Past Harrington Faculty Fellows

Charisse Barron 22-23 Faculty Fellow

Charisse Barron

Harvard University
UT Dept Host – Butler School of Music
Fellowship Awarded: 2022

Professor Barron’s research, writing, and presentations have explored a range of topics in African American music, religion, and culture. Her current book project The Platinum Age of Gospel centers on contemporary gospel music and illuminates the marked shifts away from previous eras of gospel performance and culture which have defined the last thirty years of the genre.

Aria Halliday 22-23 Faculty Fellow

Aria Halliday

University of Kentucky
UT Dept Host – Center for Women’s and Gender Studies
Fellowship Awarded: 2022

Professor Halliday’s research explores cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She examines the ideological overlaps between girlhood, Black feminism, hip-hop, and performance in the United States and the Caribbean. More broadly, she is interested in how popular culture informs our personal beliefs about culture, identity, social status, and desire.

Zachary Levenson 22-23 Faculty Fellow

Zachary Levenson

University of North Carolina, Greensboro
UT Dept Host – Sociology
Fellowship Awarded: 2022

Professor Levenson’s research considers the relationship between racism and economic development in the United States and South Africa, both ethnographically and historically. His current book project considers how the concept of racial capitalism emerged from social struggles in both national contexts, leading to divergent theoretical traditions in the process. He also works on the politics of housing and eviction in South African cities after apartheid, the subject of his first book.

Dominique Baker

Dominique Baker

Southern Methodist University
UT Dept Host – Educational Leadership and Policy
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Baker’s research focuses on the way that education policy affects and shapes the access and success of minoritized students in higher education. She primarily investigates student financial aid, affirmative action and admissions policies, and policies that influence the ability to create an inclusive & equitable campus climate. Currently, she is conducting research focused on the relationship between community college district boundaries, gerrymandering, and racial segregation, state course-taking policies and student loan accumulation, and equity in state funding of higher education.

Amira Rose Davis

Amira Rose Davis

Penn State
UT Dept Host – African and African Diaspora Studies
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Amira Rose Davis’s research uses archival research, oral history, and interdisciplinary methodologies to examine the intersection race, gender, sports and politics. Her current book project, “Can’t Eat a Medal”: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow, explores the long and oft overlooked history of Black women in sport while analyzing the various impacts and contested meanings of their athletic labor, political engagement and symbolic burden.

Maegan Fairchild

Maegan Fairchild

University of Michigan
UT Dept Host – Philosophy
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Fairchild’s primary interests are in metaphysics and philosophical logic. Her recent work focuses on varieties of ontological permissivism (like material plenitude, the view that there is a multitude of coincident objects wherever there is any material object) and the role of anti-arbitrariness in theory choice. More broadly, she’s interested in the ways that taking weird, radical, or revisionary views seriously can help us better understand the place of ontology in human inquiry.

Justin Lavner

Justin Lavner

University of Georgia
UT Dept Host – Human Development and Family Sciences
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Lavner’s research aims to understand and improve family health and well-being, particularly among underserved and marginalized populations. His current work tests the effectiveness of a responsive parenting intervention for first-time African American mothers and their newborn infants.

Anne Meng

Anne Meng

University of Virginia
UT Dept Host – Government
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Anne Meng’s research centers on authoritarian politics, institutions, and elite power sharing. Her book, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2020), examines how executive constraints become established in dictatorships, particularly within constitutions and presidential cabinets. Her current book project focuses on autocratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement in non-democracies. She has also published articles on authoritarian ruling parties, opposition cooptation, term limit evasion, and leadership succession.

Maksym Radziwill

Maksym Radziwill

California Institute of Technology
UT Dept Host – Math
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Radziwill's specialty in mathematics is number theory. He uses tools from analysis, probability theory and spectral theory to answer questions about the integers, or more generally mathematical questions that involve discrete structures.

Rachel Wang

Rachel Wang

University of Sydney
UT Dept Host – Statistics and Data Sciences
Fellowship Awarded: 2021

Professor Wang's research centers around statistical network inference, statistical machine learning, and their applications in data-rich scientific domains. On the network modeling front, she develops statistical theory and scalable methods for handling network-structured data from genomics and social science, with examples including gene networks and social networks. Her current interest in machine learning lies in developing computational tools for large-scale single-cell data from genomics to address important questions in cell type identification and gene regulatory mechanisms.

Erin Hartman

Erin Hartman

Current Institution - University of California-Los Angeles
UT Dept Host - Information, Risk, and Operations Management, McCombs School of Business
Fellowship awarded: 2020

Professor Hartman's research sits at the intersection of statistics and the social sciences, with an emphasis on answering causal questions. Currently she is working on methods for increasing the external validity of experimental findings to help researchers and policy makers understand the impact of treatments outside of the experimental setting.

Jonathan Howard

Jonathan-David Howard

Boston College
UT Dept Host – English
Fellowship awarded: 2020

Professor Jonathan Howard’s research places the literary and intellectual traditions of the African Diaspora in conversation with the environmental humanities, calling attention to black expressive culture as a crucial site of environmental thought and practice. His current book project, Inhabitants of the Deep: Water and the Material Imagination of Blackness, undertakes a black ecocritical study of the trope of water in African Diaspora literature, which illuminates the abiding relationship between blackness and the aquatic. Ultimately, it argues that blackness as it dawned in the oceanic encounter of Middle Passage represents a global species event, which harbors a blue and ecologically salutary recalibration of human life on a watery planet.

Casey Pierce

Casey Pierce

University of Michigan
UT Austin Host: School of Information
Fellowship awarded: 2019

Professor Pierce’s research examines the changing nature of work as it relates to information technology, policy and knowledge sharing in organizations. Currently, she is studying how telehealth platforms and policies in mental healthcare impact therapists' clinical work and professional identity. This research addresses implications concerning how digital platforms shape new models of patient care.

Bryan Parkhurst

Bryan Parkhurst

Oberlin College and Conservatory
UT Austin Host: Butler School of Music
Fellowship awarded: 2019

Professor Parkhurst’s main intellectual concern is the economic basis of music-making to gain a better understanding of how the historical life-cycles of economic regimes (“modes of production”) influence the way music sounds, the way it is produced and consumed, and the way people think and talk about it.

Michael Schneiders

Michael Schneiders

University of Iowa
UT Austin Host: Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fellowship awarded: 2019

Prof. Schnieders research focuses on making fundamental contributions to computational biomolecular engineering, which is used to understand how the protein and nucleic acid building blocks of cells function and interact with drugs.

Moran Bercovici

Moran Bercovici

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
UT Austin host: Department of Mechanical Engineering
Fellowship awarded: 2018

The unique physics of fluids at the microscale holds both challenges in the understating of basic physical phenomena and opportunities in leveraging these phenomena toward new technologies. Professor Bercovici's research combines experimental, analytical, and computational tools to study microfluidic problems characterized by coupling between fluid mechanics, heat transfer, electric fields, chemical reactions, and biological processes. His current research focuses on engineering electro-viscous-elastic interactions, thermocapillary flows, and superhydrophobic surfaces to create new technologies for microscale flow control, adaptive optics, 3D printing, biosensing, and single cell analysis.

Lailea Noel

Lailea Noel

New York University
UT Austin host: Steve Hicks School of Social Work
Fellowship awarded: 2018

Professor Noel’s research investigates the social and economic conditions that contribute to lower cancer treatment utilization and higher mortality rates in marginalized communities, particularly communities of color, and communities within residentially segregated urban and rural neighborhoods. She has a passion for conducting community-based participatory research and has a wealth of experience engaging communities, social scientists and medical professionals in such research partnerships. As a Harrington Fellow, she will participate in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work’s ongoing collaboration with the Dell Medical School LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes in an effort to decrease barriers to the timely initiation of cancer care.

Stephanie Jones-Rogers

Stephanie Jones-Rogers

University of California-Berkeley
UT Austin host: Department of History
Fellowship awarded: 2018

Professor Jones-Rogers’s research focuses primarily upon gender and American slavery, but she is equally fascinated with colonial and 19th century legal and economic history, especially as it pertains to women, systems of bondage, and the domestic slave trade. She is currently working on her second book project which explores the ways white women used nineteenth century property laws to invest in the expansion of slavery into the West.

Flores, René

René Flores

University of Washington
Fellowship awarded: 2017
UT Austin host: Department of Sociology

Professor Flores investigates patterns of immigrant adaptation as well as the effect of political factors on public attitudes towards immigrants in the United States. As a Harrington Faculty Fellow, he will deploy a historical lens by using computational methodologies to assess changing attitudes towards immigrant groups in public texts during the past century.

Wilkerson, Justin

Justin Wilkerson

The University of Texas at San Antonio
Fellowship awarded: 2017
UT Austin host: Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

Professor Wilkerson’s research and teaching interests lie at the interface of engineering mechanics, material science, and physics. His research is focused on multiscale modeling and fundamental experiments that shed light on the nature of the mechanical behavior of materials subject to the kinds of extreme conditions generated in armor and defense applications, nuclear reactors, hypersonic aircraft, rocket motors, as well as the cores and surfaces of planets and asteroids.

Samuel Bray

Samuel Bray

Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Fellowship awarded: 2016
UT Austin host: School of Law

Professor Bray's research will explore the topic of remedies in American law. A remedy is what the court gives to the winner in litigation. In particular his research will explore the remedies that were first developed in the English Court of Chancery and are regularly used today by courts in the United States, called equitable remedies. His specific topics of research will include the theory and origins of the national injunction, the use of equitable remedies in the federal courts of the early Republic, and contemporary law's reception of traditional equity as a form of translation.

Jeffrey Clemens

Jeffrey Clemens

Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California San Diego
Fellowship awarded: 2016
UT Austin host: Department of Economics

Professor Clemens researches a variety of issues relating to U.S. health care policy and the U.S. labor market. He has examined the federal Medicare program’s effects on the health care physicians provide to the elderly, on the development of new medical technologies, and on the payment models used by private health insurers. His research on the U.S. labor market has focused on the effects of recent minimum wage increases on employment opportunities for individuals with low levels of experience and education.

Charlie Laderman

Charlie Laderman

Research Fellow, Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge
Fellowship awarded: 2016
UT Austin host: LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Clements Center

Professor Laderman’s research focuses on 19th and 20th century international history, embracing a number of themes including the political development and foreign relations of the United States and Great Britain, the formation of the post-Ottoman Middle East and the development of ideas on humanitarianism, global governance and statecraft.

Kelly Rader

Kelly Rader

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Fellowship awarded: 2016
UT Austin host: Department of Government

Professor Rader's research focuses on the politics of decision-making in the federal judicial system. She is currently working on a series of papers about the spread and resolution of conflicts in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

Ralf Bader

Ralf Bader

Philosophy
Oxford University
Fellowship awarded: 2015
UT Austin Host: Department of Philosophy

Professor Bader's research focuses on ethics, metaphysics and Kant scholarship. He is currently working on monographs on population ethics, developing a person-affecting approach that is impartial without being impersonal, as well on the metaphysics of value, examining the different ways in which values can interact and vary across contexts.

Ratsko Jakovljevic

Rastko S. Jakovljevic

Ethnomusicology
Institute of Musicology, Serbian Arts and Sciences Academy
Fellowship awarded: 2015
UT Austin Host: Butler School of Music

Dr. Jakovljevic's research is primarily focused on traditional music of the Balkans, anthropology of music, culture studies, critical theory, popular music and applied ethnomusicology.

Ioulia Kovelman

Ioulia Kovelman

Psychology
University of Michigan
Fellowship awarded: 2015
UT Austin Host: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Professor Kovelman's research focuses on bilingual language and reading acquisition in young children. She is especially interested in how bilingual exposure to different types of languages affects both the language ability and the neural architecture for learning to speak and to read.

Herrera, Brian

Brian Herrera

Theatre
Princeton University
Fellowship awarded: 2014
UT Austin host: Department of Theatre and Dance

Professor Herrera examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through U.S. popular performance. He is particularly interested in how the labor of performers moves among industries, disciplines, and media in ways that document not only the general importance of performance within American life, but also the particular work that performers are asked to do in times of cultural, demographic, and political upheaval.

Jagoda, Patrick

Patrick Jagoda

English
University of Chicago
Fellowship awarded: 2014
UT Austin Host: Department of American Studies

Professor Jagoda’s research focuses on the ways that novels, films, television series, and digital media aestheticize networks, as metaphors and material systems, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His other work explores experimental videogames, transmedia storytelling, and the nature of play in contemporary American life. Alongside his traditional scholarship, Jagoda collaborates on a number of practice-based research projects from board games to alternate reality games about social and emotional health.

Collard-Wexler, Allan

Allan Collard-Wexler

Industrial Economics
New York University
Fellowship awarded: 2013
UT Austin host: Department of Economics

Professor Collard-Wexler uses computational models and data to investigate the dynamic behavior of industries. Many industries are characterized by fast changing market conditions and technologies. This uncertainty has pervasive effects on a firm's optimal investment and shutdown strategies, and makes the dynamic analysis of industries depart significantly from a static one. His current work investigates the role of reallocation and selection, via the move from the vertically integrated technology to mini-mills, in explaining aggregate productivity growth in the American Steel industry.

Harmansah, Umar

Ömür Harmanşah

Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
Brown University
Fellowship awarded: 2013
UT Austin hosts: Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Religious Studies

Professor Harmanşah’s research examines the art, archaeology, and material culture of the ancient Near East. He has written extensively on cities, urban space, and social memory, especially during the Bronze and Iron Ages in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia. His current work focuses on theories of place and landscape, while he investigates the cultural meanings of springs, caves, and such geological features from antiquity to early modernity.

Minian, Ana

Ana Minian

History of Undocumented Migration
Stanford University
Fellowship awarded: 2013
UT Austin: Center for Mexican-American Studies

Professor Minian studies the late twentieth-century history of Mexican undocumented migration to the United States, the growth of migrant communities, and bi-national efforts to regulate the border. Her current research employs a transnational lens to investigate how Mexican migrants, Chicana/o organizations, nativist lobbies, and U. S. and Mexican officials reshaped national belonging by redefining the meanings of immigration.

Telesca, Donatello

Donatello Telesca

Donatello Telesca
Statistics and Biostatistics
University of California - Los Angeles
Fellowship awarded: 2013
UT Austin Host: Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation

Professor Telesca's primary research focus is on multivariate statistical methods with applications ranging from nanoscience to criminology. His current projects include theoretical and computational work for fast-learning model determination procedures and robust Bayesian inference in functional data analysis.

Webber, Michael

Michael E. Webber

Energy and Environmental Technology and Policy
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2013
UT Austin host: Department of Mechanical Engineering

As Deputy Director of the Energy Institute, Co-Director of the Clean Energy Incubator, Josey Centennial Fellow in Energy Resources, and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Michael E. Webber trains the next generation of energy leaders at The University of Texas at Austin and conducts research on energy and environmental topics. He has gained public attention for national syndication of his television special on PBS and the global launch of his capstone class “Energy Technology and Policy” as a massive open online course.

Deo, Ashwini

Ashwini Deo

Semantic Change and Grammaticalization
Yale University
Fellowship awarded: 2012
UT Austin host: Department of Linguistics

Professor Deo's research examines cross-linguistically observed systematic patterns of variation and change in linguistic meanings with the goal of understanding the linguistic and cognitive underpinnings of such patterns. Her empirical focus is on the languages of the Indo-Aryan family -- both ancient and modern.

Liedl, Petra

Petra Liedl

Technische Universität München
Architecture and the Interplay Among Climate, Building, and Humans
UT Austin host: School of Architecture
Fellowship awarded: 2012

Professor Liedl`s research is dedicated to promoting a deeper understanding of the interaction of climate, buildings, comfort, and energy through an interdisciplinary approach in teaching, research, and practice. Recent projects include the development of user-friendly planning tools for building in different climate zones.

Liu, David

David Liu

Cognitive Development
University of California - San Diego
UT Austin host: Department of Psychology
Fellowship awarded: 2012

Professor Liu investigates the developmental origins of children’s conceptual knowledge about other people. By combining psychological and neuroscientific methods, he examines how young children learn social concepts that allow them to better understand, predict, and explain the behaviors of others, and how brain development supports the acquisition of these social concepts.

McGaughey, Alan

Alan McGaughey

Nanoscale Energy Transport and Conversion
Carnegie Mellon University
UT Austin host: Department of Mechanical Engineering
Fellowship awarded: 2012

Professor McGaughey uses atomic-level computational tools to develop a fundamental understanding of how heat is generated and transported through materials and devices with sizes ranging from nanometers to millimeters. This work has application in electronics, optoelectronics, and solid-state lighting, where reducing heat loads and operating temperatures is critical for increasing device lifetime, efficiency, and reliability.

Rodriguez, Abel

Abel Rodriguez

Statistics and Decision Sciences
University of California - Santa Cruz
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics
Fellowship awarded: 2012

Professor Rodriguez develops novel statistical methodology for complex scientific problems. These methods have applications in a multitude of scientific fields, including biology, political sciences, public health, sociology, and finance. Rodriguez's emphasis is on flexible methodology that relaxes common, but restrictive, assumptions about the underlying data generation mechanisms. His current work focuses particularly in the development of statistical approaches to inference in network data.

TallBear, Kim

Kimberly M. TallBear

Cultural Studies of Science and Technology, Indigenous Studies
University of California - Berkeley
UT Austin host: Department of Anthropology
Fellowship awarded: 2012

Professor Kim TallBear studies how genomics is co-constituted with ideas of race and indigeneity. She is also producing an ethnography of indigenous bio-scientists, examining how they navigate different cultures of expertise and tradition, both scientific communities and tribal communities. In addition, TallBear is interested in the potential role of indigenous bio-scientists in the development of scientific governance within tribes.

Pierce, Lamar

Lamar Pierce

Organizational Strategy and Ethics
Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis
Fellowship awarded: 2011
UT Austin host: Department of Business, Government, and Society

Professor Pierce’s research focuses on the psychological and economic motivation for behavior that destroys economic value. He studies why we, as employees and citizens, act in ways we know to be destructive to the organizations and individuals around us, and what environmental, social, and financial factors bring us back into the fold of productive behavior.

Boustan, Raanan

Ra'anan Boustan

Early Judaism, Jewish-Christian Relations
University of California - Los Angeles
Fellowship awarded: 2011
UT Austin host: Department of Religious Studies

Professor Boustan is a historian of early Judaism trained in the study of ancient Mediterranean religions. His research focuses on Jewish literary and material culture in late antiquity (c. 200–800 CE), with special emphasis on how these sources shed light on the dynamic intersections between Judaism and other Mediterranean religious traditions—Greek, Roman, and Christian.

Khademhosseini, Ali

Ali Khademhosseini

Microfabricated Materials for Tissue Regeneration
Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School
Fellowship awarded: 2011
UT Austin host: Department of Biomedical Engineering

Professor Khademhosseini uses a multi-disciplinary approach to develop microscale and nanoscale technologies with the ultimate goal of generating tissue engineered organs and controlling cell behavior.

Ward, Rachel

Rachel Ward

Mathematical Signal Processing
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
Fellowship awarded: 2011
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics

Professor Ward applies theoretical tools from probability, harmonic analysis, and optimization to problems arising in signal processing. In particular, modern signal acquisition techniques achieve higher rates of compression than traditionally thought possible by allowing for a small probability of reconstruction error. She is interested in the algorithmic and information-theoretic limits of these techniques.

Bernstein, Robin

Robin Bernstein

Performance Studies and U.S. Culture
Harvard University
Fellowship awarded: 2010
UT Austin host: Department of Theatre and Dance

Professor Bernstein studies the relationship between performance and U.S. cultural history, with a focus on formations of race, gender, sexuality, and age. She is particularly interested in the ways in which material culture, in its historical context, shapes or "scripts" everyday behaviors while allowing for social improvisation and resistance.

Katherine Dunlop

Katherine Dunlop

Early Modern and Analytic Philosophy
Brown University
Fellowship awarded: 2010
UT Austin host: Department of Philosophy

Professor Dunlop’s published work concerns early modern views of mathematical knowledge, including those of Kant, Newton, and Berkeley. She has given particular consideration to the understanding of mathematics as a practice or activity, and to the philosophical significance of alternatives to Euclidean geometry. Her current research focuses on Kant’s theory of knowledge and its reception in twentieth-century analytic philosophy.

Kreager, Derek

Derek Kreager

Adolescent Social Development
Pennsylvania State University
Fellowship awarded: 2010
UT Austin host: Population Research Center in conjunction with the Department of Sociology

Professor Kreager researches adolescent social contexts and the intersection of peer networks with health-risk behaviors. His current research focuses on adolescent romantic relationships and their associations with peer friendships, sexual behaviors, and drug use. Dynamic network analysis informs his work and allows him to explore the emergence of mixed-gender relationships during the teenage years.

Meyers, Lauren

Lauren Ancel Meyers

Infectious Disease Dynamics
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2010
Faculty member in the Section of Integrative Biology

Professor Meyers is a mathematical biologist who develops new computational methods for studying the spread and control of infectious diseases in humans and wildlife. She is now working with public health agencies throughout the world, including the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to develop effective surveillance and intervention strategies for influenza.

Visan, Monica

Monica Vişan

Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations
UCLA
Fellowship awarded: 2010
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics

Professor Vişan applies methods of modern Harmonic Analysis in the context of Partial Differential Equations, specifically to nonlinear equations of wave motion such as arise in nonlinear optics, on the surface of fluids, in the evolution of Bose-Einstein condensates, and in weakly interacting many-particle quantum systems.

Watkins, Holly

Holly Watkins

Contemporary Musical Aesthetics
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Fellowship awarded: 2010
UT Austin host: Butler School of Music

Professor Watkins’s research focuses on musical aesthetics of the past two hundred years. She is currently completing a study of the central role of metaphor in music criticism and analysis. Her more recent work turns to the theme of aesthetic transport and music’s ability to convey a sense of space.

Mark Butler

Mark J. Butler

Music Theory
Northwestern University
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: Butler School of Music

Professor Butler is a music theorist who studies popular music. His current research, which is based on extensive fieldwork with internationally active DJs and laptop musicians based in Berlin, focuses on technologically mediated performance. By examining relationships between technology and improvisation, he reveals how electronic musicians create dynamic, novel performances through the transformation of seemingly “fixed” prerecorded objects.

Carlos M. Carvalho

Carlos M. Carvalho

Statistics
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: Department of Information, Risk and Operations Management

Professor Carvalho studies Bayesian statistical methodology in complex, high-dimensional problems with applications ranging from finance to genetics. His current projects include research on large-scale factor models for high-throughput biological data, dynamic risk modeling for stock selection, Bayesian model selection and sequential Monte Carlo algorithms.

David Enoch

David Enoch

Law and Philosophy
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: School of Law

Professor Enoch works primarily in moral, political, and legal philosophy. In moral philosophy, he defends a strongly realist view of morality, according to which there are perfectly objective, irreducibly normative moral truths. David is also very interested in pursuing the implications of such a metaethical view to political and legal theory, for instance in the context of democratic theory.

Alessio Figalli

Alessio Figalli

Mathematics
University of Nice, France
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics

Professor Figalli's research is focused on different areas, both in pure and applied mathematics: optimal transport, calculus of variations, partial differential equations (in particular of Monge-Ampère type), etc. These problems have many applications in economics, physics and biology.

Su Fang Ng

Su Fang Ng

English Literature
University of Oklahoma – Norman
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: Department of English

Professor Ng primarily studies the political, religious, and cultural contexts of early modern literature, with published work ranging from the late medieval to the postcolonial. She has worked on the ideological conflicts of the English civil wars, and now focuses on empire, the classical tradition, and Anglo-Islamic relations in a comparative study of early modern Britain and Southeast Asia.

Jason E. Powell

Jason E. Powell

English Literature
St. Joseph’s University
Fellowship awarded: 2009
UT Austin host: Department of English

Professor Powell’s research examines the relationship between literature, the court, and the government of Tudor England, with particular focus on poetry and letters in the reign of Henry VIII. He argues that the rhetorical conventions of official discourse—including diplomatic correspondence—influenced the generic conventions associated with emerging literary forms in the period.

Bethany L. Albertson

Bethany L. Albertson

Political Psychology
University of Washington, Seattle
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of Government

Professor Albertson’s work explores political attitudes and persuasion. Her current research relies on surveys and experiments to examine the effect of religious appeals in American politics and the relationship between emotion and cognition, with a recent focus on the role of anxiety on attitudes towards immigration.

Eiichiro Azuma

Eiichiro Azuma

History
University of Pennsylvania
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of History

Professor Azuma specializes in Asian American history with an emphasis on Japanese American experience, as well as migration, race and ethnicity, modern Japanese history, and U. S.-Japan relations. His current research attempts to question a nation-based analysis of history and a spatially compartmentalized way of learning by examining transpacific activities of Japanese migrants.

Lorne Campbell

Lorne Campbell

Psychology
University of Western Ontario, Canada
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of Human Development and Family Sciences

Professor Lorne Campbell is a recognized expert in the fields of interpersonal relationships, research design, and data analysis. His research focuses on the psychological processes responsible for relationship initiation, maintenance, and dissolution.

Matt D. Childs

Matt D. Childs

History
University of South Carolina
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of History

Professor Childs’ primary research and teaching interests include Latin American, Caribbean, and Atlantic history, with a special focus on the importance of understanding the historical legacies of slavery and racism in shaping the modern world. In particular, his published work and research has focused on Cuban slavery through a study of slave rebellions, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the growth of Havana as a city populated by enslaved African exiles.

Matt Cohen

Matt Cohen

English
Duke University
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of English

The relationship between media and meaning is the focus of Professor Cohen’s work. Examining communication technologies from the Internet back to hand-printed books and contact-era American Indian communicative forms, he studies the complex ways in which material texts and the networks in which they travel have shaped American literature and culture.

Marcin K. Peski

Marcin K. Peski

Economics
University of Chicago
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: Department of Economics

Professor Peski's primary interests are games with incomplete information and statistical decision theory. The aim of his research is to provide foundations for the analysis of rational behavior in one or multi-person situations. His current work focuses on generalizations of de Finett's exchangeability and robustness of solution concepts to higher order beliefs.

Allan W. Shearer

Allan W. Shearer

Landscape Architecture
Rutgers University
Fellowship awarded: 2008
UT Austin host: School of Architecture

Professor Shearer’s scholarly interests center on how individuals, communities, and societies create scenarios of the future, and how these narratives and images of tomorrow are used to inform present day decisions about the environment. Much of his work has been focused through the examination of relationships between landscape and different dimensions of security.

Elizabeth Catlos

Elizabeth Catlos

Geological Sciences
Oklahoma State University
Fellowship awarded: 2007
UT Austin host: Department of Geological Sciences

Professor Catlos applies and develops geochemical techniques to understand the geologic history and influences of mountain ranges. She conducts field research in western Turkey, the Himalayas (Nepal and India), South India, and the U.S. Catlos is interested in models for heat, mass, and fluid flow along large faults and new methods to study the dynamics of the Earth’s crust.

Niko B. G. Matouschek

Niko B. G. Matouschek

Law and Economics
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Fellowship awarded: 2007
UT Austin host: School of Law

Professor Niko Matouschek works on organizational and contract economics. The aim of his research is to provide theoretical explanations for common organizational patterns and contractual arrangements. Recent projects include work on the organizational design of multi-divisional firms, the optimal design of regulatory regimes and the economics of the marriage contract.

Fumitoshi Shibahara

Fumitoshi Shibahara

Chemistry and Biochemistry
Gifu University, Japan
Fellowship awarded: 2007
UT Austin host: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Professor Shibahara is investigating transformations of molecules using a transition-metal catalysis. His research particularly focuses on achieving sustainable production of useful intermediates for functional materials and pharmaceuticals by environmentally benign “green” conditions.

Rebecca Torres

Rebecca Torres

Geography
East Carolina University
Fellowship awarded: 2007
UT Austin host: Department of Geography and the Environment

Professor Torres’ research explores a range of interests in rural development and poverty reduction in Latin America and the U.S. South. Specifically, she has examined issues of migration, agricultural development and tourism in developing country economies in the context of globalization. Torres is engaged in a five-year project of research, education, and outreach concentrating on rural transformation and Latino transnational migration to the U.S. South.

Beer, Jennifer

Jennifer Beer

Psychology
University of California, Davis
Fellowship awarded: 2006
UT Austin host: Department of Psychology

Professor Beer examines the neural systems supporting the regulation of social behavior by combining approaches from social psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience. She conducts complementary studies of patients with specific brain damage and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies in healthy populations to understand the role of the human frontal lobes in emotion, self-consciousness, and decision-making.

Giunta, Andrea

Andrea Giunta

Art and Art History
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Fellowship awarded: 2006
UT Austin host: Department of Art and Art History

Professor Giunta's work focuses on the power of art images, fundamentally from the Second World War to the present. Previously she analyzed the Argentine avant-garde during the 1960s in the context of the Cold War and the policies of the Alliance for Progress. Her current research is centred on the analysis of the mechanisms through which Picasso Guernica's particular power was constructed.

Greenberg, Mark

Mark Greenberg

Law and Philosophy
University of California - Los Angeles
Fellowship awarded: 2006
UT Austin host: School of Law

Professor Greenberg's research explores a range of problems in philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of law, and criminal and constitutional law. His current projects include work on the nature of law and its relation to morality, the content of thought, and the doctrine of stare decisis.

Henry, William

William Benjamin Henry

Classics
Oxford University
Fellowship awarded: 2006
UT Austin host: Department of Classics

Professor Henry works on the Greek manuscripts from Herculaneum . Carbonized in the eruption of 79 CE, and discovered 250 years ago, these scrolls can only now be reliably deciphered through the aid of multi-spectral imaging technology. The texts of Epicurean philosophy that are emerging shed a new light on the Graeco-Roman culture of the first century BCE.

Krebs, Ronald

Ronald R. Krebs

Government
University of Minnesota
Fellowship awarded: 2006
UT Austin host: Department of Government

Professor Krebs research currently focuses on the effects of war on democratic institutions and processes; the power of rhetoric in shaping foreign policy, especially in the area of national security and especially in the United States; and the relationship between counterterrorist discourse and policy in different national contexts. He is the author of Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship.

Edmonds, Henrietta

Henrietta N. Edmonds

Marine Science
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2005
UT Austin host: Department of Marine Science

Professor Edmonds' research involves the use of chemical measurements to understand the oceans as part of the Earth system. Her specific interests encompass seafloor hydrothermal vents, ocean circulation, and groundwater-coastal water interactions. She is preparing for a 2007 expedition to the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean.

Kreilkamp, Ivan

Ivan Kreilkamp

English
Indiana University
Fellowship awarded: 2005
UT Austin host: Department of English

Professor Kreilkamp is a scholar of British Victorian literature and culture. His work addresses Victorian attitudes towards, and fictional representations of, domestic animals. He is investigating the history of ideas about cruelty and kindness to animals, animal protagonists in novels, practices of pet-keeping and animal companionship, and the emergence of anti-cruelty and anti-vivisection popular reform movements.

Piermarocchi, Carlo

Carlo Piermarocchi

Physics
Michigan State University
Fellowship awarded: 2005
UT Austin host: Department of Physics

Professor Piermarocchi continues his investigations on the theory of optical control in semiconductor-based nanosystems, especially from the perspective of applications to quantum and classical information technology. This optical control suggests an active approach to materials science: the goal is beyond the investigation of the general properties of materials, and directly focuses on their possible functional role as memories, information processors, or network components.

Sosin, Joshua

Joshua Sosin

Classics
Duke University
Fellowship awarded: 2005
UT Austin host: Department of Classics

Professor Sosin is a Greek historian who specializes in the social, economic, and religious life of the Hellenistic world. He is working on a book-length epigraphical study of what we would call charitable foundations. The project is part of a broader research interest in the strategies that ancient Greek persons and polities formulated in raising and investing money, especially for the purpose of conducting religion.

Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

History
State University of New York - Buffalo
Fellowship awarded: 2004
UT Austin host: Department of History

Professor Cañizares-Esguerra explores the relationship of landscape narratives with nation building in nineteenth century Latin America, drawing on resources in natural history, demonology, and epics.

Pedahzur, Ami

Ami Pedahzur

Government
University of Haifa, Israel
Fellowship awarded: 2004
UT Austin host: Department of Government

Professor Pedahzur's main fields of interest are terrorism, the democratic response to extremism and violence, and political extremism in Israel.

Westphal, James

James Westphal

Management
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2004
UT Austin host: Department of Management

Professor Westphal's research on corporate governance includes an investigation of how "pluralistic ignorance" may occur on corporate boards and examines the consequences of this "ignorance" for strategic decision making.

Witt, John

John Witt

Columbia University Law School
Fellowship awarded: 2004
UT Austin host: School of Law

Professor Witt's research and teaching interests focus on the history of American law and on the law of torts.

Brock, Jeffrey

Jeffrey Brock

Mathematics
University of Chicago
Fellowship awarded: 2003
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics

Professor Brock's work focuses on the geometry of "hyperbolic 3-manifolds." His work overlaps with the classical mathematical fields of analysis and differential geometry.

Gavin, Frank

Frank Gavin

LBJ School of Public Affairs
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2003
UT Austin host: LBJ School of Public Affairs

Professor Gavin is analyzing newly-declassified historical materials to reassess nuclear strategy and arms control during the Cold War. A historian by training, his teaching and research interests focus on U.S. foreign policy, national security, presidential policymaking, and the history of international monetary relations.

Freiberger, Oliver

Oliver Freiberger

Asian Studies
University of Bayreuth
Fellowship awarded: 2002
UT Austin host: Department of Asian Studies

Professor Freiberger's research is concerned with early Christianity and early Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Long interested in Theravada Buddhism, he has shifted his focus to the comparative study of asceticism, the practice of torturing the body for various religious purposes.

Light, Andrew

Andrew Light

Environmental Philosophy
New York University
Fellowship awarded: 2002
UT Austin host: School of Architecture

Professor Light's primary interests are environmental ethics and policy and philosophy of technology. Most of his work is in environmental ethics, the subfield of philosophy devoted to questions about moral obligations to protect nature.

Belcher, Angela

Angela Belcher

Chemistry and Biochemistry
The University of Texas at Austin
Fellowship awarded: 2001
UT Austin host: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Professor Belcher's research involves combining organic and inorganic substances to generate new materials that can be used to produce transistors, wires, connectors, sensors and computer chips far smaller than anything manufactured so far.

Cabre, Xavier

Xavier Cabré

Mathematics
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Fellowship awarded: 2001
UT Austin host: Department of Mathematics

Professor Cabré's research focuses on mathematical analysis of problems arising in combustion phenomena in combustion engines. He also is interested in the propagation of signals along nerve fibers and in option pricing in markets, with emphasis on their financial risk.

Olcott, Jocelyn

Jocelyn Olcott

History
California State University
Fellowship awarded: 2001
UT Austin host: Department of History

Professor Olcott's research explores the history of women's activism and political change in post-revolutionary Mexico.

Paal, Beatrix

Beatrix Paal

Economics
Stanford University
Fellowship awarded: 2001
UT Austin host: Department of Economics

Professor Paal's research involves studying the interaction between episodes of high inflation and economic stabilization. Her projects have focused on understanding how the differences across financial systems affect the way monetary policy operates.

Contact: Michelle George, Harrington Fellows Program Coordinator

Location:

Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost

Address:

The University of Texas at Austin
110 Inner Campus Drive, Stop G1000
Austin, Texas 78712

Email:

harrington@utexas.edu

Phone:

512-471-3007