Regular Faculty
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Chair
Professor, Religious Studies & Asian Studies
B.A., Victoria University of Wellington; Ph.D., Australian National University
Areas of specialization: Buddhism in Tibet, the East and South Asian Himalayas, and beyond.
Advisory Committee
Alexander F. Day
Professor, History & Asian Studies
B.A. Colby College; M.A., Ph.D. UC Santa Cruz
Alexander Day studies the intellectual, social, and cultural history of peasants, food, and agrarian change in China. He teaches Chinese, East Asian,…
John T. Lang
Professor, Sociology
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Rutgers University
John T. Lang is a Professor of Sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he studies the intersection of food, culture, and social…
Carmel Levitan
Professor, Cognitive Science
B.A., Stanford University; Ph.D., UC Berkeley
Carmel Levitan studies multisensory interactions, researching how the different senses integrate information.
Affiliated Faculty
Sharon Cech
Visiting Instructor, Urban & Environmental Policy
B.A., Bard College; M.A., UCLA
Sharon Cech (she/her) is a Program Director at the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College (UEPI). With over a decade of…
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa
Professor, Religious Studies & Asian Studies
B.A., Victoria University of Wellington; Ph.D., Australian National University
Areas of specialization: Buddhism in Tibet, the East and South Asian Himalayas, and beyond.
Andrew Jalil
Associate Professor, Economics
A.B.; Sc.B. Brown University; Ph.D. UC Berkeley
Andrew Jalil is an economist, whose research is in two distinct areas: (1) macroeconomic history (financial crises, monetary and fiscal policy, the…
David Kasunic
Director of the John Branca Institute for Music; Professor, Music
B.A., Amherst College; M.F.A., Ph.D.; Princeton University
David Kasunic's principal research is on the music of Fryderyk Chopin. He teaches courses on Western music history, opera, music and disease, music…
Martha Matsuoka
Professor, Urban and Environmental Policy; Executive Director, Urban & Environmental Policy Institute
A.B., Occidental College; M.C.P., UC Berkeley Ph.D., UCLA
Martha Matsuoka ’83 focuses her teaching and research on community-based organizing and social movements for environmental justice, particularly in…
Clair Morrissey
Professor, Philosophy
B.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; M.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Clair Morrissey is a moral philosopher who specializes in practical ethics and political philosophy.
Michael W. Murphy
Associate Professor, Black Studies
B.A., University of San Diego; M.A., Ph.D, Brown University
Professor Murphy’s research and teaching emphasizes anticolonial and environmental approaches to sociological thought.
Karla Peña
Assistant Professor, Urban & Environmental Policy
B.A., California State University Northridge; M.S., University of Michigan; M.S., Ph.D., Cornell University
Karla Peña's teaching and research is centered on social movements and the political ecology of natural resource extraction and environmental change,…
Rosa Romero
Visiting Instructor, Urban & Environmental Policy
B.A., University of California, Los Angeles; M.Ed., University of Hawaii, Manoa
Rosa Romero is a Program Director at the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI) at Occidental College. Rosa specializes in Farm to Preschool,…
Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr.
Associate Professor, Philosophy
B.A., Pitzer College; M.A., P.h.D., U.C. Riverside
Robert Sanchez specializes in Mexican/Latinx/Latin American philosophy, as well as existentialism, and he has interests in the philosophy of race, the…
Joseph Schulz
Professor, Biology
B.S., Indiana University; Ph.D., UC San Diego
Prof. Schulz studies the biology of cone snails, venomous marine gastropods whose peptide neurotoxins are highly selective modulators of ion channels…
Vikram V. Shende
Assistant Professor, Chemistry
B.S. University of Michigan-Dearborn; M.S., Ph.D. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Vik Shende teaches Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry, and his research group investigates how enzymes can be used to efficiently assemble complex…
Tiffany Wheatland-Disu
Assistant Professor, Black Studies
B.A. University of Iowa; M.A. The New School; Ph.D. Howard University
Prof. Wheatland-Disu is a historian of Africa and the African diaspora whose research and scholarship bridge the histories of decolonization, Black…