Advisory Committee 

Dr. Chris Baynard is Associate Professor in Geography and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in the Department of Economics and Geography. His research and teaching center on geospatial applications to natural resource management at the landscape level. Additionally, he has developed and let study-abroad courses focused on the wine industry in Argentina and Chile, renewable energy and sustainability in Holland, Germany and Spain and is now leading a new course on mining and sustainable business practices in Chile. Professor Baynard also serves as the director for the Center for Sustainable Business Practices for the Cogging College of Business and serves on the Executive Board fof the Environmental Center.

Dr. James P. Beasley is an associate professor of English at the University of North Florida, where he teaches courses in Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities. His book, Rhetoric at the University of Chicago, examines the influence of twentieth-century rhetoricians on the teaching of contemporary composition and is available from Peter Lang Publishers (2018). His work has been published in College Composition and Communication, JGE: the Journal of General Education, Rhetoric Review, and Enculturation.  He recently gave the 2019 inaugural address "Sparking St. Augustine: The Digital Humanities and the Future of Archives" for the St. Augustine Historical Society.

 Dr. Erin Bennett is an Associate Professor of Piano and Pedagogy at the University of North Florida, where she teaches applied and class piano, piano accompanying, and coordinates the new degree program in Piano Pedagogy. As a performer, Dr. Bennett has appeared throughout the U.S. and in the Czech Republic, Belgium, France, and Spain. She has performed as a soloist with the University of Florida Symphony Orchestra and in collaboration with members of the Oregon Mozart Players.

 

 

Dr. Felicia Bevel is the co-chair of the Development Sub-Committee in the DHI, and an Assistant Professor of History at UNF.

 

 

 

 

 

Jessica Borusky is the UNF Gallery Director and Instructor in the Art, Art History and Design department. They are a curator, educator, cultural organizer, writer, and artist, with a focus on contemporary issues in art and organizing, publics, performance, queerness, language, and expanded media. They received their MFA in Studio Art from Tufts University and School of the Museum of Fine Arts with a concentration in video, performance, and gender studies from the Womens and Gender Studies Consortium at MIT. Borusky has worked for educational institutions, arts nonprofits, arts journals, and civic organizations across the US.

 

 Michael Boyles is a graphic designer at the Center for Instruction and Research Technology at UNF. His interest in Spanish culture and the Camino de Santiago led him to joining the 2015 journey to support the professors and students in their travels while documenting the trip with capturing photos, creating a website, developing the student’s blog, GIS satellite mapping of the six-day hike, and publishing a book of the experiences throughout the excursion. His design credentials cover a multitude of disciplines that incorporate print, environmental design, signage, trade shows, product design, package design, illustration and Web design.

Dr. Jelena Brezjanović is a visiting instructor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at the University of North Florida, where she teaches courses in Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology. The scope of her research includes studies in bilingual language patterns, migration, ethnoecology and conservation. Brezjanović serves as the Executive Coordinator for the International Society of Ethnobiology, contributing her expertise to help promote world-wide biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, especially the conservation of the ecosystems and knowledge bases of indigenous communities.

 

Dr. Jeff Chamberlain (often known to students as “Dr. J”) is the inaugural dean of the Hicks Honors College at UNF. He studied Early Modern British History for his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and has published several books and many articles on ecclesiastical, political, and social history of eighteenth-century England. He was an early adopter of online teaching technology (and even presented his web-based Medieval Murder Mystery at Bouchercon one year), and, as an administrator, is a strong advocate of digital media in education.

Dr. Karen Cousins, Director of Undergraduate Research, has been an undergraduate, a graduate student, and a faculty member at UNF. She received the PhD from the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, developing expertise in historical inquiry and archival research, critical source analysis and interpretation, theory, method, writing, and revision – knowledge she loves to share with UNF student researchers. Dr. Cousins is also an Affiliated Assistant Professor in the Department of History.

 

Rosa de Jorio is professor of anthropology; coordinator of the anthropology program at UNF; and editor in chief of Mande Studies, the journal of the Mande Studies Association. De Jorio’s research centers on the politics of cultural heritage; gender and sexuality; and digital spaces, new forms of community, and political identities. Her book Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2016. She is currently working on a coedited book on civil society, human rights, and memory in West Africa.

 

Dr. Nicholas de Villiers is professor of English and film at UNF. He is the author of Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol (2012), Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (2017), and Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-liang (forthcoming, 2022), all from University of Minnesota Press, and a chapter in I Confess! Constructing the Sexual Self in the Internet Age, edited by Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019). His research interests include gender and sexuality in cinema and new media, documentary studies, and queer theory.

 Dr. Sherif Elayoumy is a professor of computer science, the Director of the School of Computing, and a former Associate Dean of the College of Computing, Engineering, and Construction. His research interests include Data Analytics and Data Mining. His projects include a collaboration with the faculty of University of Florida's College of Medicine to analyze a large dataset from the United States Renal Data System.

 

 

Dr. María Ángeles Fernández Cifuentes is an associate professor of Spanish at UNF. Her research focuses on modern adaptations of early modern Spanish texts and the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education, particularly in the teaching of literature.

 

 

Chris Gabbard is Professor of English and teaches courses in British literature and disability studies in the Humanities. He is the author of A Life Beyond Reason: A Disabled Boy and His Father’s Enlightenment (Beacon Press 2020) and coeditor of The Cultural History of Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury Academic 2020). He sits on the Board of Directors of the DLC Nurse & Learn, the only daycare facility in Jacksonville for children with significant impairments and/or complex medical needs.

 

Dr. Joshua C. Gellers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project, and Fulbright Scholar to Sri Lanka. His research focuses on human rights, sustainable development, and technology. He is the author of The Global Emergence of Constitutional Environmental Rights (Routledge 2017).

 

 

Sheila Goloborotko's creative research focuses on printmedia as the graphic science of democracy—a tool that fosters community building and information sharing to create new socio-political ecologies. She investigates ways that feasibility, sustainability, and venture creation are the natural outgrowths of an ethical printmaking, grassroots-run, people-powered society. has exhibited installations, works on paper, sculpture, videos, and interactive projects in more than 200 exhibitions.

 

Dr. Mitch Haney teaches a variety of courses on Ethics and Applied Ethics. His research focuses on Organizational Ethics, Ethics and Social Media, and the Value of Work and Leisure to the quality of life.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Laura Heffernan is an associate professor of English at UNF. She works on nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and culture, with a particular focus on histories of reading and histories of literary criticism. She helped develop the Digital Humanities minor at UNF and, in 2019-21, she served as Director of UNF's Digital Humanities Institute.

 

 

 

Dr. John Kantner is Associate Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of North Florida. An anthropological archaeologist, he received his doctorate from the University of California–Santa Barbara. Dr. Kantner's early research was on Spanish Colonial ethnohistory, but the majority of his research has focused on Ancestral Puebloans of the U.S. Southwest. His early work in the digital humanities earned him an international New Media/Quicktime award, the ceremony for which included a surreal Mardi Gras parade appearance.

Dr. Leslie Kaplan holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She has had an interest in digital humanities since graduate school in the late 1990s when she worked on a project sharing text and images of Corinth, Greece through a web page. Her latest work is a collaboration with students. This locative project is called the UNF Ghost Tour and aims to present the history of the physical campus using augmented reality or other digital technology.

 

Dr. Philip Kaplan teaches World History and upper level courses on Greece, Rome, and the Near East. He has published articles on the history of geographical thought, on Greek travellers, explorers and mercenaries, and on the contacts and exchanges between Greeks and their neighbors in Egypt, Israel, Syria and Anatolia. He has worked on archaeological projects in Israel and Greece, and has traveled extensively in the Mediterranean.

 

Dr. Chau Kelly offers courses on African History, Modern India, European Imperialism, and the History of Medicine. Her teaching and research examine the intersection of social interpretations of health, hygiene, and development interventions in colonial settings. These interests have led to articles and conference presentations about Islamic charitable institutions (the waqf), water commodification, urban development, and nutrition interventions in Tanzania.

 

 David Kersey is an academic advisor for Spanish, French, International Studies, Political Science, and Public Administration majors. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and a Master's degree in Public Administration at UNF. Prior to working at UNF, he worked as the Executive Director of the Military Museum of North Florida.

 

 

Constanza López is an associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Her research interests include Latin American Literatures of the XX and XXI centuries, women writers, autobiography and testimonio, gender and violence, film and documentary, human rights and activism, migrations, and Hispanics in the U.S. She is author of Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: el testimonio femenino en Colombia (2012). She is currently working on a manuscript for a book titled Collective Efforts: Reterritorializing Spaces of Violence in Colombia.

 

Dr. Sarah Mattice is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, specializing in comparative and East Asian philosophy. She is the author of Exploring the Heart Sutra (2021) and Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesthetic Experience (2014). Her recent scholarship is situated in the intersections between East Asian philosophical traditions like Ruism (Confucianism), Daoism, and Buddhism, hermeneutics, and feminist reclamation.

 

Dr. Clayton McCarl is the director of the International Studies Program at UNF and an associate professor of Spanish and digital humanities. He leads coloniaLab, the North Florida Editorial Workshop, and Editing the Eartha M.M. White Collection. He was the founding director of the Digital Humanities Institute from 2018-2019.

 

 

 

Courtenay McLeland has been the Head of Digital Projects and Preservation in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library since 2012. Her unit manages the institutional repository, hosting scholarship from faculty, staff, and students as well as institutional records.  The unit digitizes materials from Special Collections and University Archives.  She holds an MLIS from Florida State University and a graduate certificate in Historic Preservation from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her interests include museums and visual resources management.  

 

Dr. Jacqueline Meier is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. She is a zooarchaeologist and her research focuses on the remains of animals from archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region. She studies human-animal interactions at archaeological sites, spanning from the time of the Neanderthals to that of the Romans.

 

 

Dr. Deb Miller provides leadership for digital learning policy, practice, and strategy at the University of North Florida. She supervises the Center for Instruction & Research Technology (CIRT) and UNF Online, and is a part-time instructor in the College of Education and Human Services. Deb also works with campus stakeholders to investigate new digital learning technologies and facilitate the adoption of appropriate tools.

 

 

Dr. Debra Murphy is a Professor of Art History and has been the inaugural chair of the Department of Art and Design since its formation in 2004. She teaches courses in Ancient Roman Art and Architecture, Italian Renaissance Art, Baroque Art, Michelangelo, Art History on Site: Italy and other special topics. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville since 2000 and on its Executive Committee since 2009.

 

 

Jennifer Murray is the Associate Dean at the University of North Florida's Thomas G. Carpenter Library. She provides strategic leadership and day-to-day oversight of the library’s technical services and systems. She holds an MLS from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. Her research interests include assessment, data visualization and technology integrations.

 

Dr. Anne E. Pfister is assistant professor of anthropology. Her research investigates the experience of deafness among deaf children and their families in Mexico City, Mexico. She uses innovative ethnographic methodology, including photovoice, in the field and has adapted this method for use in the undergraduate classroom. "Photovoice" involves participatory analysis of digital photography in response to research questions and investigative themes. Since 2015.

 

Dr. Rick Phillips is an associate professor of sociology and religious studies. He received a PhD from Rutgers University and has been teaching at UNF since the fall of 2000. He teaches courses on religion and sociological theory. His research focuses on the construction and maintenance of religious identity, particularly among Mormons in Utah. He has served as president of the Mormon Social Science Association, and is currently editor of the Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association.

 

Stephanie Race is currently the Head of Research and Outreach at the University of North Florida's Thomas G. Carpenter Library. Since completing her MLS, she has been involved with media, instruction, distance learning, reference, and statewide continuing education. She has been responsible for a number of statewide projects, including the Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute.

 

 

 Dr. Rahim-Williams is a Medical Anthropologist, and Social and Behavioral Science researcher. Her research interests include the study and application of medical humanities for compassionate medical care and treatment, qualitative research investigating narratives of the lived experiences managing co-morbidities associated with chronic diseases, photovoice stories, cross-cultural language descriptors of pain, and improving minority health and reducing health disparities. She is the Associate Director of Research Development with UNF’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.

Dr. Gordon F.M. Rakita is a bioarchaeologist and Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work. He also serves as Associate Vice President for Faculty Excellence & Academic Engagement. His work focuses on bioarchaeology, anthropological approaches to mortuary and other ritual behavior, emergent social inequality and complexity, analytical data management and statistical analyses, and evolutionary theory.

 

 

Dr. Dan Richard is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of North Florida and Co-Director of the Florida Data Science for Social Good program. His research interests include lay-epistemology, research methodology, data science, terrorism, transformational learning, and community engagement.

 

 

 

 Dr. Tara Rowe is the Associate Director of Student Accessibility Services (SAS) and Director of the THRIVE program as well as an adjunct instructor for the College of Education and Human Services. Dr. Rowe's primary areas of research include retention and student engagement for students with different abilities, inclusion and accessibility, self-advocacy and leadership, and vocational opportunities for at-risk students.

 

 

Chaz Runfola is the director of development of Academic Affairs and a UNF first generation graduate. He helps connect people and organizations back to campus to help advance areas such as the Hicks Honors College, Thomas G. Carpenter Library, Undergraduate Studies, Environmental Center, Continuing Education, Graduate School, and the Center for Community-Based Learning.

 

Andy Rush is a Course Media Developer for the Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT) at the University of North Florida. In concert with other CIRT team members, he works with UNF faculty to develop and produce course media, as well as serve as lead support for UNF Faculty Domains. He has been working in the Instructional Technology field for over 25 years.

 

 Dr. Michael Russo is a digital rhetorician, e-learning project manager, instructional designer, and educator who also teaches college English and technical writing. He has advanced degrees in digital rhetoric, communications, and information design. Dr. Russo has supported instructors, students, and staff at UNF, Clemson, and Rutgers University, employing agile methodologies to empower self-organizing teams in collaborative workspaces built on creativity and trust.  

 

 

 Katie Sarria works in First-Year Advising and helps students navigate their first year of college. She enjoys working with students to clarify their short- and long-term goals. 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Sericea Stallings-Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health. She teaches undergraduate courses in epidemiology and human diseases and teaches graduate courses in research methods and advanced epidemiology. Her research focuses on environmental epidemiology, including the association of pollutants with chronic diseases and the impact of tobacco control policy on health outcomes.

 

 

 Dr. Margaret Stewart has taught a wide range of courses including Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Small Group Communication, Mass Media, and specialized courses in social media. Her research in the area of social media and emerging communication technologies mainly focuses on military-affiliated and sports-athlete populations. To date, she has published academic research manuscripts in Communication Reports, The Journal of Technologies in Society, The Journal of Communications Media, and Computers in Human Behavior. Dr. Stewart is also a certified social media strategist and trainer for the National Institute of Social Media (NISM).

Susan Swiatosz has been an archivist for over 15 years. After a career as a historic preservationist in New York City, Susan received her MLIS at Pratt Institute in 2003 with a focus in archives and records management. She is active in regional and state archival groups, having served as President of the Society of Florida Archivists 2017-2018. Susan relocated to Jacksonville in 2018 where she is the Head of Special Collections and University Archives at the University of North Florida. She holds a BA from Colorado State University in History and a MS in Historic Preservation from Columbia University.

 James W. Taylor serves as the coordinator for academic programs and research development. Taylor enjoys teaching others about the natural environment and recently became a Florida Master Naturalist. In addition to spending his time outdoors, Taylor is an active volunteer with the St. Johns Riverkeeper, and was recognized as its volunteer of the year in 2015.

 

 

Dr. Karthikeyan Umapathy is an Associate Professor at the UNF School of Computing. He provides real-world software development experience for students by identifying collaborative projects from nonprofit and small business organizations. His research work spans the entire spectrum of the Web, from user behavioral aspects to designing complex software and data science applications.

 

 

Dave Wilson has been working in higher education to support faculty with their teaching, research, and service since 2000. During that time he has worked on a diverse set of projects using a wide set of skills. Dave currently concentrates on media, online survey support, data management, and data visualization.