Columbian College welcomed 27 new full-time faculty members this year, bringing the total number of full-time scholars to 497. Each of these academics adds skills and expertise that enhance the college’s strengths in disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Ginger Allington, Department of Geography, earned her PhD in biology at Saint Louis University. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Science Foundation’s National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. Her research on topics such as biodiversity, urbanization and environmental policy has been published in numerous scholarly journals including Environmental Science and Policy, Ecology and Ecosystems.
Hadia Anaye, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, received her MA in intercultural relations and international cooperation (with a specialty in Arabic speaking countries) from Charles De Gaule Lille 3 University in France, where she also earned an MA in business and international negotiation. She has served as a foreign language instructor and translator at academic institutions and federal government agencies in the United States and France. Since 2016, she has taught French at GW as an adjunct faculty member.
Matt Bruce, Department of Forensic Sciences, earned his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from University College London. Skilled on dangerousness and severe personality disorders, he has frequently appeared as an expert witness on a wide range of civil, forensic and family matters. In the U.K., he was clinical lead for a Department of Health and Ministry of Justice program to treat high-risk of high-harm offenders. In the U.S., he previously worked as a clinical psychologist at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Department of Behavioral Health, in Washington D.C.
Allison Caras, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, holds a PhD in Spanish applied linguistics from Georgetown University, where she was a University Fellow and the assistant director of the Spanish Language Program. She served as a research assistant and English language consultant at the University of Seville, Spain. At Georgetown, she was the co-founder and co-president of the university’s Graduate Students Mentorship Committee.
Adam Dean, Department of Political Science, received his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the political economy of international trade, labor politics and American political development. His book From Conflict to Coalition: Profit-Sharing Institutions and the Political Economy of Trade (Cambridge University Press, 2016) was a 2017 finalist for the J. David Greenstone Book Prize given by the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. His scholarly work has appeared in such journals as International Studies Quarterly and Politics & Society.
Elizabeth Deans, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, holds an MA in history of decorative arts and design from The New School’s Parsons School of Design. Her academic interests explore interdisciplinary relationships between spaces and objects, investigating themes of mimesis, intellectual culture, materiality, objectivity and interiority. Prior to coming to GW, she taught graduate seminars and surveys in the history of European and American decorative arts, architecture and design at George Mason University where she was also the assistant director of the MA in the History of Decorative Arts Program.
Carola Goldenberg, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, received her MA in applied linguistics and foreign language teaching from the University of Nottingham in the U.K. and studied simultaneous and consecutive interpreting in Argentina. She has held positions as an interpreter and translator, and in applied linguistics and second language teaching and learning. She was responsible for curriculum development and evaluation courseware in 26 languages for the European Commission, Europe and Parliament and European Council in Brussels.
Yuxiao Huang, Data Science Program, earned his PhD in computer science from Jilin University in China. His research interests are artificial intelligence and machine learning, with a focus on their application to healthcare. Prior to joining GW, he was a visiting lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral research scientist at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Loren Kajikawa, Department of Music, holds a PhD in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His main area of interest is American music of the 20th and 21st centuries. His book Sounding Race in Rap Songs (University of California Press, 2015) explores the relationship between rap music’s backing tracks and racial representation. He is co-editor of Tracking Pop, the University of Michigan Press’s series of books about popular music. He comes to GW from the University of Oregon where he was an associate professor of ethnomusicology and musicology.
Windi Krok, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, received her PhD in speech, language, and hearing sciences from Purdue University. A licensed speech language pathologist, she has worked at the Purdue Child Language Lab and as a private-practice clinician serving children and adults with speech-language impairments through schools, home-based therapy services and interdisciplinary therapy service facilities.
Joel Lewis, Department of Mathematics, holds a PhD in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His academic interests include combinatorics, especially enumerative and algebraic. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and comes to GW from his position as a lead mathematics instructor at the University of Minnesota.
Peter Loge, School of Media & Public Affairs, earned his MA in political science from Arizona State University. He has over 20 years of experience in communications including a presidential appointment at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and senior positions for Sen. Edward Kennedy and three members of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the vice president of communications for the U.S. Institute of Peace and was the first director of The Justice Project, a leading death penalty and criminal justice reform organization.
Sara Matthiesen, Department of History, holds a PhD in American studies from Brown University where she was a Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow. Her scholarship specialty is modern U.S. history, with an emphasis on gender, race, sexuality and reproduction after 1945. Her forthcoming book Reproduction Reconceived (University of California Press) examines the battles over the right to “family-making” since the 1970s. She has written on subjects that include the history of reproductive politics, the history of criminal sexualities, feminist theory and critical legal theory.
Miok Pak, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, earned her PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University. Her scholarly research focuses on Korean linguistics in the areas of clause types, especially imperatives, speech style particles and politeness in syntax and semantics. Since 2010, she has been a teaching assistant professor in the Korean language at GW. Previously, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at Georgetown University.
Erik A. Rodriguez, Department of Chemistry, earned his PhD in chemistry at California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on developing new fluorescent proteins, protein labeling tags and tools for imaging human maladies. He is a member of the American Chemical Society and a past member of the Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
Joseph M. Sène, Department of Romance, German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, received a PhD in modern letters from Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He has more than a decade of experience as a French instructor, translator and interpreter and has specialized in diversity research and community organization. He has conducted academic research at institutions including the Center for Ethnic Studies at the University of Montreal, Quebec. From 2013 to 2016, he served as a professorial lecturer at GW and has held the same position at the University of Dallas, American University and Trinity Washington University.
Dmitri Stanchevici, English for Academic Purposes Program, holds a PhD in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University. Prior to coming to GW, he was an associate professor of professional writing at the University of Memphis. He is the author of the book Stalinist Genetics: The Constitutional Rhetoric of T.D. Lysenko (Routledge, 2012) as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals including Health Communication and Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.
Eiko Strader, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, earned her PhD in sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she was awarded a Summer Fellowship. An expert on gender inequality and public policy, much of her work examines how and under what conditions gender becomes relevant in predicting life chances across different levels of geographical location. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of International Affairs and Sociology Compass.
Bryan Stuart, Department of Economics, received his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan. His areas of specialization include labor, public and urban economics and economic history. His research projects have examined the long-term effects of recessions on education and income, the role of birth town migration networks in historical U.S. mass migration episodes and the role of social connectedness in reducing crime in American cities.
Pao-Lin Tien, Department of Economics, earned her PhD in economics from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests focus on empirical macroeconomics. She has published scholarly journal articles on such topics as international economics, monetary economics, business cycle fluctuations and forecasting. Before coming to GW, she was a research economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and an assistant professor at Wesleyan University.
Max van Balgooy, Museum Studies Program, received his MA in history from the University of Delaware where he was a Hagley Fellow in Industrial American History. He has more than 35 years of experience working in museums, historic preservation, heritage tourism and historic sites, including senior positions at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum. He serves on the Council of the American Association for State and Local History and is a commissioner on Montgomery County's Historic Preservation Commission.
Christopher Warshaw, Department of Political Science, holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University. His research evaluates the links between public opinion, elections and political outcomes in city and state governments, as well as the U.S. Congress. He has developed new techniques to accurately measure the policy preferences of the American public at a variety of geographic levels. He has published articles in leading journals including the American Political Science Review and the American Journal of Political Science, and has edited volumes from Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press
Tomas Williams, Department of Economics, holds a PhD in economics, finance and management from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain. He was a visiting doctoral student in the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His primary fields of research are international finance, financial economics and empirical banking, with a special focus on financial intermediaries and how they affect international capital flows and economic activity. His articles on topics such as financial globalization and emerging economies have appeared in international scholarly journals including Economia and the Journal of International Money and Finance.
Lang (Kate) Yang, Public Policy and Public Administration, holds a PhD in public affairs from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Her research interests encompass state and local public finance, especially the questions of federalism as reflected in state-local fiscal relations and local government fiscal crises. She has published articles in journals including Public Budgeting and Finance, National Tax Journal, Health Economics and Local Government Studies.
Nima Zahadat, Data Science Program, received both a PhD in engineering and an MS in information systems from GW. His research specialties include the Internet of Things, data mining, information visualization, mobile security, security policy management and memory forensics. He has been a consultant with several government agencies as well as the United States Air Force, Navy, Marines and the Coast Guard.
Orian Zakai, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, holds a MA from Tel-Aviv University and a PhD from the University of Michigan in comparative literature. She specializes in modern Hebrew literature and culture and gender studies. Her current research focuses on the inception of Zionist feminist thought in Hebrew women’s literature. Her publications include the Hebrew short fiction collection Fill in the Blanks (Keter Publishing House, 2010).
Xiaoke Zhang, Department of Statistics, earned a PhD in statistics from the University of California, Davis. His areas of expertise include functional data analysis, longitudinal data analysis, dimension reduction, smoothing, nonparametric statistics, statistical learning and neuroimaging. He is the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation research project on “New Directions in Multidimensional and Multivariate Functional Data Analysis.” Prior to coming to GW, he was an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Delaware.