Stanford University


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  • Vivian Brates

    Vivian Brates

    Advanced Lecturer, Language Ctr

    BioVivian Brates is an Advanced Lecturer in the Stanford Language Center, where she teaches Spanish language and culture courses with a particular emphasis on community-engaged learning. Since 2011, she has designed and taught a portfolio of courses that integrate advanced language learning with issues of migration, access to health care, and human rights through long-term partnerships with community organizations.

    She believes that learning another language is ultimately about building understanding across cultures and seeing the world through other people's experiences and perspectives. In her community-engaged courses, students strengthen their language proficiency, intercultural competence, and communication skills by engaging directly with Spanish-speaking communities. Along the way, they gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic, cultural, and structural barriers that shape people's opportunities and experiences. Whether they pursue careers in medicine, law, education, engineering, business, research, or public service, her goal is to help students communicate thoughtfully across cultures and engage with others with empathy, humility, and respect.

    Over the years, her courses have partnered with organizations including the International Institute of the Bay Area, the CARA Pro Bono Project, Al Otro Lado, Freedom for Immigrants, One Life (Una Vida) Counseling Services, UG2 campus service workers at Stanford, Sequoia High School's Newcomer Program, and Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA).

    Before joining Stanford, Vivian worked as a Human Rights Observer and Election Monitor with the United Nations and the Organization of American States in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Guatemala, and later as an advocate and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Those experiences continue to shape her teaching and her commitment to connecting academic learning with meaningful community engagement.

    Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Vivian attended the University of Buenos Aires before earning an M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in Latin American Studies with a concentration in Economic Development from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

  • Michael Bratman

    Michael Bratman

    U. G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhilosophy of action, where this includes issues about individual agency over time, social and institutional organization and agency, and practical rationality.

  • Sarah Brayne

    Sarah Brayne

    Associate Professor of Sociology

    BioSarah Brayne is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, she was an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and Founding Director of the Texas Prison Education Initiative. She received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton University and completed a postdoc at Microsoft Research New England.

  • Megan Brennan

    Megan Brennan

    Advanced Lecturer, Chemistry

    BioDr. Megan Brennan's interests include the development of organic chemistry lab courses that give students hands-on opportunities to explore chemistry while reinforcing and building upon concepts learned in lecture classes. She aims for her labs to bring chemistry to life, and to afford students a chance to have fun and experience a taste of scientific discovery.

    While studying chemistry at Lafayette College (B.S. 2002), Dr. Brennan worked on the preparation of triazaphenanthrenes and the Oxa–Pictet–Spengler reaction of 1-(3-furyl)alkan-2-ols. She completed her doctoral work at Stanford (Ph.D. 2008), conducting her thesis research in palladium asymmetric allylic alkylation under the advisement of Professor Barry Trost. During her postdoctoral research with Professor Scott Miller at Yale University, she investigated the use of peptides containing a thiazole side chain for use in acyl anion chemistry. She joined the teaching staff at University of California, Berkeley in 2010 before coming returning to Stanford in 2011 to spearhead the development of a new summer organic chemistry sequence, a comprehensive course designed for pre-meds, offering an entire year of organic chemistry in nine weeks.

    Dr. Brennan also acts as the liaison to the chemistry majors, to promote events with faculty in both the academic and social aspect: providing an environment that allows students to be comfortable and able to learn, while helping them take advantage of every opportunity that Stanford offers.

    Dr. Brennan's current research is in the development classroom experiments that bring cutting edge industrial and academic research into the undergraduate laboratory experience.

  • Sinead Brennan-McMahon

    Sinead Brennan-McMahon

    Ph.D. Student in Classics, admitted Autumn 2019

    BioSinead is an ABD PhD candidate in the Department of Classics and is expecting to complete her dissertation in 2024. Her research investigates ancient Roman sexual culture and where it shows up in the landscape. It focuses on displays of sexuality that do not match up to any social or political identities, including statues of Priapus, emperors portrayed as sexual aggressors and agricultural language adopted as sexual slang.

    Sinead comes from Auckland, New Zealand, where she received her M.A. with First Class Honours. Her M.A. 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.

    Sinead is also interested in the Digital Humanities, Data Science and programming. As a CESTA DH Graduate Fellow, she is developing an ngram viewer tool for the Latin literary canon.