School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 51-100 of 150 Results
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Christian Figueroa
Undergraduate, History
BioChristian Figueroa is a political communications professional based in Southern California.
He is currently a senior communications aide at Derek Tran for Congress, one of the most competitive House races in the 2026 midterm elections, and previously held roles with U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and the California Democratic Party.
Aside from his day job, Christian is a passionate advocate for progressive policies in his community, serving on the executive board of the California Democratic Party. In 2024, he was one of the youngest delegates to represent California at the Democratic National Convention.
Christian studies history at Stanford University, specializing in early colonial America. He enjoys hiking, traveling, and watching documentaries in his free time. -
Paula Findlen
Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History and Professor, by courtesy, of French and Italian
BioI have taught the early history of science and medicine for many years on the premise that one of the most important ways to understand how science, medicine and technology have become so central to contemporary society comes from examining the process by which scientific knowledge emerged. I also take enormous pleasure in examining a kind of scientific knowledge that did not have an autonomous existence from other kinds of creative endeavors, but emerged in the context of humanistic approaches to the world (in defiance of C.P. Snow's claim that the modern world is one of "two cultures" that share very little in common). More generally, I am profoundly attracted to individuals in the past who aspired to know everything. It still seems like a worthy goal.
My other principal interest lies in understanding the world of the Renaissance, with a particular focus on Italy. I continue to be fascinated by a society that made politics, economics and culture so important to its self-definition, and that obviously succeeded in all these endeavors for some time, as the legacy of such figures as Machiavelli and Leonardo suggests. Renaissance Italy, in short, is a historical laboratory for understanding the possibilities and the problems of an innovative society. As such, it provides an interesting point of comparison to Gilded Age America, where magnates such as J.P. Morgan often described themselves as the "new Medici," and to other historical moments when politics, art and society combined fruitfully.
Finally, I have a certain interest in the relations between gender, culture and knowledge. Virginia Woolf rightfully observed at the beginning of the twentieth century that one could go to a library and find a great deal about women but very little that celebrated or supported their accomplishments. This is no longer true a century later, in large part thanks to the efforts of many scholars, male and female, who have made the work of historical women available to modern readers and who have begun to look at relations between the sexes in more sophisticated ways. Our own debates and disagreements on such issues make this subject all the more important to understand. -
Thomas Fingar
Lecturer, FSI - S-APARC
Affiliate, FSI - CISACCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsChinese domestic and foreign policy, US-China relations, US foreign policy, intelligence analysis, mega-trends and global challenges, geopolitical consequences of climate change
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Chelsea Finn
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering
BioChelsea Finn is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and the William George and Ida Mary Hoover Faculty Fellow. Professor Finn's research interests lie in the ability to enable robots and other agents to develop broadly intelligent behavior through learning and interaction. Her work lies at the intersection of machine learning and robotic control, including topics such as end-to-end learning of visual perception and robotic manipulation skills, deep reinforcement learning of general skills from autonomously collected data, and meta-learning algorithms that can enable fast learning of new concepts and behaviors. Professor Finn received her Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and her PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Her research has been recognized through the ACM doctoral dissertation award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the MIT Technology Review 35 under 35 list, and her work has been covered by various media outlets, including the New York Times, Wired, and Bloomberg. Throughout her career, she has sought to increase the representation of underrepresented minorities within CS and AI by developing an AI outreach camp at Berkeley for underprivileged high school students, a mentoring program for underrepresented undergraduates across three universities, and leading efforts within the WiML and Berkeley WiCSE communities of women researchers.
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Morris P. Fiorina
Wendt Family Professor and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
BioMorris P. Fiorina is the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. He received an undergraduate degree from Allegheny College and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, and taught at Caltech and Harvard before joining Stanford in 1998. Fiorina has written widely on American politics, with special emphasis on the study of representation, public opinion and elections. He has published numerous articles and written or edited thirteen books, including: Representatives, Roll Calls, and Constituencies; Congress--Keystone of the Washington Establishment; Retrospective Voting in American National Elections; The Personal Vote (coauthored with Bruce Cain and John Ferejohn); Divided Government; Civic Engagement in American Democracy (co-edited with Theda Skocpol), Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (with Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope), Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics (with Samuel Abrams), Can We Talk: The Rise of Rude, Nasty, Stubborn Politics (co-edited with Dan Shea) and most recently, Unstable Majorities. Fiorina has served on the editorial boards of a dozen journals in Political Science, Political Economy, Law, and Public Policy, and from 1986-1990 served as Chairman of the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Studies. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received Career Achievement Awards from the American Political Science Association’s Organized Sections on Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior, and Political Organizations and Parties.
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Stephanie Fischer
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2022
Ph.D. Minor, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Grad OCT, Hume CenterBioStephanie Fischer (she/her) is a Ph.D. Candidate with the Behavioral Decisions and the Environment group with Dr. Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, and is a Ph.D. minor with the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. She is largely interested in community-led solutions that bolster adaptive capacity in the face of acute disasters and chronic climate hazards, and the ways culture and identity play a pivotal role in achieving holistic well-being and transformative climate justice.
Stephanie also holds a B.A. in Music Composition and a B.A. in Earth Systems (Human Environmental Systems) from Stanford University. -
Roberta Leonie Claude Fischli
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioRoberta Fischli is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the social and political impact of artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on how novel AI systems can promote personal freedom and democracy.
Roberta was previously a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google, where she worked on AI agents and value alignment. Previous research appointments include the University of California Berkeley, Georgetown University, and the University of St. Gallen. She is a research affiliate at the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab at Australian National University, led by Seth Lazar.
Roberta holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in International Affairs and Political Economy from the University of St. Gallen. Her dissertation monograph "Freedom after Algorithms" investigates the changing role of freedom in the digital age. Her research has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, the European Journal of Political Theory, and History of Political Thought, among others. Roberta also works as a freelance journalist. -
Daniel Fisher
Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEvolutionary & ecological dynamics & diversity, microbial, expt'l, & cancer
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Ian Fisher
Humanities and Sciences Professor, Professor of Applied Physics and, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur research focuses on the study of quantum materials with unconventional magnetic & electronic ground states & phase transitions. Emphasis on design and discovery of new materials. Recent focus on use of strain as a probe of, and tuning parameter for, a variety of electronic states. Interests include unconventional superconductivity, quantum phase transitions, nematicity, multipolar order, instabilities of low-dimensional materials and quantum magnetism.
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James Fishkin
Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
BioJames S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab.
He received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.
He is the author of Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford 2018), When the People Speak (Oxford 2009), Deliberation Day (Yale 2004 with Bruce Ackerman) and Democracy and Deliberation (Yale 1991).
He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® – a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. His work on deliberative democracy has stimulated more than 100 Deliberative Polls in 28 countries around the world. It has been used to help governments and policy makers make important decisions in Texas, China, Mongolia, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Bulgaria, Brazil, Uganda and other countries around the world.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. -
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor, by courtesy, of African and African American Studies
BioShelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford, where she is also Director of Stanford's American Studies Program and Co-Director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of forty-eight books and has published over one hundred fifty articles, essays and reviews, many of which have focused on issues of race and racism in America, and on recovering and interpreting voices that were silenced, marginalized, or ignored in America's past. Her books have won awards from Choice, Library Journal, the New York Public Library, and elsewhere. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. Before coming to Stanford in 2003, she was chair of the American Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has been featured twice on the front page of the New York Times, and twice on the front page of the New York Times Arts section. In 2017 she was awarded the John S. Tuckey Lifetime Achievement award by the Center for Mark Twain Studies in recognition of her efforts "to assure that a rigorous, dynamic account of Twain stays in the public consciousness," and stated that "Nobody has done more to recruit, challenge, and inspire new generations and new genres of Mark Twain studies." Her most recent book, Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee, came out in 2017. Junot Díaz called it "a triumph of scholarship and passion, a profound exploration of the many worlds which comprise our national canon....a book that redraws the literary map of the United States."
She has served as President of the American Studies Association and the Mark Twain Circle of America, was co-founder of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman society, and was a founding editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies. She has given keynote talks at conferences in Beijing, Cambridge, Coimbra, Copenhagen, Dublin, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kunming, Kyoto, La Coruña, Lisbon, Mainz, Nanjing, Regensburg, Seoul, St. Petersburg, Taipei, Tokyo, and across the U.S.
In June 2019, the American Studies Association created a new prize, the "Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies." The prize honors publications by scholars outside the United States that present original research in transnational American Studies. In its announcement of the new award, the ASA said, "Shelley Fisher Fishkin's leadership in creating a crossoads for international scholarly collaboration and exchange has transformed the field of American Studies in both theory and practice. This award honors Professor Fishkin's outstanding dedication to the field by promoting exceptional scholarship that seeks multiple perspectives that enable comprehensive and complex approaches to American Studies, and which produce culturally, socially, and politically significant insights and interpretations relevant to Americanists around the world." In 2023 the Ameriican Studies Association awarded Fishkin the "Bode-Pearson Prize for Lifetime Achievement and Outstanding Contribution to the field of American Studies." Her most recent book is "Jim (Huckleberry Finn's Comrade)" published (2025) in Yale University Press's "Black Lives" biography series. Current projects include a book about Hal Holbrook and Mark Twain. -
Lazar Fleishman
Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature
BioLazar Fleishman studied at a music school and the Music Academy in Riga, Latvia before graduating from Latvian State University in 1966. His first scholarly papers (on Pushkin, the Russian elegy, and Boris Pasternak) were published during his university years. He emigrated to Israel in 1974, where his academic career began at the Department for Russian Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was co-founder and co-editor of the series Slavica Hierosolymitana: Slavic Studies of Hebrew University (1977-1984). He was Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1978-1979; 1980-1981), The University of Texas at Austin (1981-1982), Harvard, and Yale (1984-1985) before joining the Stanford faculty in 1985. He also taught at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Princeton, Latvian State University, Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), and the University of Vienna, Austria. His research interests encompass the history of 19th and 20th century Russian literature (especially, Pushkin, Pasternak, and Russian modernism); poetics; literary theory; 20th-century Russian history; Russian émigré literature, journalism and culture. He is the founder of the series Stanford Slavic Studies (1987-present), editor of the series Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures and History (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2007-present) and co-editor of the series Verbal Art: Studies in Poetics (Fordham, formerly Stanford University Press).
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Ayana Omilade Flewellen
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
BioAyana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, an artist scholar, and a storyteller. As a scholar of anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies, Flewellen's intellectual genealogy is shaped by critical theory rooted in Black feminist epistemology and pedagogy. This epistemological backdrop not only constructs the way they design, conduct, and produce their scholarship but acts as foundational to how she advocates for greater diversity within the field of archaeology and within the broader scope of academia. Flewellen is the co-founder and current Board Chair of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. In July 2022, they joined the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University as an Assistant Professor. Her research and teaching interests address Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, memory, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery and its afterlives. Flewellen has been featured in National Geographic, Science Magazine, PBS, and CNN; and regularly presents her work at institutions including The National Museum for Women in the Arts.
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James Flynn
Ph.D. Student in Classics, admitted Autumn 2023
Other Tech - Graduate, ClassicsCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsJames Flynn is a PhD student in Ancient History. He focuses on the political, economic, and religious history of ancient Greece, and on connections with other contemporary societies, particularly ancient India. He is interested in the role of religion in legitimizing political institutions from a comparative perspective, and in the subordination of religion to political authority in the Greek poleis. For his undergraduate thesis at Brown, he compared trends among Hellenistic philosophers and Indian ascetics of withdrawal from society. For his Master’s capstone project at Yale, he wrote about the historical impact of climate change on 1st century BCE South Asia. He also pursued a second MA in religious studies, with a focus on Indian religions, and he studies the languages Sanskrit and Pali in addition to Latin and Greek. He is interested in using epigraphy and papyrology for historical sources. He is also interested in applying social scientific methods to large, cross-cultural datasets, looking for long-term trends in ancient history.
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Kate Folk
Lecturer, English
BioKate Folk is the author of a novel, Sky Daddy (Random House 2025), and a short story collection, Out There (Random House 2022). Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, n+1, One Story, Granta, and The Baffler, among other venues. A 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow, she’s also received fellowships from MacDowell, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and Willapa Bay AiR. She is currently a lecturer in creative writing at Stanford University.
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Sean Follmer
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHuman Computer Interaction, Haptics, Robotics, Human Centered Design
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Debra Fong
Academic Staff Hourly, Music
BioViolinist Debra Fong is Concertmaster of the Peninsula Symphony, Associate Concertmaster of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, and Principal Second Violinist of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. She spends her summers as a first violinist with the Grammy Award-winning Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.
Also dedicated teacher, Debra is a Lecturer in Music at Stanford University, teaching violin and chamber music, and she maintains a private violin studio. She is a faculty coach for Young Chamber Musicians, a guest conductor for the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and a judge for several annual young artist concerto competitions. Debra is a former violin faculty member at The College of William & Mary, The Music Institute of Chicago, and New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory School.
Debra received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Violin Performance with Honors and Distinction from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she studied with Eric Rosenblith, James Buswell, Eugene Lehner, and Louis Krasner.
Debra has been a featured chamber musician at Toronto Summer Music; Bay Chamber Concerts in Maine; Grand Teton Music Festival; Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival in Vermont; Sarasota Music Festival; and Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut. She has been a guest artist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Chicago Chamber Musicians, North American New Music Festival in Buffalo, NY, and the New Music Festival at Santa Clara University. Debra is an avid proponent of contemporary music and has worked closely with composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Thomas Adès, Joan Tower, Bright Sheng, and Kaija Saariaho.
Debra's discography includes recordings with The Santa Fe Opera, indie pop vocalist Vienna Teng, Stanford Chamber Chorale, composer John Luther Adams, Mannheim Steamroller, and she has performed on numerous film soundtracks.
Debra plays a Giuseppe Rocca violin kindly on loan from Stanford University’s Harry R. Lange Instrument Collection. In her leisure time, Debra enjoys reading modern fiction, practicing yoga, playing word games, and seeking out excellent coffee. -
Vivienne Fong
Director of Programs and Faculty Affairs, SIEPR Operations
Current Role at StanfordDirector of Programs and Faculty Affairs
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Charlotte Fonrobert
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and, by courtesy, of Classics and of German Studies
BioCharlotte Elisheva Fonrobert specializes in Judaism: talmudic literature and culture. Her interests include gender in Jewish culture; the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity; the discourses of orthodoxy versus heresy; the connection between religion and space; and rabbinic conceptions of Judaism with respect to GrecoRoman culture. She is the author of Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender(2000), which won the Salo Baron Prize for a best first book in Jewish Studies of that year and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Scholarship. She also co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (2007), together with Martin Jaffee (University of Washington). Currently, she is working on a manuscript entitled Replacing the Nation: Judaism, Diaspora and the Neighborhood.
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Laurent Formery
Affiliate, Biology
BioI graduated from Sorbonne University (France) in Molecular and Cellular Biology, and I started my PhD at the Villefranche-sur-Mer marine station, where my research focused on the develoment and evolution of the nervous system in sea urchins, and on the roles of intercellular signaling pathways in this process. As part of my PhD, I spent one year at the Shimoda Marine Research Center (Japan). I am now trying to understand how morphological diversity emerged from gene regulatory networks, using echinoderms and other cool animals like accorn worms. I am broadly fascinated by developmental biology, evolution, and zoological studies of weird animals in general.
