Columbian College welcomed 29 new full-time faculty members this year, bringing the total number of full-time scholars to 494. Each of these academics adds skills and expertise that enhance the college’s strengths in disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Jameta Barlow, University Writing Program, earned her PhD in psychology from North Carolina State University and her Master of Public Health degree from GW’s School of Public Health & Health Sciences. Prior to coming to GW, she was an assistant professor of women and health at Towson University’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. She was also a fellow with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office on Women’s Health Service, and has worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs.
Steven J. Brady, Department of History, received a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame, where he also served as an academic advisor and an associate professional specialist. He is a two-time recipient of the Hearst Fellowship for Advanced Studies in American History. His areas of expertise include World War II, the American presidency, U.S. international relations since 1776, European international relations/imperialism since 1648 and the Indochina Wars.
Andrea Hunter Dietz, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University. She has worked in architecture research and exhibition design independently and with Bestor Architecture and Chu + Gooding Architects. She taught foundation architecture studios with Cal Poly Pomona and is a longtime associate of the Woodbury School of Architecture. Her curatorial work includes “Above and Behind,” which featured photography by Benny Chan, and “Tu casa es mi casa,” a project that brought together writers, architects and designers across the U.S.-Mexican border.
Steven Hamilton, Department of Economics, holds a PhD in economics and public policy from the University of Michigan, where he also received a Rackham Dissertation Fellowship and a Ford School Fellowship. A former analyst for the Australian Treasury, his research interests focus on public finance, applied microeconomics and program evaluation.
Brendan J. Hurley, Department of Geography, earned a PhD in earth systems and geoinformation sciences from George Mason University. He was a principal scientist for the National Marine Fisheries Service and Ocean Associates, Inc, and a fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition. His areas of expertise include spatial analytics and processing techniques. He has served as an adjunct professor at GW since 2017.
Sarah-Kay Hurst, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, holds a PhD in French linguistics from Indiana University. She comes to GW from the Université de Strasbourg in Strasbourg, France, where she served an English lecturer. She has also been an associate instructor of French at Indiana University and a French instructor and logistics coordinator for the Indiana University Honors Program in Foreign Languages in Saint-Brieuc, France.
Nicole Ivy, Department of American Studies, received a PhD in African American Studies and American Studies from Yale University. She is the director of inclusion with the American Alliance of Museums and has been a visiting scholar at GW since 2015. She is a former Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies. Currently, she is completing a book manuscript tentatively titled Materia Medica: Black Women, White Doctors, and Spectacular Gynecology.
Trevor Jackson, Department of History, earned a PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as a visiting lecturer. Among his areas of expertise are the international economy in the 20th century; capitalism and inequality from the Industrial Revolution to the present; and the history of economic crises. His forthcoming research will be published in the Journal of Economic History and Revue d'Economie Financière.
Neil Johnson, Department of Physics, received his PhD in applied physics from Harvard University where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society as well as the recipient of its 2018 Burton Award for contributions to the public understanding of physics and society. His areas of expertise include complexity theory and complex systems. At GW, he will lead an interdisciplinary initiative on complexity and data science. He has served as a professor of physics at the University of Miami and at Oxford University. His books include Simply Complexity: A Clear Guide to Complexity Theory.
Anne Jurado, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, holds a master’s of language sciences from Tulane University and a master’s of French language and literature from University Lumière in Lyon, France. She has taught at the Institut Français and Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, as well as the Catholic University and University Lumière in Lyon. In 2017, she was a part-time faculty member at GW as a professor of French as a second language.
Immanuel Kim, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Riverside. Prior to coming to GW, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author of the forthcoming book Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction and has translated numerous scholarly works including journal articles and novels.
Juliet L. King, Art Therapy Program, received her MA in art therapy from Hahnemann University. She was the director of art therapy and an assistant professor at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Herron School of Art and Design. She served as an adjunct assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Neurology (IUNC), where she also was director and supervisor clinician for the IUNC Art Therapy in Neuroscience and Medicine Program. She has authored numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals including Art Therapy, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association.
Insung Ko, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, earned his PhD in linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Prior to joining GW, he was a lecturer with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also served as a lecturer with the University of Michigan and as a visiting lecturer at the Korea University in Seoul. He is the author of the books Power Up Korean Vocabulary and Mom! Dad! Let's Talk in English.
Ashley LaBoda, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, received her PhD in Spanish linguistics from the University at Albany-State University of New York. She comes to GW from Franklin and Marshall College, where she was a visiting assistant professor of Spanish and linguistics. She has conducted fieldwork on Spanish-English code-switching in the speech of bilinguals in Lancaster, Penn, and sociolinguistic interviews of Costa Rican Central Valley Spanish speakers. She is currently researching Creole and Spanish language and cultural contact in the Caribbean.
Jae Rhim Lee, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, earned her MS in visual studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An award-winning designer, entrepreneur and transdisciplinary artist, she is the creator of the Infinity Mushroom Project, a concept using living units and wearables to reimagine the relationship between the body and the environment. She has lectured on eco-friendly decomposition at MIT and Stanford University. Her 2011 presentation at the TEDGlobal Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, reached more than 1.2 million viewers worldwide.
Tania L. Leyva, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, holds an MA in Spanish language, literature, and culture from Syracuse University. She also attended Universidad San Jorge in Zaragoza, Spain, where she obtained a University Expert designation in Spanish as a second language. She has served as a visiting instructor of Spanish at GW since 2017. Her professional interests include culture in language learning and teaching, instructional technology and service learning.
Annie Liontas, Department of English, holds an MFA in creative writing/fiction from Syracuse University. She is the author of the novel Let Me Explain You, which was an Editor’s Choice in The New York Times Book Review. Her poems and short stories have appeared in literary publications including Lit, BOMB, Ninth Letter and Night Train, and her 2016 essay “Inherit the Word ”was published in The New York Times Book Review. She has been a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College, a visiting lecturer at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a visiting writer at the University of California, Davis.
Daniel Mackay, Department of Economics, earned a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia, where he was also an instructor of economics. He has served as a visiting lecturer of economics at the University of Richmond Robins School of Business and as a visiting instructor at the College of William and Mary. His fields of interest include public economics, industrial organization, econometrics and finance.
Xolela Mangcu, Department of Sociology, received his PhD in city and regional planning from Cornell University. Prior to coming to GW, he was a professor at the University of Cape Town, where The Sunday Times called him “possibly South Africa’s most prolific public intellectual.” He has held international fellowships with the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the University of London, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution. His books include The Colour of Our Future: Does Race Still Matter In Post-Apartheid South Africa, The Arrogance of Power: South Africa’s Leadership Meltdown and Biko: A Life .
Amber Musser, Department of American Studies, earned her PhD in the history of science from Harvard University and her Master of Studies in Women’s Studies from Oxford University. She comes to GW from Washington University in St. Louis where she was an associate professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has also served as the Nancy L. Buc Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’s Pembroke Center and as an assistant professor/faculty fellow at New York University. Her books include the forthcoming Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance and Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism.
Anil Nathan, Public Policy and Public Administration, received his PhD in economics from Duke University. Prior to coming to GW, he was an associate teaching professor at Georgetown University and an assistant professor at the College of the Holy Cross. His fields of specialization include econometrics, program evaluation, the economics of education and health economics. His work has appeared in major peer-reviewed publications including the Journal of Family and Economic Issues and the International Journal of Financial Studies.
Joshua Paiz, English for Academic Purposes Program, received his PhD in teaching English to speakers of other languages from Purdue University. He was previously an adjunct lecturer at the New York University Silver School of Social Work and a lecturer at New York University Shanghai in China. He has published articles in such journals as Asian EFL Journal, SLW News: The Newsletter of the Second Language Writing Interest Section and the Journal of Language and Sexuality.
Kylie Quave, University Writing Program, holds a PhD in anthropology/archaeology from Southern Methodist University (SMU). She served as a Teaching Fellow with the Beloit College Department of Anthropology and Writing Program. She was also an adjunct professor of anthropology at SMU and a visiting instructor at the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cuzco in Peru. Her research interests include South America, ethnohistory and archival research, household archaeology, the Inka empire, Colonial Peru, museum studies, transliteracy and quantitative writing.
Gabriela Rosenblau, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, received her PhD in psychology from Freie Universität Berlin. Her research emphasizes social learning (learning about others) throughout adolescence and in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Since 2016, she has served as a post-doctoral researcher at GW and is a member of the GW Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute. She has published articles in major peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Neuroscience and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Jimmy Saw, Department of Biological Sciences, received a PhD in microbiology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has served as a postdoctoral research associate at Oregon State University and is a past Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden. His field work has included collecting water samples from the Sargasso Sea in Bermuda and extracting biofilm from silver mines in Sweden.
Yamil Velez, Department of Political Science, holds a PhD in political science from Stony Brook University. Prior to coming to GW, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University. He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. His research interests focus on public opinion; race, ethnicity and politics; political psychology; experimental methods; and applied statistics.
Allyson Vieira, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, earned her MFA in sculpture from Bard College. She has exhibited internationally and in the U.S., including solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland and the Swiss Institute in New York. Her artistic and academic interests focus on labor, form and material over time and the relationship between sculpture and architecture. She is following up her first solo catalog, Allyson Vieira: The Plural Present, with the forthcoming book On the Rock: The Acropolis Interview, which profiles Greek master marble carvers
Jennifer Wells, Department of History, holds a PhD in history from Brown University. She is the author of the forthcoming book Prelude to Empire: State Building in the Early Modern British World. She has served as a history and culture lecturer at the University of Southern California and has appeared as an on-air consultant for the National Geographic Channel and the Smithsonian Channel. As a country specialist and legislative officer with Amnesty International, she investigated human rights’ abuses in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Matthew R. Wilson, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, received his MFA in classical acting from GW and his PhD in theatre and performance studies from University of Maryland. Wilson has performed on stages across Europe and North America including at the Kennedy Center, Folger Theatre and Tribeca Playhouse, and he appeared in the Netflix series House of Cards. He has directed plays at Washington-area venues including Constellation Theatre Company, 1stStage and the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. He is a Helen Hayes Award recipient and the founder of the Faction of Fools Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.