PA/Sociology Program Welcomes New Faculty Members

Please join us in welcoming three new faculty members to our program this fall. And be sure to check this blog in the coming days as we feature each one of them in articles designed to help you get to know them better.

Evgenia Gorina, an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, joins us from Arizona State University. She studies public finance and budgeting and is particularly interested in tax policy, fiscal rules, and institutions. Evgenia’s dissertation explores dimensions of local government fiscal sustainability, focusing on pension liability funding, debt burdens, and budgetary balance. Her recent coauthored paper in Public Budgeting and Finance examines effects of tax and expenditure limitations and the form of government on local finance. Evgenia’s secondary focus, shaped by her past work at the Center for Population Dynamics at Arizona State, includes internal and international migration. 

James Harrington, an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, joins us from the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. He primarily studies issues related to performance management, performance data usage, policy evaluation, and education governance. His research has appeared in journals such as American Politics Research and American Journal of Education. Professor Harrington is currently working on several projects examining the dynamics of performance data usage in public agencies.

Nicholas Vargas is a new Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on status distinctions that operate as bases of social inequality and social inclusion/exclusion comprising race and ethnicity, immigration status, and religion. He is currently researching issues related to racial contestation, the experience whereby one’s personal racial identity does not match how they are perceived racially by others. Vargas’ peer-reviewed research has appeared in journals including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Research, Sociological Perspectives, and Sociology of Religion, among others. His research on religion and non-religion in the United States has received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association including the religion section’s “Most Distinguished Article” award with colleague Matthew Loveland.