Administration

Tamara Jeffries is the Co-Production of Knowledge Program Manager at the Center for Science and Society. She oversees the Co-Production of Knowledge Initiative, which helps advance the Center’s goals to build community relationships. Tamara received her Masters of Public Administration in environmental science and policy from Columbia University, and holds a bachelor's degree in environmental geology and anthropology (photography minor) from Case Western Reserve University. Professionally, she aims to address food systems and environmental justice issues, particularly within BIPOC communities, through research, advocacy, and storytelling. In her free time, Tamara loves being in nature, running, yoga, oat chai lattes, and all things related to the arts and culture.

Rhiannon Stephens is Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. She specializes in the history of precolonial and early colonial East Africa from the first millennium CE through the twentieth century. Her research focuses on gender, economic difference, and political organization. She has written on the history of motherhood and its intersection with politics and economics in precolonial Uganda. Her book, Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History, traces the history of poverty and wealth as economic and social concepts in Uganda over the past two thousand years. Most recently, her research has turned to engaging with historical climate change and how East African communities responded to the challenges and opportunities it posed. She is a faculty affiliate at the Earth Institute, the Institute of African Studies, the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. 

Rhiannon Stephens co-leads the Climate and History Research Cluster and serves as an Executive Committee Member.

Pamela H. Smith is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University and Founding Director of the Center for Science and Society. At Columbia, she teaches history of early modern Europe and the history of science. She is the author of The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton 1994; 1995 Pfizer Prize), and The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago 2004; 2005 Leo Gershoy Prize). Her work on alchemy, artisans, and the making of vernacular and scientific knowledge has been supported by fellowships at the Wissenschafts-Kolleg, as a Guggenheim Fellow, a Getty Scholar, a Samuel Kress Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts in Washington, DC, and by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Pamela Smith leads the Making and Knowing Research Cluster and serves as an Executive Committee and Advisory Board Member. 

Jozef Sulik is the assistant director of the Center for Science and Society and Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program. Jozef manages events, grants, communications, and budgets. He also provides administrative support for the postdoctoral scholars affiliated with the Center and their research projects. Before joining Columbia University, Jozef worked in the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships at Harvard College and spent several years as an agent in talent management in the UK. Jozef received his BA in government from Harvard University Extension School. 

Caroline Surman is the Project and Communications Manager with the Center for Science and Society and the Making and Knowing Project. She assists in planning events, administering the Center's grant programs, and oversees communications and social media. She is also responsible for training and overseeing the Center's Work Study Administrative Assistants. Caroline studied anthropology with a minor in environmental science at Barnard College and holds a masters of science in nonprofit management from Columbia University. Previously, she worked for Bank Street School for Children and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

A. Tunç Şen is an Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. He also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the science and society minor. He specializes in the history of the Ottoman Empire and its many connections with the early modern world. As a social and cultural historian of scientific and intellectual practices, Şen focuses on how people perceived the world, the frameworks through which they organized information and beliefs, and the social, political, economic, and emotional structures that both shaped and were shaped by their ways of knowing. He is the author of Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600 (Stanford University Press, 2025), as well as numerous articles on the history of science and divination, manuscript culture, the history of emotions, and the social history of education in the Ottoman and broader Islamic world.

A. Tunç Şen serves as an Executive Committee Member.