Summer 2026 Faculty Tenure and Promotions Announced

It is with great pleasure that Wesleyan announces the tenure and promotions of 15 faculty members. Additional announcements may be coming later this summer.

The following faculty were conferred tenure effective July 1, 2026, by the Board of Trustees at its most recent meeting:

• Joseph Salvatore Ackley, Associate Professor of Art History
• Martin Baeumel, Associate Professor of German Studies
• Ryuichiro Izumi, Associate Professor of Economics
• Okechukwu Nwafor, Associate Professor of Art History
• Maria-Christina Oliveras, Associate Professor of Theater
• Teresita Padilla-Benavides, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
• Mitali Thakor, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies

• Pedro Bermúdez, Associate Professor of the Practice in Video and Audio Production
• Courtney Fullilove, Professor of History (as of July 1, 2025)
• Maryam Gooyabadi, Associate Professor of the Practice in Quantitative Analysis
• A. Meredith Hughes, Professor of Astronomy
• Nataliya Karageorgos, Associate Professor of the Practice in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
• Chelsie McPhilimy, Associate Professor of the Practice in Dance
• Jesse Nasta, Associate Professor of the Practice in African American Studies
• Courtney Weiss Smith, Professor of English

Please join us in congratulating these colleagues on their significant accomplishments. Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching appear below.

Joseph Salvatore Ackley, Associate Professor of Art History
Professor Ackley is a scholar of the art and architecture of medieval Europe, with a particular focus on gold and precious metalwork, including liturgical objects, jewelry, and coinage. His book manuscript, Medieval Gold: The Radiant Medium, offers the first comprehensive examination of gold, as both a physical substance and a metalworking medium, in the Latin West. He is co-editor, with Shannon L. Wearing, of Illuminating Metalwork: Metal, Object, and Image in Medieval Manuscripts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), a 15-essay volume exploring metallic media in manuscript decoration, and he has authored multiple scholarly essays, book chapters, and book and exhibition reviews. Professor Ackley offers courses on early medieval art, Romanesque and Gothic art, Northern Renaissance art, and medieval manuscripts, as well as the introductory survey of ancient and medieval art in the Western tradition.

Martin Baeumel, Associate Professor of German Studies
Professor Baeumel is a scholar of 17th- through 19th-century literature, aesthetics, and history with a particular focus on German poetry of the early German Enlightenment. In his forthcoming book, Gesellschaft und Gedicht: Die Entwicklung der Lyrik 1700–1750 (Society and Poem: Development of Lyric Poetry ,1700 to 1750), he analyzes the works of three poets: Friedrich Rudolph Ludwig von Canitz (1654–1699), Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708–1754), and Friedrich Ludwig Klopstock (1724–1803), and explores the restructuring of the field of literary production. He offers courses on German language, as well as German literature, fairy tales, and culture.

Pedro Bermúdez, Associate Professor of the Practice in Video and Audio Production
Professor Bermúdez is a highly acclaimed artist whose work explores the intersection of cinema, theater, and immersive media. He received a New England Regional Emmy in 2020 for his film Collision Course, and his virtual production of Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick in 2021. Through his production company, Revisionist, he collaborates with various artists and cultural institutions, including recently completing a series of video installations for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s Styling Identities exhibit. Professor Bermúdez offers courses on documentary filmmaking, virtual production, 3D design, and motion capture.

Courtney Fullilove, Professor of History
Professor Fullilove is a historian whose scholarship focuses on agricultural history, global environmental history, and the history of science and technology. In her book, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (University of Chicago Press, 2017), she explores the collection, circulation, and preservation of seeds to argue that American agriculture’s global dominance was built on a foundation of exchange rather than isolated innovation, and that understanding this history is crucial for shaping a more sustainable and equitable future. She pursues paths to such futures in recent writings on biodiversity, plant genetics, and post-industrial environments. Her courses include Food Security: History of an Idea, Cold War Environmental History, The Long 19th Century in the U.S., and History of the End.

Maryam Gooyabadi, Associate Professor of the Practice in Quantitative
Analysis Professor Gooyabadi is a methodologist and social scientist whose training spans computer science, psychology, philosophy, political science, economics, and mathematical behavioral sciences. Drawing on computational methods in data science and complex systems, her work bridges digital humanities and qualitative traditions with quantitative modeling to examine technological innovation, religious belief systems, political extremism, gender dynamics, and cultural change across time. She directs the RAD Lab at Wesleyan University, collaborates with historians, religion scholars, and political scientists, and teaches courses in applied data analysis, statistical foundation of data science, time series analysis, Bayesian inference, and AI ethics.

A. Meredith Hughes, Professor of Astronomy Professor
Hughes is a radio astronomer whose research focuses on planet formation. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), she investigates circumstellar disks around young stars—collections of dust and gas that form planetesimals and eventually planets. Her research has provided fundamental insights into the structure and evolution of planet-forming disks, as well as the surprising persistence of gas in debris disks and its role in planet formation. Professor Hughes, who received the Binswanger Prize for Teaching Excellence in 2023, teaches Introductory Astrophysics, Exploring the Cosmos, Radio Astronomy, Observational Astronomy, Astronomical Pedagogy, and Planetary Science.

Ryuichiro Izumi, Associate Professor of Economics
Professor Izumi is a financial economist whose research examines the stability of financial systems and banks. He studies how future banking crises might be prevented or mitigated through the design of financial systems. His recent work explores the future of money and banking in the digital age. Professor Izumi’s published papers have appeared in The Journal of Economic Theory, The Review of Finance, The Review of Economic Dynamics, and The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. At Wesleyan, he regularly teaches the core macroeconomics course, electives such as Investment Finance and Banking and Financial Fragility, and a newly created research lab in financial economics.

Nataliya Karageorgos, Associate Professor of the Practice in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Professor Karageorgos is a scholar of comparative literature with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century Russophone literature and the ethnic minorities of Ukraine and Siberia. At Wesleyan, Professor Karageorgos teaches the Russian language sequence that anchors the major and minor in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She also teaches upper-level courses on Russian and Russophone literature and culture. Her pedagogical interests include community-based language learning.

Chelsie McPhilimy, Associate Professor of the Practice in Dance
Professor McPhilimy is a lighting and media designer for the stage. She received the prestigious Wilde Award for Best Lighting Design for her work on Spring Awakening at the Flint Repertory Theatre in 2024 and has served as a master artist and lighting designer for multiple works, including Too Hot to Handel (Detroit Opera, 2024), Deathtrap (Constellation Stage & Screen, 2023), and the national and international tour of Cartography (2018–2021). At Wesleyan, Professor McPhilimy serves as the Dance Department lighting and media designer and teaches courses on theatrical lighting, sound, projection, stage management, costumes, and stagecraft.

Jesse Nasta, Associate Professor of the Practice in African American Studies
Professor Nasta is a cultural, public, and community historian whose work focuses on the history of slavery, emancipation, and their aftermaths—with a particular focus on New England. At Wesleyan, he directs the High School Humanities Program and teaches courses on carcerality, LGBTQ+ history, and African American history in Middletown, Connecticut. Professor Nasta also serves as executive director of the Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown.

Okechukwu Nwafor, Associate Professor of Art History
Professor Nwafor is an art historian who specializes in African art and visual culture. His recent book, Exit of a Hero: Photography and the Visual Culture of Commemoration in Southern Nigeria (University of Michigan Press, 2026), explores how commemorative practices reconstituted the Southern Nigerian public sphere from the 1880s to the present to align with citizens’ aspirations for visibility and heroic accomplishments. He is also the author of Aso Ebi: Dress, Fashion, Visual Culture and Urban Cosmopolitanism in West Africa (University of Michigan Press, 2021), which received an Honorable Mention in the 2024 Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, as well as the author of 13 scholarly articles and three reviews. Professor Nwafor teaches the history of African art and material culture, contemporary African art, and the history of African photography.

Maria-Christina Oliveras, Associate Professor of Theater
Professor Oliveras is an actor who has performed extensively on and off Broadway, regionally, internationally, and in film and television, with a particular focus on new work and re-exploring the classics through a contemporary lens. She is currently on Broadway in the Tony-nominated world premiere of The Balusters, for which she received a Drama Desk nomination, and will be seen in the upcoming feature film, Vivien and the Florist. Other recent productions include Between Riverside and Crazy (Broadway, 2023), Cymbeline (Off-Broadway, 2024–25), Hadestown (National Tour, 2022–23), A Woman Among Women (Off-Broadway, 2024), and Kiss My Aztec! by John Leguizamo (Regional, 2019, 2022). Professor Oliveras teaches courses on acting and musical theater and was an Embodying Anti-Racism Fellow.

Teresita Padilla-Benavides, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
Professor Padilla-Benavides is a metalloprotein molecular and cell biologist who examines how transition metals, such as copper and zinc, regulate cell fate and differentiation by modulating gene expression in mammals. Funded by a prestigious National Institutes of Health R01 Research Project grant, her research investigates the molecular and cellular roles transition metals play in muscle development and repair as well as in cancer biology. At Wesleyan, Professor Padilla-Benavides teaches courses on molecular biology; metals, metalloenzymes and disease; and cellular mechanisms of gene regulation and gene editing tools.

Courtney Weiss Smith, Professor of English
Professor Weiss Smith is a scholar working at the intersection of poetics and intellectual history, with expertise in late 17th- and 18th-century British literature. She has published numerous essays and served as co-editor of the 11th edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. She is also associate editor for the journal History & Theory. Her monograph, Sound Stuff: Words in Enlightenment Philosophy and Poetics, explores a historical understanding of words as sensory things that were made by, and acted on, human bodies; it is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2027. She offers courses that range from introductory to advanced research courses on British literature and on poetics.

Mitali Thakor, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies
Professor Thakor is an anthropologist and scholar of science and technology studies who works at the interstices of technology, sexuality, and labor. Her first book, Facing the Child: Surveillance, Care, and the Policing of Violent Images (MIT Press, 2026), examines the rise of technocratic expertise in the policing of child sexual abuse images, expanding surveillance apparatuses in the name of child protection and rescue. She also has a book in progress that analyzes the phenomena of robotic and animate companions in eldercare, childcare, and intimate spaces. Professor Thakor teaches courses on the anthropology of science, the cultural history of AI and algorithms, feminist science studies and care ethics, and queer and critical race studies of robotics in speculative fiction. She is the co-director of Black Box Labs, an interdisciplinary undergraduate research lab of science studies and social justice.