Students work closely with one of the preceptors in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. Preceptors guide students in defining their areas of academic specialization, as well as in choosing courses. Preceptors also assist students in selecting faculty sponsors for their MA papers and take an active role in guiding and evaluating the research and writing of these papers.

Tori Gross

Assistant Director of MAPSS
Assistant Senior Instructional Professor of Anthropology

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 416
(773) 702-5405

Schedule an office hours appointment.

Tori Gross is the Assistant Senior Instructional Professor of Anthropology and Assistant Director of MAPSS. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University, an MA in Religious Studies, and a BA in Sociology and Religion both from McGill University. Tori's research interests include the politics of affect and emotion, performative hierarchy and masculinity, and parastate sovereignty in the context of India’s young democracy. She currently focuses on caste-based political movements that demonstrate the generative tensions between community and nation-state, and between yearning for the glories of the imagined past and living with the perpetual disappointments of unfulfilled desires borne by global capitalism. For more information, please visit her homepage.


Victor O. Lima

Senior Instructional Professor in Economics; Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in Economics

Saieh Hall
Room 105
(773) 834-6672

Schedule an office hours appointment.

Dr. Lima is a Senior Instructional Professor in Economics and the College, as well as Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in Economics.  His research interests include monetary economics, social effects, and unemployment effects of labor regulation. For more information, please visit his homepage.


Min Sok Lee

Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in Economics

Saieh Hall
Room 104
(773) 834-1754

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Dr. Lee is an Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, teaching undergraduate courses in principles of microeconomics and intermediate microeconomics. Min Lee holds a BA in economics from the University of Cambridge (UK), and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.


Mary (Ella) Wilhoit

Associate Instructional Professor in Anthropology

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 414
(773) 702-8319

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Dr. Wilhoit holds a PhD and MA in Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Northwestern University and a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from Vanderbilt University. For more information, please visit her homepage.


Hannah Hamilton

Assistant Instructional Professor in Psychology

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 408
(773)834-6775

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Dr. Hannah R. Hamilton is an Assistant Instructional Professor of Psychology. Her research explores the relations among the need to belong, interpersonal interactions, health behaviors (such as alcohol consumption), and relationship functioning.


John McCallum

Assistant Instructional Professor in History

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 411
(773) 702-5351

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Dr. McCallum is the Earl S. Johnson Instructor in History. His broader research interests include moral sentiments and violence, total war, human rights, the United States in 20th century global history, and the history of democracy and the state. For more information, visit his homepage.


Brianne Painia

Assistant Instructional Professor in Sociology

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 412
(773) 834-6535

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Dr. Brianne A. Painia is an Assistant Instructional Professor of Sociology. Her research interests include black femininities and masculinities, black feminism, and black religion with an emphasis on gender performance within black religious spaces.


Andrew Proctor

Assistant Instructional Professor in Political Science

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 410

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Andrew Proctor is an Assistant Instructional Professor of Political Science. His research draws on interdisciplinary perspectives and methods to advance our understanding of inequality in the United States and its intersections with the politics of sexuality, gender, race, and class. He studies how interactions between social movements and political parties constitute and mobilize groups and how institutionalized inequalities affect the politics of marginalized communities. His work is motivated by an interest in explaining how power and marginalization shape and are shaped by politics. Dr. Proctor uses qualitative and quantitative approaches and observational and experimental methodologies in his research. You can learn more about his work on his website: www.atproctor.com.


David Cantor-Echols

MA Teaching Fellow, History

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 404
(773) 702-7657

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Dr. Cantor-Echols is an MA Teaching Fellow. He recently completed his PhD in Medieval European History at The University of Chicago, where he also received an MA in History. David holds an MA in Medieval Studies from University College London as well as a BA in History and Spanish Language and Literature from Lake Forest College. 


Resney Gugwor

MA Teaching Fellow, Comparative Human Development

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 406
(773) 834-6301

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Resney Gugwor is an MA Teaching Fellow of Comparative Human Development (CHD) in MAPSS. He earned his PhD in comparative human development in 2021, his MA in comparative human development in 2016, his MA in the social sciences from MAPSS in 2013, and his BA in psychology from Northeastern Illinois University in 2012. His research interests focus on identity and action across political/educational contexts and using quantitative and qualitative methods he demonstrates both the breadth and depth of these identity processes.

His research examines the ways identity motivate action for Black and Latine youth across different contexts; he examines the ways experiencing racial discrimination can alter how black youth position themselves and their race in terms of valuing certain forms of political engagement, such as high-risk activism; his doctoral research examines how first-year Black and Latine college students begin to doubt that college will be worth the cost in the future when they face challenges making ends meet in the present--this doubting reflects shifts in how they identify themselves after facing financial challenges and how they identify with their future. In both tracks, identity, or who we are is central to what we do and what we believe/imagine we can do.


Yan Xu

MA Teaching Fellow, Political Science

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 404
(773) 702-7668

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Yan Xu is an MA Teaching Fellow in Political Science. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago. His research interests include comparative and international political economy, Chinese politics, industrial change, and state-business relations.


Agatha Slupek

MA Teaching Fellow, Political Science

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 406

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Dr. Slupek is an MA Teaching Fellow in Political Science. She recently completed her PhD (2022) in Political Theory at the University of Chicago, where she also received her MA. Agatha’s research interests include feminism and feminist political theory, 20th-century continental philosophy, legal theory, and the place of emotions, rhetoric, and voice in democratic life. Her dissertation critically examined the gendered features of the liberal tradition’s exclusion of vengeance from political life.


Marshall Kramer

MA Teaching Fellow, Anthropology

1155 E. 60th Street
Room 403
(773) 702-7772

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Marshall Kramer is a MAPSS Preceptor and Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago researching the changing place of biodiversity in the global economy. His dissertation documents the extraction of medicinal plants from the Myanmar/China borderlands. It explores this market's supply infrastructures, its labor conditions, and its overall impact on the environment to understand the informal economics of natural resource extraction.