Twenty-nine new faculty members joined CLAS for the fall 2024 semester, and three of them are joining the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies.

Alexandra Lamiña joins the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies as an assistant professor. Lamiña, a Kitu-Kara Native woman from Nayón, Ecuador, received her doctoral degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked on geographical assessments on the politics of territorial rights and autonomy of people of Indigenous and Afro-Latin descent in Bolivia, Colombia, and Brazil.  Her research primarily focuses on Amazonian urban geographies, learning from Indigenous epistemological traditions and drawing on feminist, Indigenous, and decolonizing perspectives in geography and urban planning.

Julissa Rojas-Sandoval joins the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community and Urban Studies and The Institute of the Environment as an assistant professor. Rojas-Sandoval received her doctoral degree from the University of Puerto Rico. She also worked as a postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution/National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Her research interests focus on plant ecology and tropical forests, specifically around the context of biological invasions, biodiversity conservation, and human-caused environmental changes, using approaches that span population dynamics, machine learning, data-driven simulations, theoretical modeling, biogeography, and community ecology.

Hanlin Zhou joins the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies as a tenure-track assistant professor. He earned his doctoral degree in geography from the University of Toronto. His academic interests lie at the dynamic intersection of artificial intelligence with geospatial data and technology, focusing on understanding human activities such as mobility, health behaviors, crime prevention, and natural and human-induced environmental risk.

Learn more about the nearly 30 new faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences on UConn Today.

The UConn Board of Trustees voted at its meeting on Feb. 29 to establish a new department merging the Department of Geography with Urban and Community Studies and providing an administrative home for Environmental Studies.

The new Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community and Urban Studies (GSCU) will draw on existing research and teaching strengths to address interdisciplinary issues in geography, environment, and sustainability.

The other new department is the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry, which will join four units:  American Studies Program, Asian and Asian American Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program.

Both new departments will be effective as of July 1, and they are set to launch at the beginning of the fall semester.

Learn more on UConn Today.

Learn more on Daily Campus.