Faculty

Meet the Director

Stella Oh, Ph.D.

University Hall 3528
310.338.4553
stella.oh@lmu.edu

 

Stella Oh is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and the Director of Peace and Justice Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.

Professor Oh’s research and teaching interests revolve around representations of race, gender and war. Her research has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory; Amerasia Journal; AJWS: Asian Journal of Women’s Studies; Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies. Her work has been published by Routledge, Cambridge Scholars Press, and University of Washington Press.

Professor Oh co-organized the World Conference on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery, a three-day international conference with scholars, NGO’s, and survivors of the comfort system. She is currently working on a manuscript that explores the relationship between gender, race, and loss in graphic novels. Professor Oh teaches courses on contemporary literature, graphic narratives, and human trafficking.

Professor Oh is also the program director for the Lee Yong-Soo 'Comfort Women' Human Rights Research and Creative Activity Fellowship. 

Affiliated Faculty

Jennifer Ramos, Ph.D.

Associate Professor in the Political Science and International Relations Department

310.338.1741
jennifer.ramos@lmu.edu

Jennifer M. Ramos is Associate Professor in the Political Science and International Relations Department at Loyola Marymount University. Her research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of political change, with an emphasis on the role of ideas, norms, and identity. Her current research interests include peacebuilding in divided societies, the globalization of the far right, and the preventive use of force. She has published several books, and a number of scholarly articles in journals such as Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Political Ideologies, Human Rights Review, and International Studies Perspectives. With a passion for international relations, she has lived, worked, researched and studied in a number of countries, including The Netherlands, Austria, France, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia, and Mexico. Her experiential learning courses include immersion trips to the United Nations in New York to study human rights, and to Belfast, Northern Ireland to examine the process of peace and reconciliation.

Deanna Cooke, Ph.D.

Clinical Assistant Professor / Director of Engaged Learning

University Hall 4600
310.338.2917
deanna.cooke@lmu.edu

Deanna Cooke is the Director of BCLA Engaged Learning at Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Cooke is a Community Psychologist who has focused her 15-plus career on conducting and supporting community-based collaborative research. Prior to her role at LMU, Dr. Cooke served for three years at the civil rights and social policy organization, Advancement Project, as Senior Manager and Director of Organizational Learning and Development. Dr. Cooke also spent more than eight years directing community-based research programs for Georgetown University's Center for Social Justice. Throughout her career she has worked collaboratively with a diversity of groups, from community based organizations to school districts, and has conducted both city and school district wide assessments of literacy and schools, as well as program evaluations of youth social development programs, novel teaching pedagogies, public policy change efforts, and public health issues, such as childhood obesity. Further, Dr. Cooke values connecting her faith and her professional work in community change. She helped found Restorations, a faith-based mental health program and the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Educational Development Corporation.

In addition to her community-based endeavors, Dr. Cooke researches, teaches and has published on African American racial identity and socialization. Additionally she has designed and led study abroad and educational tours to South Africa, Costa Rica and Panama and is currently designing courses to take place in Cuba and Ghana.

She is a native of Compton, CA, an avid traveler and lover of music and the arts.

Christopher Jackson, Ph.D.

Instructor of Political Science and International Relations

christopher.jackson@lmu.edu 

Christopher Jackson is an Instructor in the Political Science and International Relations Department at Loyola Marymount University, where he teaches courses in international relations, global political economy, and the politics of peace and conflict resolution. His research focuses on state building, political development, and national identity in peripheral post-conflict settings. He is particularly interested in how international practices, such as negotiations and mediation impact ethnic politics and violence. His recent work has been published in the Journal of European Integration, Civil Wars, Ethnopolitics, Peacebuilding, and Democratization.

Dr. Jackson additionally serves as the managing editor of Global Studies Quarterly, the International Studies Association’s open access journal focused on increasing the visibility of scholarship from the Global South.

Jennifer Abe, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychological Science

1 LMU Drive, UH 4751
Los Angeles, CA 90045
P: 310.338.4586
E: jennifer.abe@lmu.edu   

Jennifer Shimako Abe is a Professor of Psychological Science at Loyola Marymount University. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA in 1992 and began teaching at LMU in 1994. She is also a senior research associate at LMU’s Psychology Applied Research Center (PARC), where she engages in culturally responsive, community-based participatory research and evaluation as part of a multidisciplinary research team. Her research broadly addresses topics related to mental health service delivery for ethnically diverse populations, including help-seeking, community-defined evidence practices, spirituality, culture, and the practice of cultural humility. Jennifer has served in various leadership capacities at LMU and has long been committed to the intersections of culture, spirituality, and justice in the context of Ignatian values and the university mission. She contributes to the Peace and Justice Program at LMU with courses such as PSYC 3998 Liberation Psychology: Theory and Practice (engaged learning flag) and PSYC 4100 (capstone) Healing and Wholeness.

Jonathan Rothchild, Ph.D.

Professor of Theological Studies

University Hall, Suite 4600
Office: UH4623
Phone: 310.338.1716
Fax: 310.338.1947
Jonathan.Rothchild@lmu.edu

Jonathan Rothchild is a theological ethicist who explores the relationship between legal structures and processes and theological and philosophical conceptions of dignity, power, and justice. His teaching and research address complex social and political issues such as juvenile justice, felony disenfranchisement, the war on terror, voting rights, and sentencing policies. His interdisciplinary methodology explores theoretical debates and their concrete implications for justice and the lived realities of individuals and communities.

Sandibel Borges, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies

Dr. Sandibel Borges is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at LMU. Her research is in the field of queer migration studies, at the intersection of feminisms of color, queer of color critique, Indigenous and decolonial studies, and transnational feminism. Drawing from the narratives of LGBTQ+ Latine migrants, Dr. Borges’s research interrogates the colonial and genocidal logics of the U.S. immigration system and shows how LGBTQ+ Latine migrants refuse such logics in their daily lives.