Staff

Email:  eemeid@buffalo.edu

Errol Meidinger is the Director of the Baldy Center. He is the Margaret W. Wong Professor of Law, an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at SUNY Buffalo, and also an Honorary Professor at the University of Freiburg. His recent research has focused on efforts to use “supra-governmental” regulatory programs, such as environmental certification and fair labor standards programs, to improve the social and environmental performance of business. He is currently working on two related research projects, one focusing on interactions among state and non-state transnational governance organizations and another on the growing use by governments of limitations on access to their markets to promote environmentally and socially desirable behavior in other states. He earned his JD and PhD (Sociology) at Northwestern University. Read more.

Email:  lawirth2@buffalo.edu

Laura Wirth is the Assistant Director of the Baldy Center. She holds a masters degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is responsible for organizing and coordinating the Baldy Center’s activities, managing the daily operations and Center staff, maintaining the budget, administering the grant application and award processes for affiliated faculty and fellows, and overseeing event planning and public communications.

Email:  cfunk@buffalo.edu

Caroline Funk is the Baldy Center Research Associate. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and specializes in the archaeology of human/environment relationships. She has worked in multidisciplinary and multinational teams in Russia, Portugal, and Alaska to answer questions about the intersection of cultural and environmental histories. Caroline currently leads a multidisciplinary research program in the Rat Islands, western Aleutians, Alaska, investigating the long-term history of human use of the region, and the impact of small-scale societies on the environment. Caroline helps Baldy affiliated faculty to develop funding proposals.

Email: mhmclesk@buffalo.edu

Matthew H. McLeskey is a Baldy Center Research Assistant. He is a doctoral student in the SUNY Buffalo Department of Sociology and interested in sociology of law, urban sociology, and social theory. He recently completed an M.A. in sociology at SUNY Buffalo, and before that an M.A. in English literature at James Madison University and a B.A. at Davis & Elkins College.

Email: yaqiyuan@buffalo.edu

Yaqi Yuan (Sam) is a Baldy Center Research Assistant. She is a second-year Ph.D. student from SUNY Buffalo Sociology Department and interested in law and society, sociology of families, and medical sociology. She recently completed an M.A. in political science with the Hunan University Graduate School in China.