天美传媒

Professor Brescia combines his experience as a public interest attorney in New York City with his scholarly interests to address economic and social inequality, the legal and policy implications of financial crises, how innovative legal and regulatory approaches can improve economic and community development efforts, and the need to expand access to justice for people of low and moderate income. He is the author of “The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions” (Cornell University Press, 2020), which examines the intersection of technology and social movements, from the American Revolution, to the present day. He is also the co-editor of two books: Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations” (New York University Press, 2021); and “How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality (Routledge 2016). Before coming to Albany Law, he was the Associate Director of the Urban Justice Center in New York, N.Y., where he coordinated legal representation for community-based institutions in areas such as housing, economic justice, workers' rights, civil rights and environmental justice. He also served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School from 1997 through 2006. Prior to his work at the Urban Justice Center, he was a staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance and the Legal Aid Society of New York, where he was a recipient of a Skadden Fellowship after graduation from law school. Professor Brescia also served as Law Clerk to the pathbreaking Civil Rights attorney-turned-federal judge, the Honorable Constance Baker Motley, Senior U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. While a student Yale Law School, Professor Brescia was co-recipient of the Charles Albom Prize for Appellate Advocacy; was a student director of several clinics, including the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Homelessness Clinic; and was Visiting Lecturer in Yale College. Professor Brescia is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

Jon Gould is a distinguished scholar in justice policy, social change and government reform who has held key positions in the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Science Foundation. He assumed the deanship on Jan. 1, 2022.

Gould leads the nation鈥檚 first school of social ecology, established in 1970 in response to high demand for more socially relevant research. For more than 50 years, the school has been an internationally recognized pioneer in developing interdisciplinary approaches to social problems. Its highly ranked faculty in criminology, law and society; urban planning and public policy; and psychological science engage in research and education to foster informed social action and make the world a better place.

Gould鈥檚 expertise covers justice policy, social change and government reform. He was the principal investigator for the Preventing Wrongful Convictions Project, a multiyear research initiative funded by the National Institute of Justice. He is the author of five books and more than 100 articles and reports on such diverse subjects as erroneous convictions, indigent defense, prosecutorial innovation, police behavior, hate speech, sexual harassment and international human rights.

Gould has filled a range of government leadership roles, including senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice and director of the Law & Social Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation. In 2015, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him as reporter for a committee of the federal courts evaluating the operation of the Criminal Justice Act. Gould is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a former U.S. Supreme Court Fellow and a former trustee of the Law & Society Association. He received the Administration of Justice Award from the U.S. Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association in 2017.

Dr Dasgupta's main research areas are queer politics, activism and digital media cultures in South Asia and the diasporas.

He provides insight on diverse issues from homophobia, social justice movements, media and social change, cultural activism, inequality and politics.

He has appeared on BBC and BBC Radio 3 and has written for popular outlets such as The Independent, Tribune and The Conversation.

BIO
Philip Schwadel’s research explores the changing nature of Americans’ religious and political perspectives, addressing changes over time and between generations. He has examined how higher education and social status influence religious belief. He searches for social influences, emphasizing how religious congregations, social networks, age, time and other social contexts influence religion and politics. He holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, where he was a postdoctoral researcher with the National study of Youth and Religion for two years. He has been a faculty member in UNL’s Department of Sociology since 2005.
 
My research focuses on religion and politics in the United States, with an emphasis on social status, social contexts, and social change. The association between social class and religious beliefs, practices, and affiliations has been a long-standing interest of mine, going back to my dissertation. My research also explores the changing nature of Americans’ religious and political perspectives, addressing both temporal and generational changes. Combining these areas of research, some of my work examines generational changes in the association between social class and religious and political perspectives. Always looking for the social influence, my work emphasizes how social contexts of various kinds—including religious congregations, social networks, and generational and temporal contexts—affect religious and political outcomes. Information on my publications can be found at my  and  pages.
 Current Research
Building on the work I did with the  while on leave from UNL in 2018-2019, I am now returning to some of my earlier work on adolescent religion in the U.S. I plan on writing a series of articles looking at the role of religion in school, how teenagers navigate religion among their friends, and the prevalence and consequences of religious bullying in school.
At the same time, I am continuing to use existing survey data to further explore the associations between religion and politics and the changing nature of American religion. This research focuses on the direct and indirect effects of religious affiliations and beliefs on political outcomes such as party affiliation, political tolerance, and views of government spending. I also have an ongoing project on social networks in churches. My colleagues and I have collected network data in three churches. I plan to continue this line of research with both additional churches and additional waves of data collection within the same church.
Most recently, I have been working with colleagues in psychology to examine the social-psychological consequences of religious disaffiliation. The proportion of Americans who have no religion has grown tremendously—from about 7% in 1990 to between a quarter and a third of the population today. Our work examines how Americans who leave religion often retain some of the psychological dispositions associated with being religious. We refer to this as the “religious residue effect.”
 Current Teaching
I teach various courses on religion, including Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Global Religious Diversity, and a graduate seminar on religion. I also teach Social Problems, Sociological Theory, and the graduate-level publications seminar.
 Student Opportunities
I regularly publish with graduate students. For instance, I recently published work on religious change among lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults in the United States (with Brandi Woodell, former UNL graduate student and current faculty member at Old Dominion University) and on changes in the effects of social class on political tolerance (with Christopher Garneau, former UNL graduate student and current faculty member at University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). I have works-in-progress with graduate students (current and former) on political messages and support for environmental initiatives, on the association between the religious makeup of a community and the prevalence of hate crimes, and on the effects of education on support for capital punishment. I also plan to do more with the data we collected on social networks in churches, with opportunities for student involvement.