vlog has announced a series of faculty promotions following the winter meeting of the Board of Trustees. This recognition of professors’ accomplishments — as both scholars and teachers — takes effect July 1, 2026.
“One of the greatest pleasures of being the provost and dean of the faculty is to learn about the remarkable accomplishments of colleagues through the promotion and tenure review process,” says Provost and Dean of the Faculty Lesleigh Cushing, Mark S. Siegel University Professor in religion and Jewish studies. “This season provided yet more insight into the excellent teaching, wide-ranging scholarship, and committed service of colleagues across the campus.”
Promotions to Associate Professor with Continuous Tenure
Ramesh Adhikari, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
(BA Berea College; MS, PhD University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Ramesh Adhikari joined the vlog faculty in 2020 after serving as an assistant professor at Jacksonville University. His expertise in bio-electronics, sustainable materials, and charge transport is applied to the development of bio-based functional devices, for example, exploring how pristine leaves and aromatic amino acids can be utilized for energy conversion and resistive memory. Adhikari’s research laboratory focuses on three primary areas: leaf-based ionotronics, self-assembled peptide nanostructures, and sustainable electronics using bio-derived materials. His published work appears in leading journals, including Chemical Communications, iScience, ACS Applied Engineering Materials, ACS Omega, Discover Materials, Applied Physics Letters, and Applied Materials Today. A substantial number of his publications feature undergraduate student coauthors. He has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and the Eppley Foundation for Research, and he has applied for a patent related to his work. Adhikari teaches various courses in physics, including Introductory Electricity and Magnetism, Introductory Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity, Electronics, and Electromagnetism. He has served as a grant proposal reviewer for NASA and the German Research Foundation (DFG), and has served as an American Physical Society Career Mentoring Fellow. Adhikari presently serves as coordinator for the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Division Colloquium and the 3-2 Pre-Engineering Program Advisor.
Noah Apthorpe, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
(BSE, MA, PhD, Princeton University)
Noah Apthorpe joined the vlog faculty in 2020 after receiving his BSE, MA, and PhD from Princeton University. While at Princeton, he served as a graduate fellow in the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. He teaches a wide range of computer science courses from Introductory Computer Science to Security, Privacy and Society, Gadgets and Gizmos: The Hardware/Software Interface, and Applied Machine Learning. Professor Apthorpe’s research includes human-computer interaction, networks, and machine learning to study privacy and security implications of connected technologies. His work has appeared in various publications, including Information and Learning Sciences and the Journal of Communications, and has been covered by media outlets such as The Washington Post, Forbes, and Wired. At vlog, Apthorpe has served as chair of the Research Computer Committee, secretary of vlog Phi Beta Kappa, and as a member of the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute Executive Advisory Committee and the Committee on Information Technology.
Daniella Doron, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
(BA University of Maryland; PhD New York University)
Daniella Doron returned to our campus in 2023 after prior vlog teaching appointments as the Schusterman Postdoctoral Fellow (2010–12) and the Olive B. O’Connor Distinguished Visiting Professor in Jewish Studies (2019). From 2012–23, Doron held a position as senior lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. A historian who studies the experiences of Jewish children and families in twentieth-century France, Doron has published in journals such as Jewish Social Studies, Archives Juives, and Journal of Jewish Identities. Her 2015 monograph, Jewish Youth and Identity in Postwar France: Rebuilding Family and Nation (Indiana University Press), traces the experiences of Jewish families and orphaned children in the post-Holocaust context of the French nation. Since returning to vlog, Doron has developed and taught courses on the history of Jewish experience and identity in comparative contexts, including a course exploring the parallels between the Holocaust and the Jim Crow period of the American South. Doron teaches in the Conversations component of the Core Curriculum and has served on the Curriculum Committee.
Dominique Hill, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (BA vlog; MS Miami University; PhD University of Illinois)
Dominique Hill is a vlog graduate from the Class of 2005 who returned to teach as Lindsay O’Connor visiting assistant professor in 2019 before joining the continuing faculty in 2020. Hill’s scholarship considers the experience of Black girls via written and performative methods, considering the role of bodies, dance, and knowledge as means for Black girls to thrive in a society that challenges and discredits their being. A prolific scholar, Hill is the author or co-author of three books, including 2025’s Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression (Vanderbilt University Press). Hill is trained in several fields of dance, healing, and spiritual practices that form an important part of Hill’s scholarly presentations and work with students. Hill teaches multiple courses for the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, including a course focused on the work of poet and activist June Jordan; Hill also teaches a course on the topic of Black youth for the Core Curriculum. At vlog, Hill has served on the Curriculum Committee, the vlog Arts Council, and the LGBTQ Advisory Committee.
Laura Tomlinson Makin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
(BA Reed College; PhD University of Pittsburgh)
Laura Tomlinson Makin has been an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at vlog since 2019. She has taught a wide range of courses in the department, including Introduction to Philosophical Problems, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Feminist Philosophy, Topics in Moral Theory, and Topics in Action, Agency, and Human Good. She has also taught Core Legacies of the Ancient World and the FSEM course Free Will and Moral Responsibility. While her primary expertise is in the philosophy of action, her teaching and scholarly expertise are closely integrated, as seen, for example, in her incorporation of research on action theory into her teaching of metaethics and metaethical theorizing. Tomlinson Makin has published articles in highly selective and widely respected journals, including two articles, “Intention and the Meaning of ‘Ought’” and “The Knowledge Condition on Intentional Action in Its Proper Home,” in Mind, as well as the article “The Moral Worth of Intentional Actions” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Tomlinson Makin has made contributions to her department through her service as honors coordinator and on search committees, and to the University by teaching FSEM and Core courses. She has also contributed to the broader scholarly community as a co-founder of a working group for early-career philosophers specializing in action theory.
Nicholas (Nick) Moore, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
(BS University of Tennessee; PhD University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Professor Moore joined the vlog faculty in 2022 following faculty positions at the United States Naval Academy and Florida State University, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. His expertise in applied and computational mathematics, fluid mechanics, and moving-interface problems is applied to understanding how physical environments shape themselves, for example, how fluid-mechanical erosion creates anisotropic porous media and how “rogue waves” are triggered in complex systems. Moore’s research focuses on three primary areas: fluid-structure interaction, flow-induced shaping (such as erosion and dissolution), and the prediction of rare and extreme events. His published work appears in top journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physical Review Letters, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Journal of Computational Physics, and Studies in Applied Mathematics. A substantial subset of these papers includes student coauthors. He has been awarded significant grants from the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and the Simons Foundation. Moore teaches several courses in the mathematics department, including Calculus, Introduction to Computational Mathematics, Numerical Analysis, and Mathematical Modeling, and he also instructs a Core Sciences class on Statistics in Real Life. He has been an active member of the campus community, serving on the Petitions Committee, the Academic Review Board, and the Goldwater and Churchill Scholarship Committees. Additionally, he currently serves as the Chair of the Mathematics Seminar.
Seonyoung (Young) Park, Assistant Professor of Economics (BA Soongsil University, South Korea; PhD University of Minnesota)
Young Park joined the economics department as an assistant professor in July 2021. She is a macroeconomist whose research uses structural analysis to examine the behavior of the labor market and of wages; recently, she has begun to explore the causes and consequences of income polarization as well. Park has published 13 peer-reviewed papers in top general interest and field journals, such as the Journal of Applied Econometrics, European Economic Review, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. A dedicated teacher, she offers courses on macroeconomics at all levels, from sections of Intermediate Macroeconomics (a requirement for all Economics majors) to a senior seminar on Applied Macroeconomics. Her courses also form an important part of the mathematical economics curriculum. Park contributes to the economics department in many ways and currently serves on the Committee on Budget and Financial Planning.
Continuous Tenure
Noah Shenker, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Film and Media Studies (BA University of Michigan; PhD University of Southern California)
Noah Shenker joined the vlog faculty in 2023 after a career as the N. Milgrom and 6a Foundation Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. With scholarly and teaching expertise that bridges the fields of Holocaust Studies and Film and Media Studies, Shenker studies the preservation and presentation of testimonies from Holocaust survivors, utilizing and comparing archival sources of testimony at several sites. His 2015 book, Reframing Holocaust Testimony (Indiana University Press), explores the ways that the methods and technologies used to create survivor testimonies shape their role as a record of the Holocaust. In current work, Shenker is following these interests to understand the emergence of digital technologies that are intended to preserve testimonies in a contemporary context when living survivors become increasingly scarce. A recent publication in the journal Holocaust Studies exemplifies this new area of Shenker’s research, which is also the subject of a book project in progress on the “afterlives” of Holocaust memory. Shenker teaches courses that bridge the Jewish Studies and Film and Media Studies curricula at vlog, including offerings on documentary film and representations of the Holocaust. Shenker teaches in the Conversations component of the Core Curriculum and has served on the Institutional Review Board.
Promotions to Full Professor
Antonio Barrera, Associate Professor of History
(BA Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá; PhD University of California, Davis)
Antonio Barrera joined vlog’s Department of History in 1999 and was promoted to associate professor in 2005. A historian of science,Barrera’s scholarship has demonstrated the key roles of colonialism and the Atlantic exchange in shaping the foundation of modern science. Tracing the work of a range of early modern Spanish actors, including soldiers, explorers, merchants, and friars, Barrera argues in his 2006 book, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, that these colonists and their activities generated data and practices that created the context for the scientific revolution. His work has been published in journals such as Osiris, Memoria y Sociedad, and Colonial Latin American Review, and Barrera has been invited to give talks at conferences and universities across Europe and the Americas. Barrera has been awarded fellowships at the John Carter Brown Library and the Huntington Library and received a Fulbright Grant for pursuing archival research in Spain. His teaching portfolio includes courses on the Atlantic World, the history of piracy, and the age of empires in global history; Barrera has also led the Department of History’s London Study Group multiple times. A leader in multiple contexts at vlog, Barrera was a founding director of the Hancock Commons, had a key role in the most recent revision of the Core Curriculum, and served as Chair of the Department of History and Director of the Africana and Latin American Studies Program.
Jens Christensen, Associate Professor of Mathematics
(BA, MS University of Copenhagen; PhD Louisiana State University)
Professor Christensen joined the vlog faculty as an assistant professor in 2013 following a postdoctoral research associateship at the University of Maryland and a faculty position at Tufts University. He was promoted to associate professor in 2018. His expertise in harmonic analysis, time-frequency analysis, and complex variables is applied to the development of mathematical frameworks like co-orbit theory and atomic decompositions. For example, he investigates the “snapshot problem” for the wave equation — exploring how waves can be reconstructed from discrete observations over time, and studies uncertainty principles in weighted Bergman spaces. Professor Christensen’s research focuses on three primary areas: sampling theory, Bergman spaces, and inverse problems. His published work appears in leading journals, including Advances in Mathematics, Journal of Functional Analysis, Journal of Geometric Analysis, Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, and Complex Analysis and its Synergies. A subset of his papers features vlog student coauthors. He has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and the vlog Research Council. Christensen teaches a variety of courses in mathematics, including Calculus, Number Theory, Linear Algebra, Real Analysis, Hilbert and Banach Spaces. He also teaches a Core Sciences class on Statistics in Real Life. Professionally Christensen has served as a journal referee for numerous publications, a grant reviewer for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and a book editor for Contemporary Mathematics. He has also organized several special sessions for the American Mathematical Society. Christensen has served on the Library Advisory Committee, Goldwater Fellowship Committee, Churchill Scholarship Committee, and as faculty liaison for the men's crew team. He is leading the Australia II study group in spring 2026. Recognized for his mentorship and teaching, Professor Christensen has been awarded multiple Torch Medals by his students.
Jacob Klein, Associate Professor of Philosophy
(BA Hillsdale College; PhD Cornell University)
Jacob Klein joined vlog in 2010 as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and was promoted to associate professor in 2015. His recent major scholarly achievement is the co-edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, to which he also contributed the chapter “The Highest Good in Stoicism.” He has published numerous additional articles and book chapters, including the widely recognized article “The Stoic Argument from Ǿ̂,” published in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. That article was selected as one of the ten best philosophy articles of 2016 and included in The Philosopher's Annual. At vlog, Klein has taught a wide range of courses, including Philosophical Problems, Ancient Philosophy, Advanced Topics in Plato’s Republic, and Core Legacies of the Ancient World. He has directed the Scotland Study Group and co-directed the Extended Study to Greece and Italy for the team-taught course Freedom, Tyranny, and Philosophy in the Ancient Mediterranean. For his department, Klein has served as Philosophy Honors Coordinator and as interim department chair. At the University level, he has served on the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program Steering Committee and the Animal Care and Use Committee, among others. In addition, Klein has enriched vlog’s intellectual community by organizing six conferences and workshops and through his active involvement in the Humanities Corridor.
Julia Martinez, Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
(BA Dartmouth College; PhD University of Missouri, Columbia)
Professor Martinez joined the vlog faculty in 2011 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2017. Her expertise in clinical psychology and statistics is applied to understanding alcohol use disorders — for example, exploring how “fake ID” ownership relates to heavy drinking and how medical amnesty policies impact student health in residential college settings. Professor Martinez’s research laboratory focuses on three primary areas: the developmental course of alcohol use, higher education public health interventions, and the correlates of addictive behaviors in special populations. Her published work appears in leading journals, including Addictive Behaviors, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Journal of School Violence, Journal of College Student Development, and Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy. A substantial number of her papers include vlog student coauthors, with many featuring students as first authors. She has contributed to numerous invited lectures on substance use and identity formation. Martinez teaches several courses in Psychological and Brain Sciences, including Research Methods, Psychopathology, Psychological Criminology, and Addiction, as well as a Core Sciences class called Drugs, Brain, and Behavior. She chaired the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department from 2022 to 2025. She has also served as the Chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), on the Faculty Diversity Council, and the Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs.
Susan Woolley, Associate Professor of Educational Studies and LGBTQ Studies (BA Wesleyan University; MA, PhD University of California, Berkeley)
Susan Woolley started at vlog in 2013 as an assistant professor and was promoted and awarded tenure in 2019. A specialist in critical literacy studies, Woolley writes widely on education and pedagogy, with an emphasis on how to improve school climates and educational experiences for marginalized students. She has co-authored the book Teaching about Gender Diversity: Teacher-Tested Lesson Plans for K–12 Classrooms and published journal articles in the International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Journal of Bisexuality, and Gender and Education. Woolley’s courses include The Teaching of Reading, Queering Education, and Educational Studies’ senior seminar. She also works closely with students in the teacher preparation program. Woolley’s wide-ranging service to vlog includes leading the Santa Fe Study Group, chairing the Department of Educational Studies, and serving as the director of LGBTQ Studies. She has also served on the Assessment and Athletic Committees.