School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-100 of 278 Results
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Karen Ajluni
Director of Finance & Operations, 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 at home with her husband and three children.
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Sinead Brennan-McMahon
Ph.D. Student in Classics, admitted Autumn 2019
Research Assistant, ClassicsBioSinead Brennan-McMahon joined the Stanford Classics department in 2019.
Sinead comes from Auckland, New Zealand, where she received her M.A.. Her thesis examined the reception of Martial’s sexually obscene homosexual epigrams in school texts and commentaries. Using a comprehensive statistical analysis, she argued that Victorian editors of Martial’s Epigrams expurgated the text to remove references to material they found offensive and to curate a culturally appropriate view of the ancient world for their schoolboy readers.
Her current research focuses on developing software tools to make Latin textual criticism more efficient and accessible. She is also interested in the Digital Humanities more widely, Martial, obscenity, and Reception Studies. -
Alina Bykova
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2020
Other Tech - Graduate, History Department
Graduate Research Assistant, SociologyBioAlina is a PhD student in Russian and East European History. Her research interests include Soviet environmental history with a focus on the Arctic, Soviet industrial development, and post-Soviet deindustrialization. Alina is writing her dissertation on the environmental history of Svalbard. She also works as a research associate and editor-in-chief at The Arctic Institute.
In 2019 Alina earned her masters in European and Russian Affairs from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Her masters thesis was about the rise and fall of Soviet mining settlements on Svalbard. Prior to her experience in academia, she completed a Bachelor of Journalism at Ryerson University and worked as a breaking news reporter at the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. -
Yan Chang
Ph.D. Student in Japanese, admitted Autumn 2021
Student Research Assistant, East Asian Languages and CulturesBioYan Chang is a Ph.D. student in modern and contemporary East Asian literatures, cultures, and media. His research interests currently center on trans-linguality, trans-culture, and trans-nationality in post-Cold War Japanophone literature. His academic concerns also include visuality and modernity of modern Japanese literature in the Taisho period as well as Shanghai urbanization and the concomitant media representations in the 1990s. Before joining Stanford, Yan received a joint B.A. in Economics and Japanese from Shanghai International Studies University, an M.A. in Japanese Culture Studies from Nagoya University, and an M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities.
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Hongchan Choi
Adjunct Lecturer, Music
BioAs a musician/engineer, Hongchan strives to push boundaries of the open web platform for music technology.
He studied with Jonathan Berger, Chris Chafe, and Ge Wang for my doctoral research at CCRMA between 2010 and 2014. After completing the doctoral thesis 《Collaborative Musicking on the Web》 in 2014, Hongchan joined Google Chrome where he currently leads various web music technology projects as a Technical Lead and Manager.
Outside of Google, he serves as a co-chair of W3C Audio Working Group driving a collective effort of multiple industry professionals to design advanced audio capabilities for the web platform. Hongchan also continues to engage with academia as an Adjunct Professor at CCRMA, Stanford university. -
Kai Dowding
Undergraduate Student Services Officer, History Department
BioAs the undergraduate student services officer for the Department of History, I oversee student degree progress in the major and minor and work closely with the director of undergraduate studies, director of honors and research, and our intrepid peer advisors to plan and carry out undergraduate programming. I also schedule the department’s curriculum in collaboration with the vice chair. I enjoy getting to know each student as they journey through the major or minor, and am always happy to chat with students about their interests and plans, both within Stanford and beyond.
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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. -
Dillon Gisch
Ph.D. Student in Classics, admitted Autumn 2014
Master of Arts Student in Anthropology, admitted Winter 2016
Event Technician, ClassicsBioDillon Gisch is currently PhD Candidate in Classical Archaeology at Stanford University. His dissertation investigates how images—particularly images of "modest Venus" from central Italy, coastal western Turkey, and coastal Syria—that modern viewers have viewed as "replicas" of Praxiteles' famous Knidian Aphrodite engendered a diverse array of contextual significances for viewers in the ancient world. He also studies the provenance histories and historiographies of these images and other "replicated" ancient art, especially related to issues of gendered, ethnic, and sexual identities. He has broad interests in visual culture; the historiography of art; social archaeology and art history; collecting, museum, and heritage ethics; empire and cultural appropriation; catalogs and cataloging practices; and legacy data analysis.
Previously, he received his BA in Classical Studies and Art History with Distinction (summa cum laude) from the University of Washington (Seattle). He has worked as a gallerist of early modern and modern (1450–1970) European, American, and Japanese graphic art on paper at Davidson Galleries in Seattle. He has also excavated in central Italy at the ancient Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo) and the ancient Roman site of Cosa.
The Europe Center and the American Academy in Rome have featured portions of his ongoing dissertation research. -
Melissa A. Hosek
Ph.D. Student in Chinese, admitted Autumn 2015
Stanford Student Employee, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Hume DBC Monitor, Hume CenterBioMelissa A. Hosek is a PhD candidate specializing in modern Chinese literature with interests in environmental humanities, science, technology and society (STS), and digital humanities. Her dissertation examines how technological progress transforms ideas regarding nature and environmentalism in modern Chinese literature. Working primarily with science fiction narratives, she analyzes how writers and filmmakers diagnose the changing human-nature relationship amidst science-driven development since the 1970s. Her research constructs an ecocritical literary history of contemporary Chinese science fiction and maps the transformation of humanistic reactions to the environmental crisis. In addition to her dissertation research, she is also interested in Chinese language teaching and learning in higher education, and is certified in Language Program Management and ACTFL OPI testing. In the field of digital humanities, she has developed several projects and received the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities. Her other interests include: materialism, science fiction studies, critical theory, and nationalism.
