Three new tenure-track professors join Macalester’s faculty

Three new tenure-track professors will be joining the Macalester faculty in the coming months: Sheharyar Imran, Political Science; Kristin Heysse, Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science; and Zuoyu Tian, Linguistics.

Professor Imran is an expert in international relations focusing on critical political economy and postcolonial theory. His current research examines the colonial construction of global economic order. He traces trans-imperial connections across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds to examine how colonialism has shaped capitalist social relations, including private property, free labor, and development. He will be teaching courses on international relations, global political economy, and infrastructural development with a focus on colonial history and anticolonial, abolitionist futures. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Professor Imran is completing his doctorate in political science at Johns Hopkins University and received his BA in international studies at Vassar College.

Professor Heysse is a discrete mathematician who is focused on utilizing graph theory and spectral techniques coming out of linear algebra to analyze complex networks. Her current research focuses on the spectra of non-backtracking matrices. These complicated arrays of numbers, when analyzed using this approach, can offer better models for interpreting processes on networks such as disease transmission, where patterns rarely reverse back to where they originated. Dr. Heysse will teach graph theory, discrete optimization, and calculus, among other courses, and has taught at Macalester as a visiting assistant professor and non-tenure track professor since 2017. Professor Heysse grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota and earned her doctorate in mathematics from Iowa State University and her BA in mathematics from Concordia College. 

Professor Tian specializes in computational linguistics. His current research focuses on using computational methods to study language change in ancient languages, as well as sensitive speech and misinformation detection in social media. He will teach courses that include introduction to linguistics and computational methods in linguistics. Dr. Tian grew up in Dalian, China and completed his doctoral study in computational linguistics from Indiana University, his MA in linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University, and his BA in Chinese language and literature from Beijing Language and Culture University.