The University of Houston’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences welcomes eight
new faculty members, who begin teaching with the 2026 Fall semester. Three are UH
alumni.
Each brings a wealth of scholarship and research to the University. They join the
College’s existing team of award winners and world-renowned academics.
Erika Callicott is a CLASS alumna and joins the Department of Economics as an instructional assistant
professor. She earned her bachelor, master's, and doctoral degrees from the University
of Houston. She was a visiting professor at CLASS during the 2025-2026 academic year.
Callicott’s research focus is macroeconomics and environmental economics.
Sebin Nidhiri is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and a CLASS alumnus, earning
his doctorate in economics at UH in 2026. His research studies how financial markets
respond to monetary policy. He will teach courses in econometrics and macroeconomics.
Martin “Max” Ridge joins CLASS as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, having
previously worked as a professor of practice. Ridge completed his doctorate in politics
at Princeton University in 2025. Before that, he earned a master’s degree at London’s
Queen Mary University through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program’s UK Partnership
Award. His research focuses on democratic theory and modern political thought, particularly
on the relationship between work and political participation.
Seth Whitty also earned his doctorate from CLASS. Whitty, a new assistant professor in the Department
of History, graduated in 2025. He spent the year before his new professorship as a
postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Virginia. He also had a post-masters
fellowship at UH in 2022. His research fields focus on slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction,
and the Atlantic world.
Katja Hofmann will join the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences during the 2027-2028 academic
year as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics. In June 2026, she earned
her doctorate in economics from Stanford University, following up with a yearlong
postdoctoral fellowship at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. As an applied microeconomist, Hofmann’s research specializes in empirical
industrial organization and health economics.
Also joining the CLASS faculty are Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science; Wilma Muhammad Murphy, an assistant professor in African American Studies; and Duane Prefume, an associate professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication.