The School of Social Sciences is happy to welcome three new professors to its faculty lineup. With research interests in topics such as how new members of society gain citizenship, how child health contributes to economic development in poor countries, and why humans act the way we do in groups, their scholarly contributions will further expand the interdisciplinary research strengths for which the School of Social Sciences is known.  
 
Learn more about the school's new faculty below or welcome them in person at the annual Social Science Welcome Reception on Tuesday, September 29 from 3:30 - 5:30 p.m. in Social Science Plaza A, Room 2112.  
 
 
Manisha Shah, Assistant Professor of Economics  
Research: development economics, health  
Education: Ph.D. in economics, University of California, Berkeley; M.S. in development studies, London School of Economics and Political Science; B.A. in economics and development studies, University of California, Berkeley  
 
Manisha Shah, assistant professor, comes to UC Irvine following a two year faculty appointment at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is a development economist with interests in health and labor economics. Her research uses applied microeconomic concepts to better understand how population health affects economic development in poor countries. She is currently leading a randomized impact evaluation in Indonesia for the World Bank, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Australian Research Council, in which she and others are evaluating sanitation programs in seven different countries to determine how improved sanitation impacts child health and spurs local economic growth. She also studies the economics of sex markets in Latin America to learn how more effective strategies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region. Her findings have been featured in several leading publications including the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and Demography.  
 
 
Sara Wallace Goodman, Assistant Professor of Political Science  
Research: citizenship policy, immigration, immigrant integration, ethnic diversity in democracies, and diaspora  
Education: Ph.D. and M.A. in government, Georgetown University; B.A. in political science, Miami University (Ohio)  
 
Sara Wallace Goodman, assistant professor, specializes in the study of membership requirements for citizenship acquisition through naturalization. She comes to UCI following a six month post doctoral fellowship at Maastricht University in the Netherlands where she began a comprehensive study of citizenship policy requirements in 33 European countries. Her findings will be the topic of a book project currently in progress. Previous work by Goodman has been published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Political Studies. In addition to her role as a political science assistant professor at UCI, Goodman will also be involved as a faculty affiliate with the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy.  
 
 
Yen-Sheng Chiang, Assistant Professor of Sociology  
Research: social networks, social psychology, group behaviors and dynamics, mathematical and simulation modeling  
Education: Ph.D. and M.S. in sociology, University of Washington; B.S. in economics, National Taiwan University  
 

Yen-Sheng Chiang, assistant professor, studies the foundations of social order and human behaviors through an examination of topics such as the emergence and maintenance of fairness and how commonly accepted societal norms have evolved. He uses mathematical, statistical, and experimental methods in his approach, bringing together knowledge from cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology, computer science, and sociology. Before coming to UCI, he spent a year as a post doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany. His research has been featured in Rationality and Society and the Journal of Mathematical Sociology. During completion of his graduate degree, two of his papers received section awards as the Best Graduate Student Paper from the American Sociological Association.