Meet the
New Faculty!

Emory College of Arts and Sciences welcomes an exceptional group of 45 new faculty members starting this fall. New hires can be found across the humanities, the arts, and the natural and social sciences.

More than 50 percent are from underrepresented groups, reflecting an increasingly diverse faculty. They are expected to make strong contributions to Emory’s tradition of academic excellence in research and teaching while pushing the boundaries of discovery and creativity with broad impact in the liberal arts and sciences.

The College also celebrates the promotion of several current faculty who have been promoted this year to associate and full professors with tenure, senior lecturers and professor of pedagogy.

Michal Arbilly
Lecturer
Biology and Quantitative Theory and Methods

Michal Arbilly completed her PhD in Zoology at Tel-Aviv University (2011). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Arbilly held positions at the University of California, Berkeley; University of St. Andrews; and Stanford University. Dr. Arbilly’s scholarly focus is the evolution of behavior and cognition. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Biological Sciences, Current Zoology, and Behavioral Ecology.

David Guillermo Barba
Assistant Professor
Film and Media Studies

David Guillermo Barba completed his MFA in Film at Columbia University School of the Arts (2005). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Barba held positions at the University of Notre Dame, William Paterson University, and Columbia University School of the Arts. Professor Barba’s primary scholarly focus is screenwriting and producing. His creative productions have been screened by over 150 festivals worldwide, HBO, Showtime, Sundance and in theaters.

Dan Benardot
Professor of Practice
Center for the Study of Human Health

Dan Benardot completed his PhD in Human Service Studies and Human Nutrition at Cornell University (1980). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Benardot was a Professor of Nutrition at Georgia State University.

Dr. Benardot’s primary scholarly focus is sports nutrition. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, and ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal. His most recent book is ACSM’s Nutrition for Exercise Science (Wolters Kluwer, 2019).

Christoph Breunig
Assistant Professor
Economics

Christoph Breunig completed his Dr. rer. Pol. in Economics at Universität Mannheim (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Breunig held a position at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Dr. Breunig’s research focuses on microeconomics in primarily nonparametric instrumental variable methods, endogenous selection models, and random coefficient models. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, and Econometric Theory.

Emily Burchfield
Assistant Professor
Environmental Sciences

Emily Burchfield completed her PhD in Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University (2017). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Burchfield held a position at Utah State University. Dr. Burchfield’s primary research integrates social and environmental data to understand the distributional consequences of changing climate on humans and the environment. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Ecology and Society, Regional Environmental Change, and Journal of Rural Studies.

Alix Chapman
Assistant Professor
African American Studies

Alix Chapman completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Chapman held positions at Spelman College and Tulane University. Dr. Chapman’s primary scholarly focus is the politics of class, sex, and sexuality throughout the African Diaspora. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including University of Georgia Press, Cultural Dynamics, and The E3W Review of Books 9.

In-Koo Cho
Acting Professor
Economics

In-Koo Cho completed his PhD in Economics at Princeton University (1986). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Cho held positions at the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, and Brown University. Dr. Cho’s research focuses on neural network in games, the efficiency of the electricity market, search models, macroeconomic learning dynamics, and learning models with misspecification. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including International Economic Review, Journal on Decision Processes, and American Economic Review.

Heather Christle
Assistant Professor
English and Creative Writing

Heather Christle completed her MFA in Creative Writing at University of Massachusetts Amherst (2009). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Christle held teaching appointments at the University of Guelph, Wittenberg University, University of Texas at Austin, Kent State University, Antioch College, Sarah Lawrence College, Emory University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Christle’s primary scholarly focus is poetry. Her work has been published in a number of leading journals including Boston Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry.

Katherine Davis
Assistant Professor
Chemistry

Katherine Davis completed her PhD in Physics at Purdue University (2014). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in Spring 2020, Dr. Davis held positions at Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Purdue University, and the University of Louisville. Dr. Davis’ research uses structural and spectroscopic techniques, with an emphasis on x-ray methods, to characterize the catalytic mechanisms of metalloenzymes. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Physical Review X.

Pearl Dowe
Asa Griggs Candler Professor
Political Science and African American Studies

Pearl Dowe completed her PhD in Political Science at Howard University (2003). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Dowe held positions at the University of Arkansas and Johnson C. Smith University. Dr. Dowe’s research interests are African American women’s political ambition and public leadership. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Social Science Quarterly, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and Journal of African American Studies.

Janeria Easley
Assistant Professor
African American Studies

Janeria Easley completed her PhD in Sociology at Princeton University (2016). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Easley held a position at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Easley’s primary scholarly foci are stratification, social mobility, spatial mismatch, race/ethnicity, neighborhoods, education, gender, and quantitative methods. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Russell Sage Journal of the Social Sciences, Urban Studies, and Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (2nd edition).

Emily Kalah Gade
Assistant Professor
Political Science

Emily Kalah Gade completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of Washington (2017). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in spring 2020, Dr. Gade held a position at the University of Washington. Dr. Gade’s research interests are political violence, insecurity, state use of force against civilians, civil resistance, terrorism/insurgency, discrimination, and human rights. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including The Political Methodologist, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Journal of Military Ethics.

Caitlin Hargraves
Lecturer
Theater and Dance

Caitlin Hargraves completed her MA in Classical Acting for Professional Theatre at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (2016). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Hargraves held positions at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Stella Adler Studio. Professor Hargraves’s primary scholarly focus is classical theatre. She is a professional actor who has performed with The Weird Sisters, Synchronicity Theatre, Theatre Emory, and Impulse Repertory Co.

Sorin Huh
Senior Lecturer
Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures

Sorin Huh completed her PhD in Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Huh held a position at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Huh’s research interests are Korean as a second/foreign language, second language acquisition, and development and evaluation. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Korean Language Education, and Japanese/Korean Linguistics: Vol. 19.

Krzysztof Karbownik
Assistant Professor
Economics

Krzysztof Karbownik completed his PhD in Economics at Uppsala University (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Karbownik held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Arizona, and the Warsaw School of Economics. Dr. Karbownik’s research interests are family, health, and labor. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Review of Economics of the Household, and Education Finance and Policy.

Kyungmin (Teddy) Kim
Acting Associate Professor
Economics

Kyungmin (Teddy) Kim completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania (2009). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Kim held positions at the University of Iowa, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of Miami. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on information economics, bargaining theory, and search theory. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Econometrica, RAND Journal of Economics, and Journal of Economic Theory.

Lauren Klein
Acting Associate Professor
English and Quantitative Theory and Methods

Lauren Klein completed her PhD in English with a Certificate in American Studies at the City University of New York (2011). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Klein held a position at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Klein’s scholarly foci are digital media, literary and cultural Studies, media studies, and science and technology studies. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Feminist Media Histories, Early American Literature, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.

January LaVoy
Assistant Professor
Theater and Dance

January LaVoy completed her MFA in Acting at the National Theatre Conservatory. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor LaVoy was a professional actor, voiceover and acting coach in New York City, guest lecturer at the University of Iowa and Kingsborough Community College, and director/mentor at the Denver Center Theatre Academy and the 52nd Street Project. Professor LaVoy’s primary scholarly foci are theatre, television, and voice acting. She is best known as an award-winning narrator of over 250 audiobooks.

Kathleen Leuschen
Lecturer
English and Writing Program

Kathleen Leuschen completed her PhD in English/ Rhetoric and Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2016). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Leuschen held positions at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Leuschen’s research interests are literacy studies, rhetorical theory, feminist historiography, community-engaged pedagogy, and social movement rhetoric. She has a number of publications including Lenses: Perspectives on Literature, Rhetorical Approaches to College Writing, and Techne Rhetoric Review.

Stu Marvel
Assistant Professor
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Stu Marvel completed her PhD in Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (2015). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Marvel held positions at Leeds University School of Law and Agnes Scott College. Dr. Marvel’s primary scholarly foci are reproductive technology, kinship, vulnerability, and queer and feminist legal theory. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Emory Law Journal, Florida International University Law Review, and International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Mizuki Mazzotta
Lecturer
Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures

Mizuki Mazzotta completed her PhD in Applied Linguistics at Georgia State University (2017). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Mazzotta held positions at Georgia State University, Kennesaw State University, Georgia Perimeter College, McGill University, Soka University, and the University of South Florida. Dr. Mazzotta’s primary scholarly focus is second language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Kotoba to Mozi, McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, and Proceedings of the 25th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.

Jenny Wang Medina
Assistant Professor
Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures

Jenny Wang Medina completed her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University (2015). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Medina held positions at Rutgers University and Columbia University. Dr. Medina’s primary scholarly focus is modern Korean literature and culture. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Azalea: Acta Koreana, Journal of Korean Literature and Culture and Words Without Borders. Dr. Medina also translated and published The Bird by Oh Jung-hee (Telegram Books, 2007).

Julio Ulises Medina
Assistant Professor
Dance and Movement Studies

Julio Ulises Medina completed his MFA in Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles (2016). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Medina held positions at California State University, Long Beach; Orange Coast College, Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos School, Scripps College, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Medina’s research interests are hip-hop on the concert stage, hyper masculinity, gender and sexuality studies, fusion forms, floor-based movement forms, and energetics. He has choreographed a number of performances including Remnants (November 2018), I Gotta (June 2018), and We Out Here (November 2017).

Adam Tahir Mirza
Assistant Professor
Music

Adam Tahir Mirza completed his PhD in Music Composition/Theory at New York University (2017). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Mirza held positions at New York University and Bowling Green State University. Dr. Mirza’s primary research interests include experimental and electronic music, immersive music theatre, and critical approaches to music technology. He has composed a number of performances including Appeals of Distance (2018), Space Phrase (2018), and InInInOut (2017).

Maria Montalvo
Assistant Professor
History

Maria Montalvo completed her PhD in History at Rice University (2018). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Montalvo held positions at Tulane University, the University of New Orleans, and Rice University. Dr. Montalvo’s research interests are African American history, the history of the nineteenth-century United States, and the history of women, race, and gender. She has a number of publications including The American Yawp and The Abolitionist Seminar.

Paloma Moyano
Lecturer
Economics

Paloma Moyano completed her PhD in Economics at The Graduate Center at City University of New York (2018). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Moyano held positions at the City University of New York, Catholic University of America, the University of Maryland, and the Universidad de los Andes. Dr. Moyano’s primary scholarly foci are health economics, development economics, and economics of education. She has been a speaker at several conferences including the Southern Economics Association (2017-18) the Eastern Economics Association (2016-17).

Malavika Murugan
Assistant Professor
Biology

Malavika Murugan completed her PhD in Neurobiology at Duke University (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in Spring 2020, Dr. Murugan held a position at Princeton University. Dr. Murugan’s research focuses on neural circuit mechanisms underlying socially motivated behaviors. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Cell, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience.

Craig Perry
Assistant Professor
Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Jewish Studies

Craig Perry completed his PhD in History at Emory University (2014). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Perry held a position at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Perry’s primary scholarly focus is on the study of the medieval Middle East in a global perspective that emphasizes cross-cultural interaction and inter- regional connections. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including International Journal of Middle East Studies and Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World.

Seunghwa Rho
Lecturer
Quantitative Theory and Methods

Seunghwa Rho completed her PhD in Economics at Michigan State University (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Rho held positions at Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, and Duke University. Dr. Rho’s primary scholarly focus is econometrics. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Journal of Productivity Analysis and Econometric Theory.

Leila Rieder
Assistant Professor
Biology

Leila Rieder completed her PhD in Molecular Biology, Cellular Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University (2013). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Reider held a position at Brown University. Dr. Rieder’s primary scholarly focus is using a combination of genetics, biochemistry, microscopy, and modern genomics to investigate nuclear domain formation and function. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Genes and Development, Chromosome Research, and Trends in Genetics.

Dehanza Rogers
Assistant Professor
Film and Media Studies

Dehanza Rogers completed her MFA in Film Production/ Directing at the University of California, Los Angeles (2014). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Rogers held a position at Cornell University. Professor Rogers’ primary interests are filmography, directing, social justice, and story-telling. She has written and directed several short films and videos including From Land to Land, The Youth, and Sweet, Sweet Country.

Robyn Schiff
Acting Professor
English and Creative Writing

Robyn Schiff completed her PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol (2000). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Schiff held positions at the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and the University of Oregon. Professor Schiff’s primary scholarly focus is poetry. Her poetry has been published in a number of leading journals including The New Yorker, The Spectator, and the Bennington Review.

Renard Sexton
Assistant Professor
Political Science

Renard Sexton completed his PhD in Political Science at New York University (2017). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Sexton held a position at Princeton University. Dr. Sexton’s primary scholarly foci are political economy of conflict and development, comparative politics, international relations, quantitative methods, and experimental methods. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science.

Dan Sinykin
Assistant Professor
English

Dan Sinykin completed his PhD in English at Cornell University (2015). Prior to joining faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Sinykin held positions at the University of Notre Dame, the College of Wooster, and Grinnell College. Dr. Sinykin’s primary scholarly focus is quantitative methods and literary analysis. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including American Literary History and ASAP/Journal Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture.

Jessica Lynn Stewart
Assistant Professor
African American Studies

Jessica Lynn Stewart completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (2018). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Stewart held a position at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Stewart’s primary research interests are race and politics. She has presented papers at a number of conferences including the Midwestern Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2017), American Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2016), and Academy of Health Annual Conference (2009).

Carl Suddler
Assistant Professor
History

Carl Suddler completed his PhD in U.S. History with a minor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University (2015). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Suddler held positions at Florida Atlantic University, University of Delaware, and Indiana University. Dr. Suddler’s research interests are African American history, twentieth-century U.S. history, urban history, histories of crime and punishment, and the histories of childhood and youth. He has published several articles, and is the author of Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York (New York University Press, 2019).

Chris Suh
Assistant Professor
History

Chris Suh completed his PhD in U.S. History at Stanford University (2019). Prior to joining faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Suh held positions at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Delaware. Dr. Suh’s research interests are U.S. in the Pacific world, Asian American history, and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Pacific Historical Review and Journal of American History.

Daniel Sussman
Assistant Professor
Physics

Daniel Sussman completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Sussman held positions at Syracuse University and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sussman’s research focuses on anomalous dynamics and mechanics of disordered soft matter systems in both equilibrium and active settings. His work has been published in a number of journals including Soft Matter, Europhysics Letters, and Computer Physics Communications.

Maja Tasković
Assistant Professor
Mathematics

Maja Tasković completed her PhD in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin (2016). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Tasković held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, George Mason University, and Northern Virginia Community College. Dr. Tasković’s research interests are nonlinear kinetic equations and dispersive partial differential equations. Her articles have been published in a number of journals including Kinetic & Related Models, Differential and Integral Equations, and Integral Transforms and Special Functions.

Yiran Wang
Assistant Professor
Mathematics

Yiran Wang completed his PhD in Mathematics at Purdue University (2015). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Wang held positions at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Wang’s research foci are microlocal analysis, inverse problems, integral geometry, spectral and scattering theory. His articles have been published in a number of journals including SIAM Journal on Mathematics Analysis, Inverse Problems and Imaging, and Communications in Partial Differential Equations.

Benjamin Wilson
Assistant Professor
Psychology

Benjamin Wilson completed his PhD in Neuroscience at Newcastle University (2014). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in Spring 2020, Dr. Wilson held a position at Newcastle University. Dr. Wilson’s research focuses on the uniqueness of humans and the commonalities between human and nonhuman primates. His articles have been published in a number of journals including Topics in Cognitive Sciences, Interaction Studies, and Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

Melissa T. Yang
Lecturer
English and Writing Program

Melissa T. Yang completed her PhD in English, specializing in Composition and Rhetoric, at the University of Pittsburgh (2019). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Yang held a position at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Yang’s research focuses on animal rhetorics and the environmental humanities. She is also invested in archives, writing centers, and multimodal pedagogy. Her articles have been published in Frame: Journal of Literary Studies, TRACE: A Journal of Writing, Media, and Ecology, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.

Tiphanie Yanique
Associate Professor
English and Creative Writing

Tiphanie Yanique completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Houston (2006). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Professor Yanique held positions at Wesleyan University and The New School. Professor Yanique’s research interests are screenwriting, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She has published several books including Wife: Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2015), Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2014), and How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf, 2010).

Rocio Zambrana
Acting Associate Professor
Philosophy

Rocio Zambrana completed her PhD in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (2010). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2019, Dr. Zambrana held a position at the University of Oregon. Dr. Zambrana’s primary scholarly focus is decolonial feminism. Her work has been published in a number of journals including Philosophy Today, Hegel Bulletin, and Contineutral Philosophy Review.