Youssef Benzarti
Assistant Professor, Economics | Ph.D., UC Berkeley

Youssef Benzarti is an Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and works at the intersection of Public Finance and Behavioral Economics. His work quantifies the hassle costs of taxation, and studies the incidence of payroll taxes and Value Added Taxes.

Amy Gonzales
Assistant Professor, Communication | Ph.D., Cornell University

Amy Gonzales is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. Her work examines the effects of social interaction via communication technologies on individual identity, social support, and well-being. She is also interested in the consequences of disrupted access to communication technology. She is especially interested in these phenomena for people from disadvantaged communities (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, low-income populations, LGBTQ individuals, etc.). Her work aims to advance theoretical understanding and real-world solutions that may help mitigate the long-term consequences of new digital infrastructures that may otherwise exacerbate social inequalities.

Paasha Mahdavi
Assistant Professor, Political Science | Ph.D., UC Los Angeles

Paasha Mahdavi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. His research explores statistical methodology to study energy and environmental politics. Recent work includes the politics of extractive resource nationalization; the effects of carbon dividends on civic engagement; the network dynamics of political elites; and the political economy of fossil fuel subsidy reform. His articles have been published in journals such as Energy Policy, Nature Energy, Political Science Research & Methods, and World Politics. He earned his B.A in Economics from Columbia University, M.A. in International Policy from Stanford University, and M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA.

Catherine Taylor
Assistant Professor, Sociology | Ph.D., Cornell University

Cate Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of  Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her main research and teaching areas are gender, work and occupations, social psychology, health, and methods. Before joining the faculty at UCSB, Professor Taylor earned her PhD in Sociology at Cornell University, was a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University, and was a faculty member at Indiana University. Her work has been published in leading sociological and interdisciplinary journals including American Journal of Sociology, Social Science & Medicine, and Gender & Society. She also delivers training and talks to help organizations increase their diversity in hiring and retention.

Alisa Tazhitdinova
Assistant Professor, Economics | Ph.D., UC Berkeley

Alisa Tazhitdinova is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics. He primary interests are in economics of taxation and labor economics. Professor Tazhitdinova’s research combines economic theory and large administrative datasets to understand how tax systems affect individuals’ and firms’ behaviors, in order to help design more effective public policies. Professor Tazhitdinova’s research has been supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and has been published in Journal of Public Economics. She received her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 2016.

Sharon Tettegah 
Professor, Black Studies | Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara

Sharon Tettegahis the Director at the Center for Black Studies Research andProfessor in the Department of Black Studies. . Dr. Tettegah's research centers on the intersection of Social Science, STEM learning, Emotions, Equity and Social justice. She was also a former Program Director at the National Science Foundation where she managed five programs in the Directorates of Education and Human Resources, Computer and Information Science and Engineering and including a NSF cross-cutting program on Science, Engineering, Education for Sustainability (SEES). Dr. Tettegah is the Series Editor for Emotions and Technology: Communication of feeling, for, with and through digital media. She is also co-editor on 7 of the 8 volumes on Emotions, Technology.The volumes include Digital Games; Behaviors; Design and Learning; Design; Health; Learning; Social Media and Mobile Technology.