October 5, 1998

New Faculty

Ravi Rajan
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Ravi Rajan joined the UCSC faculty last winter as an assistant professor of environmental studies. His interests include comparative studies of contemporary environmental institutions. He has recently published a set of papers on the transition of Bhopal from an acute to a chronic disaster. His two upcoming books trace the intellectual history of the impact of German forestry on the tropics, and the career of the geographer, Clarence Glacken. Rajan is also an activist and serves on the Board of Pesticides Action Network. He earned a B.A. in mathematics and an M.A. in philosophy from Delhi University and a D.Phil. in environmental history from the University of Oxford.

Helen Shapiro
Associate Professor of Sociology

As an economist, Helen Shapiro specializes in the economic development of less-developed countries. Her focus is on Latin America--specifically Brazil--and Mexico and the interactions of states and multinational corporations. "With globalization, is there even room for state policies to influence the direction of economic development, or can multinationals do whatever they want?" asked Shapiro, whose book detailed the origins of the Brazilian automotive industry. She teaches courses in sociology, economics, and Latin American and Latino studies. Shapiro has an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale Univesity. She came to UCSC from the Harvard Business School, where she taught for eight years.

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