School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 41-60 of 107 Results

  • Douglas McAdam

    Douglas McAdam

    Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor, Emeritus

    BioDoug McAdam is The Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and the former Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author or co-author of 18 books and some 85 other publications in the area of political sociology, with a special emphasis on race in the U.S., American politics, and the study of social movements and “contentious politics.” Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, a new edition of which was published in 1999 (University of Chicago Press), Freedom Summer (1988, Oxford University Press), which was awarded the 1990 C. Wright Mills Award as well as being a finalist for the American Sociological Association’s best book prize for 1991 and Dynamics of Contention (2001, Cambridge University Press) with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly. He is also the author of the 2012 book, A Theory of Fields (Oxford University Press), with Neil Fligstein and a book due out this summer on the historical origins of the deep political and economic divisions that characterize the contemporary U.S. The book, from Oxford University Press, is entitled: The Origins of Our Fractured Society: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Post-War America (with Karina Kloos). He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

  • Jay McClelland

    Jay McClelland

    Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Professor of Psychology and, by courtesy, of Linguistics and of Computer Science

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research addresses topics in perception and decision making; learning and memory; language and reading; semantic cognition; and cognitive development. I view cognition as emerging from distributed processing activity of neural populations, with learning occurring through the adaptation of connections among neurons. A new focus of research in the laboratory is mathematical cognition and reasoning in humans and contemporary AI systems based on neural networks.

  • Susan K. McConnell

    Susan K. McConnell

    Susan B. Ford Professor, Emerita

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSusan McConnell has studied the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the development of the mammalian cerebral cortex. Her work focused on the earliest events that pattern the developing forebrain, enable neural progenitors to divide asymmetrically to generate young neurons, propel the migration of postmitotic neurons outward into their final positions, and sculpt the fates and phenotypes of the neurons as they differentiate.

  • Raymond McDermott

    Raymond McDermott

    Professor of Education, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsInteraction analysis and social structure; the political economy of learning; writing systems; educational and psychological anthropology.

  • Nathan McDonald

    Nathan McDonald

    Basic Life Science Research Associate, Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in the fundamental cell biology of neurons. In particular, I study how neuronal synapses are formed and function. Synapses are specialized intercellular junctions that facilitate rapid communication between neurons, and thus form the basis of neural circuits and nervous system function.

    Within a synapse, synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitters are released at a specific region termed the active zone. The active zone is composed of a variety of molecules that coordinate the tethering and priming of synaptic vesicles, the recruitment of ion channels to respond to action potentials, and the stabilization of the synapse through transmembrane connections to a postsynaptic cell.

    A wide range of transmembrane proteins are capable of initiating synapse formation during development and provide specificity for targeting the proper postsynaptic cell, including Neurexins/Neuroligins, LRRTMs, DIPs/DPRs, and many Ig domain proteins. However, in all synapses, these molecules must signal to build a common active zone core. I am studying how the conserved active zone core assembles downstream of this complexity, a fundamental unresolved question in developmental neurobiology.

    To study this problem, I use the simple and stereotyped nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. I use fluorescent imaging of endogenous proteins at single neuron and single synapse resolution, as well as genetic and biochemical methods.

  • Daniel McFarland

    Daniel McFarland

    Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Sociology and of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe majority of my current research projects concern the sociology of science and research innovation. Here are some examples of projects we are pursuing:
    1. the process of intellectual jurisdiction across fields and disciplines
    2. the process of knowledge innovation diffusion in science
    3. the propagators of scientific careers and advance
    4. the role of identity and diversity on the process of knowledge diffusion and career advance
    5. the process of research translation across scientific fields and into practice
    6. the formal properties and mechanisms of ideational change (network analysis, or holistic conceptions of scientific propositions and ideas)
    7. developing methods for identifying the rediscovery of old ideas recast anew
    8. investigating the process of scientific review

    I am also heavily involved in research on social networks and social network theory development. Some of my work concerns relational dynamics and cognitive networks as represented in communication. This often concerns the communication of children (in their writings and speech in classrooms) and academic scholars. I am also co-editing a special issue in Social Networks on "network ecology", and I am a coauthor on a social network methods textbook coming out with Cambridge Press (Forthcoming, by Craig Rawlings, Jeff Smith, James Moody and Daniel McFarland).

    Last, I am heavily involved in institutional efforts to develop computational social science, computational sociology, and education data science on Stanford's campus.

  • Michael McFaul

    Michael McFaul

    Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Woods Institute

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAmerican foreign policy, great power relations, comparative autocracies, and the relationship between democracy and development.

  • Robert McGinn

    Robert McGinn

    Professor (Teaching) of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly Interestsexploration of ethical issues related to nanotechnology

  • Mark McGurl

    Mark McGurl

    Albert Guérard Professor of Literature

    BioMark McGurl's scholarly work centers on the relation of literature to social, educational and other institutions from the late 19th century to the present. He is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard), which was the recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for 2011. His most recent book, Everything and Less: Fiction in the Age of Amazon (Verso 2021), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

    McGurl’s first book was The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James (Princeton). He has also published articles in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Literary History, and New Literary History. He teaches a range of classes on American literature and related topics.

    McGurl received his BA from Harvard, then worked at the New York Times and the New York Review of Books before earning his PhD in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins. He has held fellowships from Office of the President of the University of California and the Stanford Humanities Center.

  • Alison McQueen

    Alison McQueen

    Associate Professor of Political Science and, by courtesy, of History

    BioAlison McQueen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on early modern political theory and the history of International Relations thought.

    McQueen’s book, Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2018), traces the responses of three canonical political realists—Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans Morgenthau—to hopes and fears about the end of the world. A second book project, Absolving God: Hobbes’s Scriptural Politics, tracks and explains changes in Thomas Hobbes’s strategies of Scriptural argument over time.

    Her other ongoing research projects explore methods of textual interpretation, the ethics and politics of catastrophe, and treason in the history of political thought.

  • Christian V. Mejia

    Christian V. Mejia

    Lecturer

    BioChristian Mejia (he/they) believes that light has the ability to transport us to a moment in time and cradle us within a particular place. Light affects our mood, informs our emotional landscape, and enhances the everyday moments that make up our lives. The right light can tell a story that goes beyond words.

    Christian’s approach to design seeks to create environments that ask people to lean into and learn something about our shared humanity. His design practice includes live performance, architectural lighting, and immersive entertainment. His work has been seen on stages and in built environments around the world. Some of his most cherished theatrical collaborations include the Geffen Playhouse (Los Angeles), Fountain Theatre (Los Angeles), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), ACT (San Francisco), and New Conservatory Theatre Center (San Francisco). His architectural lighting design practice has included work with Universal Creative, Lincoln Center NYC, and global Soho House properties.

    Christian received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts. See a selection of his work at christianvmejia.com.

  • Jamie Meltzer

    Jamie Meltzer

    Professor of Art and Art History

    BioProfessor Jamie Meltzer teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Documentary Film. His feature documentary films have been broadcast nationally on PBS and have screened at numerous film festivals worldwide. His latest short documentary, not even for a moment do things stand still, premiered at SXSW in March 2022, winning a Special Jury Mention in Visual Reflection. The film provides an observational glimpse into a COVID-19 art installation, dropping into intimate moments of people honoring their loved ones, and interrogating the role of mourning and closure during an unfolding tragedy. It was published as a New York Times Op-Doc in April 2022. Huntsville Station, a short documentary film directed with Chris Filippone, was featured as a New York Times Op-Docs and premiered at Berlinale and SXSW in 2020. The film observes the scene at a bus station - where dozens of inmates just released on parole take in their first moments of freedom before taking the bus home. True Conviction (broadcast on Independent Lens in May 2018), a co-production of ITVS and the recipient of a Sundance Institute grant and a MacArthur grant, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where it received a Special Jury Mention in the Best Documentary Feature category. Informant (2012), about a revolutionary activist turned FBI informant, was released in theaters in the US and Canada in Fall 2013 by Music Box Films and KinoSmith. Previous films include: Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story (Independent Lens, 2003), about the shadowy world of song-poems, Welcome to Nollywood (PBS Broadcast, 2007), an investigation into the wildly successful Nigerian movie industry, and La Caminata (2009), a short film about a small town in Mexico that runs a simulated border crossing as a tourist attraction.