Barnard welcomes faculty members to campus in new appointments every fall semester to uplift the College’s mission of providing young women with a world-class education across the arts and sciences.
“It is my great pleasure to welcome these new faculty members to the College. Barnard faculty are the linchpin of our educational mission and provide our students with unique opportunities to partner in research and teaching that enlarges what we know and what we can do as citizens of our local and global communities," said Rebecca Walkowitz, Provost and Dean of the Faculty. "These colleagues join the ranks of our excellent scholars, writers, artists, and practitioners from across the disciplines and will help us innovate and grow as a community of bold, brave leaders."
For the 2024-2025 academic year, experts will join departments from human rights to computer science. Meet the 28 scholars arriving on campus this fall, below.
Assistant Professors
Matthew Delvaux, History
Matthew Delvaux is a medieval historian of marginalized peoples and interregional connections. His work includes research on Latin, Old English, Old Norse, and Arabic texts, complemented by interests in archaeological approaches, material studies, and digital methods. His current project, “Unwilling Journey: Human Traffic in the Viking World,” follows the stories of Viking captives taken from western Europe, trafficked through northern Europe, and sold into slave markets along the Abbāsid frontiers in Central Asia. Necklace beads — made in the east, traded through the north, and worn in the west — play an important role in this research. Delvaux is also a contributing member to “Textile Colours of the Viking Age,” a research project housed at the National Museum of Denmark and supported by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond.
Delvaux received his Ph.D. in history from Boston College, where he also taught world history as a visiting assistant professor. He then joined the Princeton Society of Fellows, where his courses examined such topics as the Western canon, early medieval craftwork, premodern ecotravel, and intersections between apocalypticism and worldviews. Delvaux completed an M.A. in history and a certificate in archaeology from the University of Florida, as well as a B.S. in history and foreign languages from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His research has been supported by the Medieval Academy of America and the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and his work appears in such venues as Medieval Europe and the Journal of Glass Studies.
Yizhou Huang, Theatre
Yizhou Huang is an assistant professor of theatre and specializes in theatre history and historiography, Chinese theatre, Asian American theatre, and global Asian performance. Her current book project, “Cosmopolitan Performance and Its Ecologies in Interwar Shanghai,” examines Shanghai’s vibrant theatre scene engendered by foreign settlers and the influences of these performances on native art forms in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to historical research, she follows contemporary Chinese performances closely and has published about them in both English and Chinese.
Before coming to Barnard, Huang taught at Tufts University, Florida State University, and Saint Louis University. As a scholar committed to global politics as well as local action, Huang has worked on several public humanities projects. From 2017 to 2018, she collaborated with scholars of community health and civic life on a research project about Pao Arts Center in Boston’s Chinatown, exploring the impact of gentrification on minority communities. With a Mellon Foundation sub-grant, Huang developed “Imagining a Post-Pandemic Global Asian Theatre” (2021-2022) at Florida State University. Addressing the anti-Asian hate that surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project featured in public-facing talks and workshops by Asian and Asian American artists.
Erica D. Musser, Psychology
Erica D. Musser is an assistant professor of psychology, and her research focuses on the nature and clinical presentation o fneurodevelopmental disabilities, with a focus on ADHD, autism, and related disabilities. As a licensed clinical psychologist, Musser is interested in improving understanding of these conditions to enhance assessment and diagnosis — as well as to develop more tailored and neuro-affirming care for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities.
Lucy Simko, Computer Science
Lucy Simko works at the intersection of computer security and human-computer interaction. She focuses on the computer security-related needs, practices, and experiences of underserved or marginalized populations. Simko’s research has been published at IEEE Security & Privacy, USENIX Security, Computer and Communications Security, Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, and Interaction Design and Children (IDC).
Simko will teach Usable Security and Privacy for Barnard’s Department of Computer Science this fall. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science and engineering in 2022 from the University of Washington and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at George Washington University.
Tiffany Tseng, Computer Science
Tiffany Tseng is an assistant professor of computer science and the director of the Design Tools Lab. Her research contributes design software that enables creative expression and knowledge sharing practices. The ultimate goal of her work is to empower a range of users, from young people to professional designers, to realize their creative potential using new technologies.
Before joining Barnard, Tseng was a research scientist at Apple and project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. She has developed design tools across creative domains including animation, machine learning, electronics prototyping, and 3D design, through both her research and her professional work as a product designer at companies, such as Autodesk and IDEO. She received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab in 2016, was sponsored by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and holds an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Lili Xia, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
Lili Xia is a scholar of premodern Chinese literature. Her broader research interests include cultural memory, antiquarianism and canonization, print and book culture, intermediality, and digital humanities. She is now working on her book project, titled “North Against South in Middle Period China: Classical Poetry and Literati Culture Under Jurchen Jin Rule (1115 1234).” By demonstrating a rival narrative of claiming China in the Sino-Jurchen North against the cultural orthodoxy conceptualized in the Han Chinese-ruled South, the book illustrates the burgeoning literati culture under Jurchen rule and fleshes out the Jin poetic production in particular. While making full use of Jin literary texts, this book is further enriched by art history and material culture, as well as digital tools of social network and geographic analysis to better represent Jin literati culture on the whole. Xia’s research aims to reveal the heterotopia and heteroglossia of China as an intersubjective, transcultural, and border-crossing space in the Middle Period (800– 1400 CE).
Before coming to Barnard, Xia received her B.A. and M.A. in classical Chinese literature from Fudan University and her Ph.D. in East Asian studies at Princeton University. She was the 2023-2024 Louis Frieberg Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Asian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Lecturers
Angela Paoletta, Chemistry
Angela Paoletta is a lecturer in the Chemistry Department and the general chemistry laboratory director. She teaches general chemistry and quantitative analysis. Paoletta has interests in chemical education, as well as antiracist and inclusive pedagogy.
As a trans individual, she is particularly inspired by queer and trans pedagogy and strives to make her classrooms and laboratories welcoming to all students. Prior to joining Barnard, Paoletta completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University in Latha Venkataraman’s group. Her graduate work looked at electroluminescence from gold nanogaps and single-molecule junctions. Paoletta attended Princeton University for undergraduate studies in chemistry.
Term Faculty
Noah Allison, Term Assistant Professor of Urban Studies
Noah Allison is a critical urban studies scholar whose transdisciplinary work explores metropolitan inequities and opportunities and the processes that cause them. He examines these dynamics by focusing on territories’ power structures, urban development, social politics, spatial contestations, and everyday life. His current book project explores the relationship between fear and city planning in two American migrant metropolises.
Prior to joining Barnard, Allison was a visiting urban studies faculty member at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Culinaria Research Centre and worked as an urban planner and architectural historian for nearly 10 years. He completed a B.A. in the history of architecture at UC Santa Barbara, a master’s in urban city planning at Cal Poly, an M.A. in gender and sexuality studies at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London, and a Ph.D. in urban and public policy at the New School.
Dale Booth, Term Assistant Professor of History
Dale Booth specializes in British social and cultural history from 1700 to 1920, with specific focus on the history of the body, queer and trans history, labor history, and the history of science. Prior to joining Barnard, they taught in the department of history and for the gender and sexuality studies program at Bryn Mawr College, as well as at Rutgers University. Booth teaches courses on queer and trans history, the history of witchcraft and magic, urban histories of Britain, and the history of Europe since the Renaissance.
Booth is working on their first book project, “Fluid Economies, Fluid Identities: Gender, Water, and Work in Britain, 1750-1918,” which brings together a social and economic history of women in the fishing industry with an inquiry into scientific discourses and popular understandings of sex, gender, and species.
Caroline Bowman, Term Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Caroline Bowman focuses on Kant, 19th-century German philosophy, and social and political philosophy. She is currently working on a monograph that investigates Hegel’s account of the relationship between the psychological and social components of freedom. Bowman also writes on related themes in contemporary debates about freedom and has published articles concerning the relationship between nature and freedom in the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. Her courses at Barnard include a first-year seminar on the politics of the family and History of Philosophy II: Aquinas to Kant. Before joining Barnard, Bowman was a postdoctoral lecturer at New York University, where she received her Ph.D. in philosophy. She completed a B.A. in philosophy at Claremont McKenna College.
Vincent FitzPatrick, Term Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Vince FitzPatrick is a computational biologist who studies gene expression. His research is concerned with the modeling of the structure and activity of promoters genome wide. Previously, FitzPatrick worked as a lecturer in the biological sciences department at Columbia University. He received his B.A. in biological sciences from Northwestern University and his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Columbia.
Meghan Hartman, Term Assistant Professor of Religion
Meghan Hartman is a scholar of South Asian religions, specializing in the literatures of Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic traditions spanning the 17th to the 20th century. She works in the linguistic realms of Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit, and Classical Arabic.
Hartman earned her doctorate in South Asian religions from the University of Virginia. Her current book project, “Immersive Environments: Mīrājī and the Experience of Lyric Worlds,” centers on Mīrājī (1912-1949), a gender-bending South Asian Muslim poet, Urdu literary critic, and translator. The central questions of the book ask: How does one enter a world completely and fully? What is that experience like? And why might these two questions be an important way to rethink political sovereignty in late colonial South Asia? Hartman’s working answer grows from Mīrājī’s approach to lyric poetry as an immersive virtual environment to experiment with forms of selfhood and gender expression — at times transforming his own identity as a Muslim man into the famous female Hindu poet Mirabai or the Buddha through performance. Hartman’s work demonstrates how Mīrājī forges a theory of South Asian lyric poetry based on premodern and early modern Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic traditions — and why this was politically salient at a time of hardening religious and linguistic identities in late colonial South Asia. Her articles on lyric poetry and imaginative praxis are found in the journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
At Barnard, Hartman teaches courses on South Asian religions and literature, lyric poetry, sexuality, and virtual reality. A directive that animates her research and teaching is how to foreground humane interpretive approaches to address structures of inequity. Hartman’s courses range from introductory lectures to upper-level seminars — such as Introduction to Hinduism and More Than Real: Dreams, Imagination, and Virtual Reality in South Asian Religions. Hartman also taught Religion Lab — a course leading majors through the history of the field, introducing methodologies to develop responsible research habits, and asking what questions humane scholarship should address.
Gina Jae, Term Assistant Professor of Anthropology
This fall, Gina Jae returns to Barnard’s Department of Anthropology, where she will teach and advise students in the major of medical anthropology. Her scholarly interests include the biopolitics of science and medicine, the role of affect and care in the production of scientific knowledge and clinical practice, the implications of introducing new technologies to stratified social systems, and the use of oral histories in ethnographic research. Jae’s clinical background is in internal medicine and pediatrics. Her completed monograph, The Anticipatory Politics of Sickle Cell Disease, was recently supported by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship. Jae’s current research is on the social life of hydroxyurea.
Andreina Torres Angarita, Term Assistant Professor of Urban Studies
Andreina Torres Angarita is a cultural anthropologist with an interest in urban studies, feminism, and Latin American/Latinx studies. Her book project focuses on the politics of welfare provision, via housing and grassroots activism during the Bolivarian period (1998-present) in Venezuela. From 2014 to 2017, Torres Angarita did ethnographic fieldwork in Caracas that looked at how working-class women’s leadership in housing movements shaped claims for land redistribution and struggles for social reproduction in a changing urban environment. Following on her dissertation research, Torres Angarita is eager to explore the historical pendular migration between Afro-Colombian rural towns and low-income neighborhoods in Caracas — and the growing Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. — with a specific interest in tracing family trajectories and transnational home and place-making strategies.
Torres Angarita has taught courses in urban anthropology, feminist anthropology, ethnographic methods, Latin American and Latinx studies with a focus on social movements, political economy, and feminist geographies. Prior to joining Barnard College, she was a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and a postdoctoral fellow at CUNY’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies. She received her B.A. in international development studies and art history from McGill University, an M.Sc. in gender and development studies from FLACSO Ecuador, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center.
Marjorie Castle, Term Associate Professor of Political Science
Marjorie Castle is a political scientist specializing in regime change — both democratization and democratic decline — and innovative teaching methods. Her regional expertise is in central Europe, with a focus on Poland. Her most recent publication is the forthcoming chapter on democratic consolidation in the Routledge Handbook on Polish Politics. Castle also co-edits the textbook Politics in Europe.
In recent years, Castle has incorporated American politics into her writing and courses on democratic backsliding and political violence. After teaching at the University of Utah, she will teach Media and Politics, Sovereignty and Democracy in the European Union, and Democracy’s Guardrails at Barnard. Castle completed an undergraduate degree at Austin College, an M.A. in international relations at Yale, and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford. She has also taught at the Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, Poland, and was on the founding staff of Newsweek Polska.
Andrew Chambers, Term Associate of Education
Andrew Chambers is a philosopher of education, with a focus on moral development, ethics, and epistemology. His dissertation provides an account of ethics that emphasizes the perception and articulation of moral meanings and considers the implications of that account for education. Chambers received a B.A. in English literature and secondary education from Wheaton College and his M.Ed. in specialized studies: statistics and philosophy from Harvard University. He is expected to defend his dissertation at Columbia University in 2025.
Mollie Dalton Hamilton, Term Lecturer of Psychology
Mollie Dalton Hamilton received a Ph.D. in psychology from the brain and developmental sciences department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has an M.A. in French studies from New York University — where she investigated how access to language influences access to power and space in postcolonial contexts — and an M.A. from École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, where she studied bilingualism in infants.
In addition to language, Hamilton is interested in how infants and young children use memory to solve problems. Hamilton is a proud member of a federally recognized tribe, the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut. There are no living speakers of the Mohegan language, and so her fascination with languages began when she delved into understanding the death of the Mohegan language and how protecting language is essential to cultural identity and the preservation of culture itself.
At Barnard, Hamilton teaches Language Development and a Developmental Psychology Lab. Prior to joining Barnard, she was a scholar in residence at Emerson College and taught introduction to psychology, abnormal psychology, music language, and the brain and multilingualism. Before deciding to be a scientist, Hamilton dreamed of becoming an opera singer; she holds a bachelor’s of music in vocal performance from Ithaca College. In addition to singing, Hamilton enjoys cooking, trying new foods, traveling, learning languages, reading and writing poetry, and swimming.
Svetlana Komissarouk, Term Lecturer of Psychology
Svetlana Komissarouk is a social psychology scholar who bridges research and group therapy practice. She explores the dynamics of helping interactions and how they vary across cultural and motivational contexts. Komissarouk’s bestselling book, Sandwich Generation, on intergenerational relationships, draws on her empirical research to provide practical insights into (mis)communication within modern families. A well-known popularizer of psychology, Komissarouk frequently appears in media and lectures worldwide. Before joining Barnard, she taught at Columbia University, starting in 2015. She holds an M.A. in mathematics from Donetsk University and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Tel Aviv University.
Isabelle Portelinha, Term Lecturer of Psychology
Isabelle Portelinha is a social psychology scholar of political behavior and social change, with a focus on identity and normative beliefs. Her forthcoming book, Positive Imaginaries for a Pro-Environmental Practice, explores the socio-psychological processes shaping social representations and behavior related to climate change. Portelinha’s current research investigates the effects of identity beliefs on the experiences of multicultural individuals and examines the shaping of subjectivity. She teaches a variety of courses: Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, the Social Self, and Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice.
Prior to joining Barnard, Portelinha was a faculty member at the London School of Economics, Raritan Valley Community College, and New York University. She received her B.A. in social sciences, an M.A. in social and organizational psychology, and a Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from the University of Paris Nanterre.
Term Associates
Kurt Semm, Term Associate Professor of Economics
Kurt Semm is an ecological economist with expertise in natural resources, political economy, game theory, and economic history and thought. He is a senior economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and received his Ph.D. from the New School in 2024. His research analyzes the complex relationship between economic growth and water management. Through the political economy theory of rents, Semm’s analysis incorporates social and cultural specificity into water analysis. Traditional economic methods for water–marginal pricing and game theoretic models cannot capture the institutional, historical, and cultural nuances implicit in managing water. Semm’s work has significant practical implications, as he argues that water security is a hydrological or geological issue and a social relation between communities and water management institutions. This unique perspective — which offers greater explanatory power than traditional methods — equips economists to advise policymakers and government officials more effectively in designing and implementing water management policies.
Semm’s current research pertains to water usage in semiconductor factories (FABS) in arid climates, a comparison of the game theoretic methodology between James M. Buchanan and Elinor Ostrom, further developing his theoretical contributions to rent theory in the political-economy tradition.
Dominic Walker, Term Associate of Sociology
Dominic Walker’s research is motivated by questions at the nexus of racism, identity, neoliberalism and the cultural politics of education in the United States. In education specifically, he studies how education spaces construct narratives of racial progress while maintaining the race and class order. His dissertation, In Transition: A Study of Youth of Color in Transitional School Programs, is an ethnography of transitional school programs (TSPs), non-profit organizations that recruit poor and working-class youth of color and prepare them to transition from mostly public schools in urban communities to elite, mostly private schools. He investigates how working class youth of color recruited by TSPs move across race, class, and space for upward social mobility, and how those experiences influence how they see themselves and the communities they come from. He also investigates how TSPs navigate the conflicting interest of promoting social change while relying on old sources of inequality like elite schools. His first article from that project, titled, “The Terms of Inclusion: Transitional School Programs in a Racialized Organizational Field” has been accepted for publication at the journal, Sociology of Education.
Barnard is also excited to welcome these additional faculty members to the community:
- Niamh Duggan, Term Lecturer of French
- Mulu Gebreyohannes, Term Associate Professor of Economics
- Cristian Ivanov, Term Associate Professor of Mathematics
- Jonathan Keller, Term Associate Professor of Political Science
- Angelika Seidel, Term Lecturer of Psychology
- Aqil Shah, Term Associate Professor of Political Science
- Jennifer Trowbridge, Term Assistant Professor of Human Rights
