Middlebury Welcomes 46 New Faculty

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College welcomes 46 new faculty members this fall, including eight in tenure-track positions. The new teachers and researchers arrived on campus for a two-day orientation on August 26. As a group, they represent 28 academic disciplines.

The following will join Middlebury this fall as tenure-track faculty members:

Cihan Artunç, assistant professor of economics, comes to Middlebury from the University of Arizona, where he served as assistant professor of economics. Artunç earned his PhD, MPhil, and MA in economics from Yale and his BA in economics and BS in mathematics from Boğaziçi University. His research interests include economic history, law and economics, and corporate governance.

Kristin Bright, assistant professor of anthropology, comes to Middlebury from a term appointment as assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. Bright earned her PhD and MA in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her BA from Bates College. Bright also earned an NIH postdoctoral traineeship from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Andrew Fieldhouse, assistant professor of economics, earned his PhD and MA in economics from Cornell University. He earned his BA in economics and political science from Swarthmore College. Fieldhouse teaches and researches in the fields of macroeconomics and public economics.

Laura Lesta García, instructor in Luso-Hispanic studies, has been a visiting instructor at Middlebury since 2014, teaching a variety of courses. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her BA from Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.

Alex Lyford, assistant professor of mathematics, has been teaching at Middlebury since 2017. Lyford earned his PhD, MS, and BS in statistics and his BS in mathematics from the University of Georgia. His research interests include undergraduate statistics education, machine learning, automated scoring of student responses, and statistics education games.

Eric Moody, assistant professor of biology, earned his PhD and MS in biology from Arizona State University and his BS in zoology and biological aspects of conservation from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Most recently, Moody was a USDA NIFA postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University in Ames.

Akhil Rao, assistant professor of economics, earned his PhD and MA in economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his BS in business administration from the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include environmental resource economics, computational economics, and econometrics.

Jennifer Wang, instructor in English and American literatures, earned her PhD in English from Brown University, her MA in English and writing studies from the University of Western Ontario, and her BA in English from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include race and literary aesthetics; queer of colour critique; comparative racializations; posthumanism and racial embodiment; and affect, biopolitics, and new materialisms.

Middlebury is also pleased to welcome the following visiting faculty, professors of the practice, instructors, lecturers, and teaching assistants:

Associate Professor

Jennifer Sellers, PhD, University of Texas, Austin, visiting associate professor of psychology

Assistant Professors

Philip Caplan, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting assistant professor of computer science

Natalie Coe, PhD, University of Minnesota, visiting assistant professor of neuroscience

Genie Giaimo, PhD, Northeastern University, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric

Hemangini Gupta, PhD, Emory University, visiting assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies

Michael Jordan, MFA, HAW Hamburg, Germany, visiting assistant professor of studio art

Victoria Juharyan, PhD, Princeton University, visiting assistant professor of Russian

Jenny Kemp, MFA, SUNY Albany, visiting assistant professor of studio art

Megan Mayhew Bergman, MFA, Bennington College, visiting assistant professor of English and American literatures

Afaf Nash, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, visiting assistant professor of Arabic

Julia Proctor, MFA, George Washington University, visiting assistant professor of theatre

Estefania Puerta, MFA, Yale School of Art, visiting assistant professor of studio art

Amy Redman, PhD, University of New Hampshire, visiting assistant professor of sociology

Sarah Rogers, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting assistant professor of history of art and architecture

Phoebe Streblow, MFA, School of Visual Arts, NY, visiting assistant professor of studio art

Peter Tan, PhD, University of Virginia, visiting assistant professor of philosophy

Instructor

Mon Zabala, BA, University of Puerto Rico, visiting instructor in Luso-Hispanic studies

Lecturers and Teaching Positions
Julie Aelion, Paris Diderot University, assistant in French

Alina Barton, Russian State University for the Humanities, assistant in Russian

Paula Jiménez Saenz, University of La Rioja, Spain, assistant in Spanish

Laura Klein, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany, assistant in German

Virginia Mazzoni, Università di Lingue, Italy, assistant in Italian

Ai Sugimoto, International Christian University, Japan, assistant in Japanese

Francianne Dos Santos Velho, Leiden University, the Netherlands, assistant in Portuguese