Meet Our New Faculty
Alma Hartley
PhD University of Tennessee
Lecturer, political economy and globalization
Hartley obtained her PhD degree with a concentration in political economy and globalization in summer 2024. Their research interests are interdisciplinary and broadly include feminist political economy/structural intersectionality, social theory, social movements, and state violence.
Sam Kendrick
PhD University of Kansas
Assistant professor, gender and race
Kendrick’s research focuses on cultural meanings of sex and love in the context of changing patterns of courtship and what those changing patterns mean for gender inequality at the intersections of race and class. Her recent research examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on courtship practices, gender power dynamics, and sexual norms.
Andrew Taeho Kim
PhD University of Kansas
Assistant professor, critical race and ethnic studies, political economy
Kim’s research focuses on labor markets, stratification and inequality, race and gender in the labor market, Asian Americans, and quantitative methodology. Before coming to UT, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lindsay Shade
PhD University of Kentucky
Assistant professor, environment
Shade’s focus is on extractive industries, environmental justice, land politics, and public revenues. Their work draws from popular education traditions to engage grassroots stakeholders in southern Appalachia and northern Ecuador to address community problems related to land. They engage with critical legal studies, decolonial and queer theory, and political economy, and contribute to efforts to transition from extractive to regenerative economies, especially in those areas hardest hit by extraction.
Vivian Swayne
PhD University of Tennessee
Teaching assistant professor, criminology
Swayne completed her PhD in sociology in 2023, concentrating in criminology with certificates in social theory and women, gender, and sexuality studies. Her main areas of interest are policing, sexuality, and culture. Swayne was a Sexuality Fellow at the California Institute of Integral Studies and helped write a databank on sexuality discourse across social media.
Stephen Wulff
PhD University of Minnesota
Assistant professor, criminology
Wulff’s research interests include policing, critical criminology, punishment, law and society, and social movements. He is co-authoring a report with Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy on the financial costs stemming from George Floyd’s murder.
Aryana Soliz
PhD Concordia University
Assistant professor, transportation, gender
Soliz’s research centers on the analysis of transportation and climate action policies, drawing from theories of mobility and disability justice. Her research projects explore the social impacts of active and public transportation initiatives, mobilities of care, and street experiments in communities across Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Jennifer Sims
PhD University of Wisconsin
Associate professor, critical race and ethnic studies
Sims’s research and teaching focus on critical race and ethnic studies, including critical mixed-race studies, social psychology, identity, perception, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, research methods, and critique of science and knowledge.