People

RGSCP Faculty & Staff

R. Scott Smith

Director, Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project

Dr. Scott Smith is professor in UNH’s department of Classics, Humanities, and Italian Studies and Director of the Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project. A self-described “weird child,” he has published extensively in ancient mythography (the way the Greeks and Romans organized and interpreted their own mythical stories) and the philosopher-poet Seneca the Younger. He has received every major teaching award at UNH. For an article on Scott, see An Accidental Professor.

Stephan Nitu

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project

Dr. Stephan Nitu (PhD Oxford) is the RGSCP postdoctoral fellow. An ancient historian with a dual interest in the Classical Athenian economy and the value of the humanities writ large, he teaches courses on democracy, individuals, and societies in the ancient world. His most recent work, Humanities Forward (with Arlene Holmes-Henderson MBE), presents an international and collaborative argument for the humanities’ relevance today—to policymakers, academics, and the public. The book is available to read open access (include link to https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781805967446).

Brian Wolfel

Democracy Fellow/Lecturer, Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project

Brian Wolfel is passionate about interdisciplinary teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences. Brian's teaching and research focuses on the history of political thought, intellectual history, and American politics. Specifically, his research explores the vulnerabilities of American democracy and the prospects for reform with respect to social problems such as economic inequality, hyperpluralism, social atomization and alienation, and the challenges of technology. He also explores the relationship between Plato's philosophy and the modern political thought of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is the author of Thomas Carlyle and the Political Universe: From American Transcendentalism to an Elusive Post-Liberalism and has published articles in Telos, Utopian Studies, and Carlyle Studies Annual.

Rebecca Norris

Program Assistant, Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project

Nicholas Smith

Director, RGSCP Future Leaders Institute

Professor of Philosophy

Dr. Nick Smith is a professor in the University of New Hampshire Department of Philosophy and the Director of RGSCP's summer camp for high school student's, the Future Leaders Institute. Before coming to UNH, Smith worked as a litigator for LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene, and MacRae and as a judicial clerk for the Honorable R.L. Nygaard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Smith published I Was Wrong: On The Meanings of Apologies with Cambridge University Press in 2008 and Justice through Apologies: Remorse, Reform and Punishment in 2014 (also with Cambridge University Press). Smith regularly appears in the media, including interviews with Diane Rehm, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian UK, NPR, BBC, CBC, CNN, Fortune, Salon, Aeon, Radiolab, Philosophy Talk, and others. He has received teaching awards from the UNH and Vanderbilt.

RGSCP Steering Committee

RGSCP is overseen by a steering committee:

Robert Ambrose, former Senior Deputy Secretary of State of New Hampshire

Michele Dillon, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (UNH)

Michael Leese, Associate Professor of History (UNH)

Scott Smith, Professor of Classics, RGSCP Director (UNH)

Kimberly Babbitt, Chief Sustainability Officer and Executive Director of the Sustainability Institute (UNH)