UO Today

Chandler James is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, who specializes in American Politics, with a focus on the U.S. presidency and public opinion. In addition, he is a committed environmentalist and outdoorsman. He joined the UO faculty in fall 2023.

Nina Amstutz is an Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. Professor Amstutz along with Portland artist and activist Cleo Davis curated the exhibition “Policing Justice” which is on view at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art through May 19, 2024.

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Religious Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

“My project will provide something that has long been needed: a book-length study of the historical figure of Muhammad, the formation of the Qur’an, and the beginnings of Islam that is both grounded in the methods of historical criticism and aimed at the general reader. Unfortunately, this important perspective has been largely absent from public discourse on Islam, and it is this significant gap that my book aims to fill.”

Maxwell Foxman is an assistant professor of Media Studies and Game Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Professor Foxman’s primary research focus is on how games and play interact with non-game contexts and media professions. This research engages several overlapping realms such as immersive media, game journalism, esports, and game production.

Foxman is the co-author of Mainstreaming and Game Journalism with David Nieborg which was published in 2023 by the MIT Press.

Laura Pulido professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she

studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. Her research explores the relationship between race, place, and social and environmental processes. She has devoted much of her career to studying environmental racism, especially how racism is conceptualized and operationalized in the scholarship and practice of environmental justice. Most recently, she has been studying how white supremacy and white nationalism impact climate denial and refusal.

Three UO humanities scholars with extensive expertise in the philosophy of AI, computation, digital humanities, information politics, and data ethics engage, through perspectives rooted in the humanities, the challenges that AI and other data-driven technologies increasingly present today.

Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative, the Data Ethics coordinator, and author of Simulating Science: Computer Simulations as Scientific Instruments (2023)

Mattie Burkert, associate professor of English, director of the Minor in Digital Humanities, the interim director of the New Media and Culture Certificate, and the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the London Stage Database

Colin Koopman, professor of Philosophy, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019), and the project lead of the Our Data, Our Selves web project.

Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez is an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.

His research interests include Critical Philosophy of Race, Latin American and Caribbean Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 18th and 19th century German Philosophy, and 20th century Continental Philosophy.

Gualdrón Ramírez studied philosophy as an undergraduate and MA student at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and earned a PhD in Philosophy from DePaul University, Chicago.

Before joining UO, he was Assistant Professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department at the University of North Texas (2021-2023) and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Oxford College of Emory (2018-2020).

Artist Omar Khouri was born in London and spent his childhood in Lebanon.

In 2002, he graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston with a BFA in illustration. After spending a year in Los Angeles working in cinema and television, he returned to Beirut.

In 2006, Khouri cofounded Samandal Comics Magazine, the first experimental comics periodical in the Arab world. He is currently Samandal’s Editor-in-Chief and one of its many international contributing artists.

In 2010, Khouri's sociopolitical satire Utopia won Best Arabic Comic book at the Algerian International Comic Book Festival. His work spans many art forms including painting, comics, animation, theatre, film, and music.

Khouri is currently artist-in-residence for the UO’s Comics and Cartoon Studies program. He is producing a U.N. report on the right to food in comics form as a collaboration with Law professor Michael Fakhri and English and Comics Studies professor Kate Kelp-Stebbins. This work is in conjunction with professor Fakhri’s appointment as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for the United Nations.

Diego Mauricio Cortés is an Assistant Professor of Global Media at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication.

Professor Cortés’s research intersects alternative and community media, Latin American Indigenous studies, religious studies, and popular culture. Through this multidisciplinary practice, he examines formations of contemporary Indigeneities in the Andes, transnational evangelicalism, American whiteness, and media representations of the war on drugs.

Professor Cortés is currently working on a book manuscript that explores the repercussions of the rapid expansion of evangelicalism (non-denominational American Christianity and Pentecostalism) among Andean Indigenous communities in Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

Prior to joining the UO faculty in fall 2023, Professor Cortés was an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

Sergio Loza, Romance Languages, Director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

My project explores the collective experiences of Latinx students who served as student ambassadors for the Spanish heritage Language program at the University of Oregon. These student ambassadors collaborate in various administrative tasks as well as advocate for multilingualism and Latinx representation on campus by organizing events on campus. The design, implementation, and outcomes of this program highlight the applied ways in which social justice educational frameworks can inform innovative programmatic initiatives that enrich the educational experiences of Latinx students.