Faculty Achievements in Spring 2026
Each semester, The Connection shares a collection of publications, fellowships, awards, and other achievements from Wesleyan faculty members. Read more about the accomplishments and contributions the University community makes to broader research and intellectual life below.
Awards & Fellowships
Charles Barber, a professor of the practice of letters, was awarded a Lucas Artists Literary Arts Fellowship at the Montalvo Arts Center’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program. Each Fellow is awarded three months of time in the Lucas Artists Residency, which can be used over a three-year period to develop new work, take risks, and forge collaborative partnerships.
Visiting Professor of Economics and in the College of Social Studies César Jeanpierre Castillo-García became a Research Fellow at the Paris School of Economics-University of Berkeley's World Inequality Lab based on the working paper “Conflicting Claims and Taxation: A Distributive History of 20th Century Peru.”
Assistant Professor of English Sierra Eckert was awarded an American Association of University Women American Postdoctoral Leave Fellowship. Eckert will use the fellowship time to complete her first book, Research Aesthetics: Information and the Form of the Nineteenth-Century Novel, a literary history of evidence in the age of statistics and state archives that shows how the British novel takes shape in response to systems for recording, sorting, and storing information.
Khalil Johnson, chair and assistant professor of African American Studies and assistant professor of Education Studies, was selected to be among the inaugural class of fellows for The National Fellowship on the Future of Liberal Education (NAFFLE). Sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, NAFFLE convenes newly tenured faculty members for a multi-year program in which they acquire practical knowledge and a sustaining professional network, as well as time and space for reflection on the purposes of American higher education.
Ethan Kleinberg, Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of History and Letters, was awarded membership in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton for 2026-27 academic year. Kleinberg’s project, “The Politics of the Future,” explores our increasingly impaired relationship to the future, a relationship so damaged that we are unable to confront the pressing crises of the present.
Natasha Korda, professor of English and of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, was inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, the third-oldest learned society in the United States. Its purpose is the dissemination of scholarly information through lectures and extensive publications.
Professor of Government Basak Kus’s project—“Sandy was a Bitch”: State and Community in the Eye of the Storm—was selected for the 2026 Colby Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities, which “gathers scholars from around the globe to collectively explore how the Environmental Humanities contribute to the theorization, imagination, and practice of socially just and ecologically hopeful futures for humans and nonhumans.”
Assistant Professor of Theater Maria-Christina Oliveras was nominated by Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play for her work in THE BALUSTERS, described as a “raucous wild ride through a small community with big feelings.” The show also received five Tony nominations, other accolades including an Outer Critics' Circle Award and Drama League citations.
James John Praznik, assistant professor of the practice in music, as co-artistic director of the new music ensemble No Exit, commissioned and premiered Andrew Rindfleisch's American Descent, which was a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Sumarsam was awarded the Praba Nawasena Budaya (Beacon for the Future Culture) by the Center of Excellence in Science and Technology of Javanology at Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) in recognition of his outstanding dedication and leadership in the development and promotion of Javanese culture. Additionally, the Center presented a certificate of recognition to Wesleyan University for achieving fourth place in the UNS Jawametrik (International Category), acknowledging the university's significant contributions and commitment to preserving Javanese culture within its institutional environment.
Jennifer Tucker, professor of history, Science and Technology Studies, environmental studies, and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, was elected to new-look Editorial Board for the journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
Sarah Wellons, assistant professor of Astronomy and of Integrative Sciences, was named one of the 2026 Cottrell Scholars. This program honors and helps to develop outstanding teacher-scholars who are recognized by their scientific communities for the quality and innovation of their research programs and their potential for academic leadership.
Grants
Tracy Heather Strain, Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, received a second grant from Catapult Film Fund for her documentary-in-progress Survival Floating, which draws on personal history to explore Black relationships to swimming and water. The Development Grant is $25,000; Strain had previously received a Research Grant from the nonprofit.
Sumarsam, Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music, received a Wesleyan Grants in Support of Scholarship to attend the International Meeting of the Symposium of the International Council for Traditional Music and Dance Study Group on Performing Arts in Southeast Asia, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, sponsored by Chulalongkorn University.
Jennifer Tucker, professor of history, Science and Technology Studies, environmental studies, and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, received a short-term Research Fellowship in March from the New York Public Library’s Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. Tucker also received a $50,000 Mellon Foundation grant for designing and implementing collaborative courses and programs with the Archaeology Department on the industrial history and heritage of Middletown in the 18th and 19th century.
Amy MacQueen, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a $375,000 Academic Research Enhancement Awards grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for direct costs associated with her research titled, “How Does a Synaptonemal Complex Protein Promote Crossover Recombination and Synapsis?”
Natasha Korda, professor of English and of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, received a Wesleyan Project Grant of $5,000 for a new book, Shakespearean Walkscapes.
Publications
Erika Taylor, professor of chemistry, co-authored, “Structural adaptations of heptosyltransferase I enzymes in proteobacteria: Insights into evolutionary resilience and functional dynamics.” published in Protein Science. This research could aid our understanding of the pathogenic effects of human-to-bacterial interactions.
Ruth Johnson, associate professor of biology, researched the diversity within actin cytoskeleton, a network of protein fibers in cells with a membrane-bound nucleus. Her findings were published in a co-authored paper, “Generation and maintenance of apical rib-like actin fibers in epithelial support cells of the Drosophila eye,” in Development.
Peter Gottschalk, professor of religion, edited Hindu, Muslim, and the Dynamics of Identity in South Asia: Belonging and Conflict from the Past to the Present, a book which explores the histories, experiences, traditions, and more, that make up Hindu and Muslim identities in South Asia and the West. The anthology, published by Bloomsbury, includes writing from Professor of Letters William Pinch and Professor of Global South Asian Studies, Emeritus, Philip Wagoner.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Benjamin Elling discussed the evolution and landscape of ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), a chemical reaction between carbon atoms in fibers derived from petroleum, in a paper in Chemical Reviews, titled “Strain-Driven Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization.”
Kelly Thayer, assistant professor of integrative sciences, published, “BPS2026 – Allosteric regulation in p53 isoforms: From structural dynamics to functional rescue of the tumor suppressor protein,” in Biophysical Journal.
Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Teresita Padilla-Benavides studied a transporter of copper in Salmonella bacteria. Padilla-Benavides and co-authors published a paper, “CuiT is a Cu importer required for metal homeostasis in Salmonella enterica,” on their findings in Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports.
Michael Perez, assistant professor of psychology, co-wrote a paper, published in Psychology of Pushback, that highlights ways that the United States’ history with racism informs a perception that the nation’s democracy is infallible.
Professor of Psychology Hilary Barth and co-authors ran three social cognition experiments on how participants make inferences in response to statements of opportunity. The researchers published their findings in a paper, “Special days for one group inform children about both mentioned and unmentioned groups,” in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Dana Royer, professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Valerie Nazzaro, professor of the practice in quantitative analysis, and co-authors published research in Palaios testing whether methods used to reconstruct climate assertions through full size leaf fossils also align with incomplete leaf fossils.
Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics Abigail Hornstein and Assistant Professor of Economics Xiaoxue Zhao co-authored, “Stock Market Liberalization and Capital Misallocation,” in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade.
Zhao also studied the economic costs of tax evasion by examining a reform in China, called the Golden Tax Project, a technology which significantly realigned tax rates in Chinese counties. Zhao and a co-author published, “Fiscal capacity and capital misallocation: the economic costs of tax evasion,” in the Journal of Public Economics.
Masami Imai, professor of economics, researched how disruptions in bank lending can slow down technological progress, using a banking crisis in the 1990s as a case study. Imai and co-authors published a working paper, “Impaired Credit Dynamism and the Innovation Slowdown,” at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
Kolby Hanson, associate professor of government, and co-authors analyzed how migrant attitudes toward democracy shift when they move to an autocratic country in a paper, “Bringing Autocracy Home? How Migration to Autocracies Shapes Migrants’ Support for Democracy,” for World Politics.
Emily Stark, assistant professor of mathematics, and Alex Margolis, Van Vleck Visiting Professor of Mathematics, co-authored a paper in the Journal of Topology on graphically discrete groups.
Basak Kus, professor of government, published an article in Intereconomics: Review of European Policy examining Simon Kuznets’ postwar claim that economic growrth would ultimately generate greater equality. She was also invited to join the Scholars Strategy Network and wrote a policy brief for them on climate adaptation.
Erica Wessmann, visiting professor of art, had a sculpture exhibition, “Someone’s Home,” at the Kingston Gallery in Boston from April 3 to 26.
Hari Ramesh, professor of government, published Harnessing the State: Oppressed Groups and the Pursuit of Radical Democracy in Harvard University Press in June. The book argues that oppressed groups can wield the power of the state to “claim agency and dismantle sources of their oppression.”
Marcela Oteíza, professor of theater, published an article examining how the Baquedano statue was used as a performance and political tool during the Chilean social uprisings in 2019 and 2020 in a special issue of Theatre and Performance Design.
César Jeanpierre Castillo-Garcia, visiting professor of economics, wrote a paper on Peruvian neoliberalism in the 1960s for Global Perspectives that outlines the ways officials reshaped policy to support private business. Castillo-Garcia also wrote a working paper on the distribution of wealth in Peru from 1942 to 2022 for World Inequality Lab. The income distribution data produced in this paper will be included in World Inequality Lab’s World Inequality Database.
María Ospina, professor of Spanish and chair of Romance Languages and Literatures, published Only a Little While Here through Simon & Schuster, a novel that explores what it means to create or lose a home through a story of five animals on a migratory journey.
William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities Andrew Curran published Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson with Other Press in February. This book investigates how 13 figures shaped the concept of race during Enlightenment.
Rich Olson, chair and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, and co-authors published “Crystal structure of Vibrio cholerae polysaccharide lyase RbmB bound to Vibrio polysaccharide (VPS) fragments provides insights into substrate recognition and cleavage.” Their work, which provides a tool for studying and combating protein and carbohydrate interactions in pathogen biofilms, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ethan Kleinberg, Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of History and Letters, reviewed Elias Palti’s book Intellectual History and the Problem of Conceptual Change in a paper for the Journal of the Philosophy of History.
Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies Stephen Angle published, “Is Confucian Active Citizenship Too Demanding?” in author Sungmoon Kim’s A Confucian Theory of Power through Manchester University Press.
Joan Cho, associate professor of East Asian Studies and government, published “Democracy Under Neoliberalism in South Korea” in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.
Amy MacQueen, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, co-authored “Crossover formation and coordinated assembly of synaptonemal complex relies on a direct interaction between Zip1 and Zip3,” which was published in GENETICS.
Tsampikos Kottos, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, published “Noise-resilient exceptional point sensing with immunity to undesired perturbations,” in Science Advances in February. Then in May, he co-authored “Parity–time symmetry and exceptional points in electronic circuits,” in Nature Electronics and “Revisiting the local-density-of-states enhancement at exceptional points,” in Physical Review A.
Andrews Professor of Economics Richard Grossman co-authored, “Was freedom road a dead end? Socio-economic effects of Reconstruction in the American South” in Economic History Review.
