New faculty for fall 2026

Dr. Timothy Sargent, PhD 

Professor (Teaching), Department of Economics

Dr. Sargent has a PhD in economics from the University of British Columbia.  His research is focused on analyzing and developing public policies to improve economic growth in Canada.

Sargent has spent 28 years in the Canadian federal government, holding deputy minister and associate deputy minister positions at Agriculture and Agri-food, Finance, Fisheries and Oceans and International Trade. He has also held senior positions at the Privy Council Office.

He is the director of Economic Growth and Prosperity at the School of Public Policy and lectures on markets and public policy.

Dr. Matthew Weigel, PhD

Assistant professor, Department of English

Dr. Weigel is a Dene and Métis author and artist from Edmonton who earned his PhD in English from the University of Alberta. His doctoral dissertation, “On the Legibility of Trees,” works across genre and medium as he endeavours to tell new stories in old ways, and share old stories in new ways. 

Weigel’s multimodal work is situated in his relationship to the land and considers the historical, archival and ecological connections between stories and place. His debut poetry collection, Whitemud Walking, was the winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Indigenous Voices Award, and the Alcuin Society Award for book design as well as a finalist for the Writers' Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize. He is also a bpNichol Chapbook Award winner. 

Weigel will be teaching Indigenous literatures.

Dr. Caitlin Cunningham, PhD 

Assistant professor (Teaching), Department of Geography 

Dr. Cunningham (she/her) holds a PhD in interdisciplinary studies from Dalhousie University. She is interested in how geospatial education can help people better understand a world in which maps, spatial data and GIS technologies are increasingly embedded in everyday life.

Cunningham will be teaching courses on cartography and geographic information science, focusing on innovative and student-centered approaches to teaching and learning that move beyond learning GIS as a technical skill.

Dr. Catherine Boyle, PhD 

Assistant professor, Department of History

Dr. Boyle is a historian who writes on slavery, race and empire at the crossroads of the African continent and the Middle East. Prior to joining the University of Calgary, they were a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Middlebury College.

Boyle’s writing has been featured in Feminist Formations and The Journal of Modern African Studies. They are currently at work on a book project entitled She Who Knows: Sudanic Slavery, Race Formation, and Embodied Dissent in Ottoman Tunisia, 1735-1869.

They are thrilled to be teaching Ways of Knowing (Histories of Science, Medicine and Technology), as well as global history, historical methods and courses on the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa.

Dr. Peter Jackson, PhD, FRSE FRHistS 

Professor, Department of History
Fellow, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies

Dr. Jackson received his PhD in history from the University of Cambridge and is a leading authority on the history of international relations, intelligence and international security. He recently held the Chair in Global Security at the University of Glasgow, was the founding executive director of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society.

Jackson’s research and teaching span the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century international relations, Franco-British relations, modern and contemporary France, and the role of intelligence in national and international security. He has authored five books, including most recently (with Sébastien Laurent) L’essor du renseignement moderne (Paris, 2025). He has also led or co-led six funded research projects, including “The Weight of the Past in Franco-British Relations since 1815.”

Jackson is the Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada in Intelligence and Security in a Changing Global Order at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Federica Bocchi, PhD 

Assistant professor, Department of Philosophy

Dr. Bocchi is a philosopher of science specializing in philosophy of biodiversity and environmental ethics. She conducts research and writes on biodiversity measurement and conservation interventions, seeking to understand how these practices can advance or impede social goals and data sovereignty.

Bocchi has been hired to teach and engage in transdisciplinary work . She looks forward to connecting with colleagues from any discipline and hopes to establish an inter- and trans-disciplinary research program to investigate how environmental justice relates to conservation measurement practices.

View her profile to see a more detailed list of her projects and collaborations.

Dr. Natalya Adam-Rahman, PhD 

Assistant professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Adam-Rahman earned her PhD in political science from Stanford University. Her work examines how social norms and household dynamics shape women's political empowerment in South Asia, specifically Pakistan and India. Prior to joining the University of Calgary, she was a lecturer at Stanford University's Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Program.

Adam-Rahman will be teaching courses on research methods in political science, South Asian politics and the politics of gender and social norms. Outside the office, she is looking forward to exploring Calgary's parks with her dog.

Dr. Elizabeth Good, PhD 

Assistant professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Good holds a PhD from Northwestern University and was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. She has held fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Good works at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. She specializes in women’s representation in peace negotiations. Her multi-method research has been published in the American Political Science Review.

 When not working, she prefers hiking, skiing or biking in the mountains.

Dr. James Hillman, PhD

Assistant professor, Department of Psychology

Dr. Hillman completed his doctoral studies at Queen's University in the Mac Lab studying belonging and decision making and has completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Ohio State University working in the Attitudes and Persuasion Lab on various projects relating to attitude extremity and extremism.

Hillman is currently expanding the focus of his work on social cognition and influence, studying how people's need for belonging and understanding can lead to a variety of outcomes such as biased media engagement, interpersonal conflict, polarization and extremism.

He will be teaching social cognition and social psychology.

Dr. Stephanie Woolridge, PhD

Assistant professor, Department of Psychology

Dr. Woolridge completed her PhD at Queen's University, clinical residency at The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Woolridge is a clinical psychologist whose work focuses on social well-being and recovery in psychosis. She explores clinical, neurocognitive, social cognitive and stigma-related factors that influence social functioning, with a particular focus on intimate relationships among young adults experiencing early psychosis. Complementing this work, she designs, implements and evaluates psychosocial interventions for psychosis.

She will be teaching undergraduate-level Psychopathology and graduate-level Adult Psychotherapy.

Dr. Debadatta Chakraborty, PhD 

Assistant professor, Department of Sociology

Dr. Chakraborty completed a PhD in sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a focus on transnational authoritarianism through an examination of the rise of Hindu right-wing politics (Hindutva) in India and the United States.

Chakraborty’s areas of expertise are political sociology and social movements, intersections of race, caste, class, gender and indigeneity, global and transnational sociology, Asia and South Asian diasporas and sociology of religion. Her work has been published in a variety of books and journals, including Social Science & Medicine, International Sociology, and The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict.

Chakraborty is a public sociologist who also works with pro-democracy community-based groups and non-profits in the United States and in India.

Dr. Veda Hyunjin Kim, PhD

Assistant professor, Department of Sociology

 

Dr. Kim received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His work has appeared in the Journal of Genocide Research, Humanity & Society, Critical Asian Studies, Critical Sociology, the British Journal of Sociology, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Korean Journal of Sociology, Social Science History and Sociological Forum.  

Kim is working with Temple University Press on a book project examining how US imperialism abetted the state crimes that founded "South" Korean peoplehood and the subsequent racial and gender relations within the US-led world order. 

He teaches historical criminology and anti-/de-/postcolonial theories as practices of collective emancipation.