School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-100 of 222 Results
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Karen Ajluni
Academic Operations Mgr 1, Philosophy
BioKaren Ajluni is the Director of Finance and Operations in the Departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies within the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) at Stanford University. Previously, Karen worked for six years as the Finance Manager in the Physics Department, also within H&S. Before coming to Stanford, Karen worked for four years at Santa Clara University, most recently as Assistant Dean of Administration and Finance in the School of Education and Counseling Psychology. Prior to that she was the Operations and Administration Manager of the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Karen has been employed in non-profit and educational administration for over 25 years, and has experience with a wide variety of organizations, including Downtown College Prep High School, the Girl Scouts of Northern California, EHC Lifebuilders, Futures without Violence, and Project Match. She received a B.S. in Psychology from Santa Clara University and a Masters in Public Administration from San Jose State University. Karen lives in downtown San Jose with her husband and three children.
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Mathew Ayodele
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2022
Ph.D. Minor, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Other Tech - Graduate, History DepartmentBioMathew Ayodele is a PhD student in the Department of History at Stanford University. His research interest focuses on the Colonial and Postcolonial Histories of Africa, particularly the religious, gender, and medical history in West Africa. He is primarily interested in interrogating the social history of medicine, medical pluralism, Christian missionaries' interplay, and reproductive health in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. Mathew is also interested in women's sports history within the context of gender, religion, and media politics in the late 20th century in Nigeria.
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Erica Cao
Lecturer, Music
BioErica Cao received her PhD from the University of Cambridge Centre for Music and Science and is a resident psychiatrist at San Mateo County. She seeks to understand and address social determinants of behavioral health through development and characterization of arts-based strategies through qualitative, mixed-methods, and community-engaged approaches. As part of this work, she examines the impacts of a collaborative songwriting model she developed, Music Corps, on, for example, interpersonal measures of empathy, social connectedness, and community engagement across social service and clinical settings. Trained in psychology and ethnomusicology, she has conducted fieldwork and organized songwriting workshops with social service organizations in NYC. She continues this work in community mental health settings and with San Mateo County. She co-founded Humans in Harmony, a 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit which organizes collaborative arts projects with community members. Her interests are in community-engaged research, health services implementation, and health equity.
Education
MD, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
PhD, Music, Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge
BA, Psychology; Certificate Program, Musical Performance, Princeton University
Publications
Cao, E. L., Blinderman, C. D., & Cross, I. (2021). Reconsidering empathy: An interpersonal approach and participatory arts in the medical humanities. Journal of Medical Humanities, 42, 627–640.
Cao, E. L., & Gowda, D. (2018). Collaborative songwriting for health sciences interprofessional service learning. Medical Education, 52(5), 550.
Cao, E. L., Lotstein, M., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2014). Similarity and families of musical rhythms. Music Perception, 31(5), 444–469.
Courses taught:
Music in Psychic and Social Life (MUSIC 110, ANTHRO 112, TAPS 110), Winter 2025, Spring 2026
CV: https://tr.ee/XawH03MPUg -
Stephen Choy
Asst. Director of Finance and Administration, Philosophy
Current Role at StanfordAssistant Director of Finance and Operations: Department of Philosophy & Department of Religious Studies
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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. -
Zach Haines
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2022
Renaissance Music Project Assistant, MusicBioZachary Haines is a PhD student in Musicology at Stanford University. He is both an active scholar and performer as a baritone, with research interests in the vocal repertoires of the late Renaissance and early Baroque.
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Burçak Keskin Kozat
Director of Finance & Operations, History Department
Current Role at StanfordDirector of Finance & Operations
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Joaquín Lara Midkiff
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2025
Other Tech - Graduate, History DepartmentBioJoaquín Lara Midkiff is a doctoral student studying as Dean's Fellow in the Department of History at Stanford University whose scholarship focuses on the social and labor movements of Indigenous Mexican and Central American communities in the United States during the twentieth century.
His earlier work centered Mixteco and Triqui encounters with carcerality, pan-Indigenous coalition-building, and racialized agricultural labor in the Pacific Northwest during the late twentieth century.
His scholarship and commentary has been published or is forthcoming in the Western Historical Quarterly, Truthout, and The Oregonian, among others. His poetry appears in The Future Lives in Our Bodies (Abalone Mountain Press) and Crab Creek Review.
At Stanford, he has also received the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) and Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement (RAISE) fellowships, and organizes the Latin American & Caribbean History Workshop (2026-27).
Joaquín lives with his family in Salem, Oregon, where he has served on various public and non-profit boards, including Cherriots (Salem Area Mass Transit), the Oregon Disabilities Commission, and PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union. He earned his B.A. from Yale University. -
Joo-Mee Lee
Academic Staff Hourly, Music
BioD.M.A. Boston University
M.M., New England Conservatory
BMus., Royal Academy of Music, London/King's College
Violinist Joo-Mee Lee has taken on several roles in the Department of Music at Stanford University since the fall of 2014. She served as director of the Stanford New Ensemble. As a Lecturer, she teaches courses on Introductory Violin and Professional Development in Music, and also gives individual lessons. She has worked closely with the Stanford Symphony and Philharmonia, and has overseen the annual Concerto Competition.
Previously, Lee served as an artist-in-residence and violin faculty at the University of Denver and at Colorado College. She also taught at Brandeis University, and was a sought-after teacher at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Lee earned her Doctor of Musical Arts from Boston University where she was a Roman Totenberg Scholarship recipient. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled An Analytical Study of Three String Quartets of Bernard Rands.
As a young musician, Lee was chosen to represent South Korea for the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, which performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Amsterdam Concertgebouw. She was a founding member of the Tonos String Quartet which won New England Conservatory’s Honor’s Quartet position. Her quartet took part in the Bank of America Celebrity Series with Rob Capilow, and performed live on Boston's WGBH radio among other concert venues throughout New England. The quartet was invited by the Joong-Ang Daily Newspaper to give a recital at Hoam Art Hall in Seoul, Korea.
Lee has been invited to various music festivals including Aspen, Banff, and Sarasota where she performed solo and chamber recitals. While she was in graduate school, she won a position in the DaVinci Quartet and toured throughout the United States, giving concerts and masterclasses. Concurrently, she won a position in the Colorado Springs Symphony (now Philharmonic), and became a tenured member.
As an avid new music advocate, Lee gave world premieres of chamber music and solo works by many contemporary composers. Among the composers with whom she has closely collaborated are Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas, Samuel Adler, and Jennifer Higdon.
