New Arts and Sciences Faculty Announced

The School of Arts and Sciences welcomed 22 new standing faculty members for the 2018-2019 academic year.

The School is pleased to welcome:

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, Assistant Professor of Biology. Abdus-Saboor studies the role of sensory systems in perception from the level of the gene to the level of organismal behavior and mechanisms governing somatosensory encoding, with a particular focus on pain. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Oscar Aguirre Mandujano, Assistant Professor of History. Aguirre Mandujano studies early modern Ottoman intellectual history and its connections to literature, poetry, and imperial bureaucracy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

David Amponsah, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies. Amponsah studies religion and society in Africa and its diaspora with a focus on colonialism, popular culture, and contemporary politics. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Courtney Boen, Assistant Professor of Sociology. Boen studies social determinants of population health inequality, with particular attention to the social factors producing racial and socioeconomic health inequities. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Shira Brisman, Assistant Professor of History of Art. Brisman studies Northern European art and theory of the early modern period, specializing in the boundaries between privacy and society, religious modes of thinking, and categories of secularization. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Andrew Carruthers, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Carruthers studies linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, specializing in Malay-speaking maritime Southeast Asia. He also focuses on the study of language, selfhood, and belonging; borders, mobilities and infrastructures; American pragmatism and critical theory; and semiotics. Carruthers received his Ph.D. from Yale University.  

Brent Cebul, Assistant Professor of History. Cebul studies modern U.S. political history, urban history, race and identity in American politics, business history and capitalism, contemporary political and policy debates in historical perspective, and digital history. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Maria Cuellar, Assistant Professor of Criminology. Cuellar studies the use of statistics in the law, focusing on statistical arguments of causal attribution and the validity of statistical statements in forensic analysis. She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Roxanne Euben, Professor of Political Science. Euben studies comparative political theory; Islamic political thought; political rhetoric and spectacle; jihad, terror, and sovereignty; and the politics of humiliation. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and comes to Penn from Wellesley College.

 Roquinaldo Ferreira, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History. Ferreira studies African, colonial Brazilian, and Atlantic history; history of the transatlantic slave trade; and slavery and colonialism and their role in the flows of global commodities. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles and comes to Penn from Brown University.

Joseph Francisco, President's Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. Francisco studies atmospheric chemistry, tropospheric and stratospheric chemical kinetics and modeling, and atmospheric laser spectroscopy and photochemistry. He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and comes to Penn from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Adrianna Jenkins, Assistant Professor of Psychology. Jenkins studies cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, empathy and decision processes, and the cognitive and neural mechanisms of social and economic thought and behavior. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

D. Brian Kim, Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies. Kim studies Russian literature of the long 19th century; the theory, practice, politics, and aesthetics of translation; literary and cultural relationships between Russia, Western Europe, and East Asia; and Meiji-and Taishō-era Japanese literature. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Kristina Lyons, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Lyons studies cultural anthropology, with a focus on the sciences, technologies, and politics of human-soil relations in Colombia. She also specializes in environmental humanities, ethnographic theory, experimental ethnography and poetics, politics in Latin America, and socio-ecological justice. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.

Thomas Mallouk, Vagelos Professor in Energy Research and Professor of Chemistry. Mallouk studies materials chemistry, including photoelectrochemistry, electrochemical energy conversion, low-dimensional physical phenomena, and motion on the nanoscale. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and comes to Penn from Pennsylvania State University. 

Mona Merling, Assistant Professor of Mathematics. Merling studies algebraic topology, algebraic K-theory and its applications to number theory and manifold theory, and equivariant stable homotopy theory. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Robyn Sanderson, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Sanderson studies astrophysics, near-field cosmology, stellar debris shells around galaxies and their use as probes of dark matter distribution, dynamics of galaxy formation, and statistical power of large astronomical surveys. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Melissa Teixiera, Assistant Professor of History. Teixiera studies the history of Brazil, Latin America, and the wider Lusophone world; economic history; constitutionalism and legal history; history of the social sciences and global history; and the methodological questions that arise with writing comparative and transnational history. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Rebecca Waller, Assistant Professor of Psychology. Waller studies socioemotional development, child psychopathology, and personality development, origins of moral and antisocial behaviors, and how the environment interacts with genetic risk. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.

Simone White, Assistant Professor of English. White specializes in contemporary poetry and poetics, experimental writing, American literature and the genealogical lines of "American soul,” African-American cultural studies, sound studies, and critical legal studies. White received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from The New School. She earned a J.D. from Harvard University.

Liang Wu, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Wu studies experimental condensed matter physics with a focus on light-matter interactions, topological insulators and semimetals, quantum antiferromagnets, spin liquids, superconductors, 2D materials, and plasmonics. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Mantha Zarmakoupi, Morris Russell and Josephine Chidsey Williams Assistant Professor of Roman Architecture. Zarmakoupi studies art and architecture of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, cultural interaction between Greeks and Romans in development of artistic production, and shaping of their built environment. She also specializes in the study of architecture, harbor infrastructure, and urban development of late Hellenistic and Roman Delos. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.