New Faculty 2018-2019
Georgetown College is thrilled to welcome 37 new full-time faculty members with primary appointments in College departments this year. Get to know them here.
Tenure-line Faculty
W. Ian Bourland
Department of Art and Art History
Ian Bourland (F’04), joins the faculty of Art and Art History with a focus on global contemporary art. Ian worked as an art critic in Chicago and New York before completing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2012. For the past six years Ian was on the faculty of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he taught courses on modern and contemporary topics, critical theory, photography, and the art of Africa and its diasporas.
Anne Calderon
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Anne Calderon (G’14) returns to the Hilltop after serving as a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Spanish at Catholic University. Her primary research interests are cognitive science and applied linguistics. Prior to receiving her Ph.D. at Georgetown, Calderon earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Illinois.
Elizabeth Cross
Department of History
Elizabeth Cross is a historian of late eighteenth-century France and its empire, with an emphasis on the history of political economy and capitalism. She studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where she received her Ph.D. in 2017. Her current book project traces the history of the last French East India Company during the late Old Regime and the French Revolution, exploring how revolutionary political transformations and global, imperial politics shaped economic institutions on the national level. She comes to Georgetown from Florida State University, where she held an assistant professorship.
Victor Fernandez-Mallat
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Victor Fernandez-Mallet completed his Ph.D. in Modern Languages at the University of Montreal (Canada) in 2014. Before joining Georgetown University, he held the following positions: Assistant I in Spanish linguistics at the University of Bern (Switzerland), part-time Lecturer in Spanish linguistics at the University of Basel (Switzerland), and Lecturer in Spanish linguistics at the University of Washington (USA). Fernandez-Mallet is currently interested in variation in forms of address, language attitudes and ideologies, Spanish in the U.S., and linguistic and semiotic landscapes.
LaMonda Horton-Stallings
Department of African American Studies
LaMonda Horton-Stallings is Professor of African American Studies. Prior to Georgetown, she held appointments at the University of Maryland College-Park, Indiana University, and the University of Florida. She has published two award-winning books and numerous essays featuring intersectional examinations of black sexual cultures.
Joseph Johnson
Department of French and Francophone Studies
Joseph R. Johnson joins Georgetown University as an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies. His research centers on medieval languages and literatures, especially in their original manuscript forms. Before coming to Georgetown, Joseph studied at New York University (Ph.D., 2017) and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kostadin Kushlev
Department of Psychology
Kostadin Kushlev is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Before joining the faculty at Georgetown University, Kushlev completed a postdoctoral appointment with Ed Diener and Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of British Columbia, under Elizabeth Dunn and Toni Schmader. His passion for knowledge and the pursuit of truth through research was originally sparked at Reed College, his alma mater.
Kushlev’s current research program explores how constant connectivity to the Internet via smartphones impacts people’s relationships, well-being, and health, as well as how we can harness technology to improve well-being and promote positive behavioral change.
Kai Liu
Department of Physics
Kai Liu is transitioning to Georgetown University in 2018 as Professor of Physics, and will become a McDevitt Chair in Physics in 2019. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1998. He then carried out postdoctoral research at the University of California – San Diego. He joined the University of California – Davis faculty in 2001, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005 and Professor in 2008. Liu’s research interest is in experimental studies of magnetism and spin transport in nanostructured materials.
Toshihiko Mukoyama
Department of Economics
Toshihiko (Toshi) Mukoyama is a Professor at the Department of Economics at Georgetown University. He obtained his B.A. and M.A in economics from University of Tokyo, and M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from University of Rochester. Prior to Georgetown University, he worked at Concordia University, the Federal Reserve Board, and the University of Virginia. Mukoyama’s main research area is macroeconomics. His research topics include the aggregate labor market dynamics, economic growth, and business cycles.
Alexandre Poirier
Department of Economics
Alexandre Poirier is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University. After receiving a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Montreal, he received his M.A. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Iowa.
Jamil Scott
Department of Government
Jamil Scott is joining the Department of Government after receiving her Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University. She received a bachelor’s degree in Government and Politics and Psychology from the University of Maryland – College Park. She is a recipient of the King Chavez Parks Future Faculty Fellowship. Scott’s research interests lie in the areas of political behavior, political representation, race and ethnicity politics and gender politics. She pays special attention to how the intersection of gender and race can influence the political experiences of women of color.
Nicholas Subtirelu
Department of Linguistics
Nic Subtirelu is Assistant Professor in the Applied Linguistics concentration. He is interested in the role of language and discourse in education. In particular, he explores how educational institutions respond to linguistic diversity and how they might implement more inclusive practices and policies. Subtirelu was a National Academy of Education / Spencer dissertation fellow (2015-2016) and earned his doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Georgia State University.
Olúfẹmi Táíwò
Department of Philosophy
Olúfẹmi Táíwò comes to the Hilltop from the University of California – Los Angeles, where he completed his Ph.D. and taught classes on social philosophy, ethics, and the social contract. His intersectional research on social and political structures draws from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, histories of activism and activist thinkers, and the Black radical tradition. He joins the Department of Philosophy as an Assistant Professor and will lead a class this fall on the philosophy of reparations.
Nitin Vaidya
Department of Computer Science
Nitin Vaidya is the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair and Department Chair of Computer Science. He received Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He previously served as a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Non-Tenure-line Faculty
Kate Al-Shamma
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Performing Arts
Matthew Anderson
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Theology
Amos Beimel
Visiting Research Professor, Department of Computer Science
Alison Biggs
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Linguistics
Philip Buffum
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Computer Science
Kasey Christopher
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Biology
Paul Cudney
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Philosophy
Benjamin Elzinga
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Philosophy
Ray Essick
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Computer Science
Nell Haynes
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Anthropology
Zachary Herz
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Classics
Henry Hyatt
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Rob Jansen
Assistant Professor of the Practice, Department of Performing Arts
Alex JohnsTon
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Linguistics
Fatima Kharbouch
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Bokyung Mun
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Fei Ren
Associate Teaching Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Alexandra Solovyeva
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Economics
Bohumira Smidakova
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies
Deborah Stearns
Teaching Professor, Department of Psychology
Shree Taylor
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Anne ThiNglum
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies
Geoffrey Traugh
Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of History