Faculty News
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Salute to Faculty Scholarship
Each April the Clark community comes together to celebrate the scholarly publications and creative projects authored by Clark faculty over the previous year. Read about the recent work of Clark faculty.
Meet our new tenure-track faculty: 2010-2011
Davis Baird, Ph.D.
Provost; Professor, Department of Philosophy
Davis Baird's background and training are in the philosophy of science. He is the author and
editor of numerous books and articles, including Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific
Instruments (University of California Press, 2004) and Nanotechnology Challenges: Implications
for Philosophy (World Scientific Publishers, 2006).
His most recent work focuses on the societal and ethical issues associated with nanotechnology. To pursue this work, Baird put together an interdisciplinary team of researchers spanning ten academic departments and secured in excess of $5 million in external funding from the National Science Foundation and other organizations.
Baird graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy from Brandeis University and holds master's and doctoral degrees in the philosophy of science from Stanford University. He joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1982 and was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy in 2001. Baird served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy from 1992-2005 and was appointed Dean of the South Carolina Honors College in 2005. The South Carolina Honors College is a 1,300-student liberal arts college located within the larger research university.
Anthony Bebbington, Ph.D.
Higgins Professor of Environment and Society; Director, Graduate School of Geography
Anthony Bebbington was elected in April 2009 as a member of the prestigious National Academy
of Sciences (NAS). Bebbington's work addresses the political ecology of rural change
with a particular focus on the factors that drive the relationships between humans and the
environment under conditions of inequality and poverty. His recent research has explored how
social movements, indigenous organizations and socio-environmental conflicts influence these
relationships in contexts affected by the expansion of extractive industries. He has worked
throughout South and Central America, although primarily in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Bebbington studied geography and land economy at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with distinction. He completed a master's and Ph.D. at Clark in 1988 and 1990. He has been a Professor of Nature, Society and Development in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester (U.K.), where he also has been an Economic and Social Research Council Professorial Fellow and a Research Associate of the Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales, Peru.
Bebbington has held fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Fulbright Commission and the Inter-American Foundation, as well as positions at the World Bank, University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Cambridge and the International Institute of Environment and Development. He is a native of Staffordshire, England.
Philip J. Bergmann, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Philip Bergmann's research interests are focused on the evolution of segmentation and body shape in
vertebrates. His current research is integrated towards understanding how segmentation influences
changes in body proportions during ontogeny and evolution, and how it affects organism function.
Bergmann comes to Clark from the University of Arizona, where as the G.G. Simpson Postdoctoral Fellow studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, he taught a course in herpetology. Prior to his time at the University of Arizona, he taught and mentored undergraduate students at Tulane University and the University of Calgary.
Bergmann has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants for his work, and his research has been published in several leading journals in biology and zoology. He received a B.S. and an M.S. from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Bergmann will begin teaching at Clark in January 2011.
Ramon Borges-Mendez, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, International Development, Community, and Environment Department
Ramon Borges-Mendez has been a visiting associate professor at Clark since 2009 and has
held academic positions at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Northeastern University,
University of Massachusetts Amherst, American University's School of International Service,
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and
the University of Chile's Public Policy Graduate Program. He currently is doing research on
Puerto Rican low-wage workers in Puerto Rico and the United States, a project sponsored by
the Ford Foundation and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
Borges-Mendez has written on various public policy issues: workforce development, labor markets, Latino CBOs, Latino poverty and community development in the United States, immigration, decentralization and civil society matters in Latin America. In 2005, he was chosen as William Díaz Fellow by the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council. Borges-Mendez is a member of the advisory board of the Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy and the Center for Social Policy, both at UMass Boston. In 2007, he was appointed commissioner to Gov. Deval Patrick's Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants, and to the Asset Development Commission. He is also an elected member of the board of directors of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).
Borges-Mendez received a B.A. in Social Thought and Political Economy from UMass Amherst, and an M.A. in City Planning and a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stacey Hancock, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Stacey Hancock comes to Clark from Reed College in Portland, Ore., where she was a visiting
assistant professor. Her current research interests are in time-series analysis, specifically,
change-point detection. She also is interested in environmental statistics, and involved in statistics
education research.
Hancock received a B.A. in Mathematics and Music from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn.; an M.S. in Statistics from Montana State University; and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Colorado State University. She has presented at major mathematics colloquia and is a member of several statistics and mathematics associations.
Hugh S. Manon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Visual and Performing Arts (Screen Studies)
Hugh Manon earned a B.S. from Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College, graduating summa
cum laude. He received an M.A. in English and a Ph.D. in Cultural and Critical Studies (film
studies emphasis) from the University of Pittsburgh. At the University of Pittsburgh, he was a
visiting instructor and adjunct instructor with the Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Manon joined the faculty of Oklahoma State University's Department of English, Screen Studies Program in 2002. He received that institution's Regents Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. Manon's teaching and research interests include Lacanian psychoanalysis; film genres (horror, film noir, pseudo-documentary); lo-fi and punk aesthetics; cuteness culture; and Tod Browning, George Romero and Edgar G. Ulmer.
Manon has published articles in major film journals and is a member of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society.
Christina M. McGraw, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Carlson School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Christina McGraw comes to Clark from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, where
she was a postdoctoral fellow and assistant lecturer in Marine Chemistry. There, she developed
new analytical instrumentation to study the local impacts of ocean acidification, and also
co-supervised and mentored students with environmental and analytic projects.
Prior to her appointment at Otago, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Centre for Sensor Research, Dublin City University, Ireland, where she developed autonomous environmental sensors based on microfluidic technology. McGraw has published articles in leading scientific journals, and presented at various international conferences.
She received a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and an M.S. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Washington, Seattle.
McGraw will begin teaching at Clark in January 2011.
Laura Gale McKee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Hiatt School of Psychology
During 2009-10, Laura McKee held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Training Program in Research
on Black Child Development at the University of North Carolina. She has experience
working with children and families: her expertise is in working with depressed youth.
McKee's research focuses on the transmission of depression from caregivers to offspring. During her graduate training, she was involved in a family-based, cognitive behavioral intervention trial (Raising Healthy Children) aimed at preventing externalizing and internalizing disorders among offspring of depressed caregivers. At UNC, McKee investigated the construct of depression in African American families, the link between parent and child depression, and dimensions of family functioning that may serve to transmit the risk.
McKee received a B.A. in English from Duke University, magna cum laude; an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College; and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont.
Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, International Development, Community, and Environment Department
Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger specializes in remote sensing and spatial analysis. Her doctoral
research, conducted at Clark and funded by the U.S. Man and Biosphere Program, focused on
linking field interviews and survey data with satellite imagery data to explain and model landuse
change in rural southern Mexico.
Ogneva-Himmelberger is on the Clark team of researchers (along with Professors Tim Downs and Rob Goble) participating in the National Children's Study. It is the largest and most longterm study ever conducted on how environmental and genetic factors impact children's health in the U.S. from birth to the age of 21. Within the Clark team she is leading the effort to use GIS methodology to identify representative areas for sampling within Worcester County, and to map and analyze environmental conditions related to population health in Worcester County.
Ogneva-Himmelberger has been an assistant professor at Clark since 2006; previously, she taught at Tufts University, Mount Holyoke College, Worcester State College and the National University of Costa Rica. She received an M.A. in Geography from Moscow State University in Russia, and a Ph.D. in Geography from Clark in 1998.
Debra Osnowitz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Debra Osnowitz was a high school teacher and an editorial freelancer before becoming a
researcher and earning a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 2005. She came
to Clark as a visiting assistant professor in 2007. She recently finished Marketing Expertise:
Contract Professionals in the New Economy, to be published in September. She also has published
articles in a number of sociology journals.
At Brandeis, Osnowitz received numerous academic honors, including the Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of Sociology; Outstanding Teaching Award; University Prize Instructorship; Berkowitz Research Award; and the Department of Sociology's Dissertation Fellowship. In 2004 she was the recipient of the Braverman Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and from 2008 to 2010 she was part of the Early Career Scholars Program.
Chih Ming Tan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
A native of Singapore, Chih Ming Tan received a B.S. and an M.S. in Economics from the London
School of Economics and Political Science. He also earned a M.S. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Economics.
Between degrees, Tan served as an economic analyst with the Ministry of Defense in Singapore while completing his military draft requirements. He joined the Department of Economics at Tufts University as an assistant professor in September 2004.
Tan's primary research interests are in the areas of economic growth and development. His current research employs statistical learning techniques as well as recent developments in sample splitting and threshold regression methods to uncover important causes of economic divergence across countries.