Maxwell School Announces Two New Chairs and Trio of Directors for 2024-25

August 9, 2024

Citizenship & Civic Engagement Undergraduate Program

History Department

Political Science Department

Public Administration & International Affairs Department

Social Science Ph.D. Program

Sociology Department

Center for Policy Design and Governance

Center for Policy Research

Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry

Maxwell X Lab

Promotions & Appointments

Junko Takeda

Leonard M. Lopoo

Christopher Faricy

Sebastian Karcher

Amy Lutz

Several Maxwell School faculty have been promoted to leadership roles, including Junko Takeda, who has been named chair of the Citizenship and Civic Engagement (CCE) Undergraduate Program after serving in an interim role since July 2023, and Leonard M. Lopoo, who began as chair of the Public Administration and International Affairs Department in July 2024.

Takeda, professor of history, was named interim chair in the spring of 2023. Her research and teaching interests include the histories of citizenship, early modern globalization, revolutions, migration, displacement and disease. She has written two monographs, “Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean” (Johns Hopkins, 2011), and “Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters” (Liverpool University Press, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020). Her two books-in-progress explore migration, dispossession, and ethnic and religious violence in the early modern world. Takeda's additional interests include Asian-American history and Zainichi Korean history.

Takeda is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. At Syracuse she has received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Research and Teaching, and she was named the inaugural O’Hanley Faculty Scholar and Daicoff Faculty Scholar. She also received the Junior Meredith Teaching Recognition Award as an assistant professor, and the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award from the SU Graduate School in 2023.

Lopoo is professor, chair and associate dean of public administration and international affairs, the Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, and a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research. He succeeds Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs.

While chair, Lopoo will continue to serve as director of the Maxwell X Lab, which he co-founded in 2017 with Joe Boskovski ’14 M.P.A.

Lopoo applies behavioral public administration principles to improve the performance of government agencies and nonprofit organizations. His research also focuses on family matters, ranging from fertility and marriage to maternal employment and the social welfare policies designed to assist the low-income population. He has published work in several journals, including Demography, Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Marriage and the Family, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. His research has been supported by numerous federal agencies and foundations, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, Pew Charitable Trusts, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Allyn Family Foundation. His honors have included the Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award, the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award, the Meredith Professors Recognition Award and the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize.

“I am grateful to these highly accomplished scholars, instructors and outstanding citizens of the school for taking on the leadership mantle and providing our community with strong experience and a deep appreciation for our mission and goals.”

Dean David M. Van Slyke

Additionally, three faculty members have assumed director roles for the 2024-25 academic year: Christopher Faricy, Sebastian Karcher and Amy Lutz.

Faricy, associate professor of political science and the inaugural Hicker Professor of Renewing Democratic Community, succeeds Grant Reeher as director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Faricy is the co-director of the American Policy Agendas Project, a multi-institution initiative that uses data to trace changes in the national policy agenda and public policy outcomes of the United States. He is also a research affiliate for the Center for Policy Research and the Center for Policy Design and Governance. He researches American politics, social policy, income inequality, tax policy and public opinion on government spending. He authored “Welfare for the Wealthy: Parties, Social Spending, and Inequality in the United States” (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and co-wrote “The Other Side of the Coin: Public Opinion toward Social Tax Expenditures” (Russel Sage Foundation, 2021). He has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for his research on social, political and economic inequality and he has been cited by numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes and the Washington Post.

Karcher, a research associate professor in the political science department, recently became director of the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry. He also directs the related Qualitative Data Repository. His work has been published in numerous journals across traditional disciplinary lines, including the Data Science Journal, International Studies Quarterly and Qualitative Health Research. In June 2024, he started a four-year tenure as an associate editor of the American Political Science Review. He has received funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Sloan Foundation.

Lutz, associate professor of sociology, is director of the Social Science Ph.D. Program. A senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research, she studies children of immigrants and inequalities related to race, ethnicity and education. Her work has been published in journals such as City & Community, and Sociology of Education and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and CUSE grants. Additionally, she is co-author of "Parenting in Privilege or Peril: How Social Inequality Enables or Derails the American Dream" (Teachers College Press, 2021).

“I am grateful to these highly accomplished scholars, instructors and outstanding citizens of the school for taking on the leadership mantle and providing our community with strong experience and a deep appreciation for our mission and goals,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke.