Graduate School

Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program

The Offices of the Dean of the Graduate School and the Dean of the Faculty are pleased to share the Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program for 2024-2025. The Deans’ Faculty Fellows program will award selected students a spring semester academic appointment as Visiting Assistant Professors, following completion of the Ph.D. degree.

Deans’ Faculty Fellows Nominations

Deans’ Faculty Fellows

For the 2024-2025 year, graduate program chairs will have the opportunity to nominate one applicant for a Deans’ Faculty Fellowship. Nominations from programs without an active PhD program, including undergraduate programs or centers and institutes, will require prior review of budget availability. 

Deans’ Faculty Fellows will teach or co-teach one course in a host department. Deans’ Faculty Fellows may take on additional research or teaching duties if funding is available from grants or other departmental sources.

Applicant Eligibility

Applicants must be nominated for a Deans’ Faculty Fellowship. Applicants must be Brown doctoral students, active in Fall 2024, who commit to completing all requirements for the degree (including completing, defending, and depositing the dissertation) by December 1, 2024. Applicants may be in any year of their graduate program at the time of application, including in year six or above. 

The program is open to students of all nationalities. However, international students will have to arrange with the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISSS) for authorization for employment for the term of the appointment (Optional Practical Training). Please note that many students are limited to just 12 months of OPT, and the appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor will count for 4.5 months of the OPT. Interested international students should consult in advance with OISSS and follow all guidance as directed, as the process is time-sensitive and delays may prevent stepping into the DFF role.

Applicant Selection Criteria

The applicant selection criteria will include the applicant’s record of excellence in teaching and scholarship; their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion; their timely progress toward degree completion and their plan for completion (with extra consideration for applicants completing in 6 years or less); and, for all applicants, the support from the advisor and department.

Application

The application will be available through UFunds (under “Graduate School Distinctive Opportunities”). Applicants should consult with their Chair (or DGS) before applying to confirm their department’s nomination in advance:

  • Step 1: Applicant completes the Deans’ Faculty Fellows application form in UFunds, including the email address of their department chair, director of graduate study, and faculty advisor. 
  • Step 2: The Chair receives an email prompting them to complete the nomination form. When applicable, Chairs will also be asked to confirm funding availability.The DGS and advisor receive an email prompting them to complete the relevant section of the form in UFunds.

Timeline and Funding

Fellows appointed for the spring 2025 semester will receive a salary of $19,000 for 4.5 months. The position enables graduate students to continue on their health insurance policy that they began in fall 2024. For graduate programs that did not pause admissions for 2021-2022 admissions cycle, funding for positions will be drawn primarily from departmental resources.

  • March 1, 2024: Application opens in UFunds
  • March 22, 2024: DFF applications are due
  • March 29, 2024: Nominations and recommender forms due.

Questions

For questions, please contact Vanessa Ryan, Senior Associate Dean of Student Development, or Byrd McDaniel, Assistant Director of Student Development, at Graduate_Dean@brown.edu.

Current Deans’ Faculty Fellows

  • Joe Colleyshaw
    Department: Slavic Studies
  • Mateo Diaz Choza
    Department: Hispanic Studies
  • Ashley Dun
    Department: English
  • Kristen Essel
    Department: Political Science
  • Christina Gilligan
    Department: Pembroke Center
  • Aaron Jacobs
    Department: History
  • Laurence Kenny
    Department: Philosophy
  • Hannah Krueger
    Department: Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
  • Talley Murphy
    Department: Theatre Arts and Performance Studies
  • Katherine Freeze Wolf
    Department: Music
  • Samee Sulaiman
    Department: Anthropology
  • Francesca Zambon 
    Department: Italian Studies

Past Deans’ Faculty Fellows

Flor Chiaramonte

Department: Hispanic Studies

Laura Chilson-Parks

Department: History of Art and Architecture

Sloane Garelick

Department: Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

Rob Grace

Department: Political Science

Emily Joyce

Department: Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

Nicholas Kahn

Department: Comparative Literature

Matthew Lueckheide

Department: Chemistry

Sarah McGrath

Department: Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

David Mullins

Department: Comparative Literature

Christian Obst

Department: German

Kaitlyn Quaranta

Department: French and Francophone Studies

Les Robinson

Department: History

Eleanor Rowe

Department: English

Amber Vistein

Department: Music

Group photoEthel Barja Cuyutupa

Department: Hispanic Studies

Aimee Bourassa

Program/Department: Urban Studies

Cyrus Cousins

Program/Department: Computer Science

Pedro de Almeida

Program/Department: Portuguese and Brazilian Studies

Christopher DiBona

 Program/Department: Religious Studies

Matthew Ellis

Program/Department: Modern Culture and Media

Berta Garcia Faet

Department: Hispanic Studies

Michael Gastiger

Department: English

Claire Grandy

Center/Institute: Pembroke Center

Leland Grigoli

Department: History

Cassandra Guan

Department: Science and Technology Studies

Warren Harding

Department: Africana Studies

Milen Ivanov

Department: Applied Mathematics

Morris Karp

Center/Institute: Cogut Institute

Erica Kinias

Department: History of Art and Architecture

Christopher Lee

Department: English

Kristine Li

Department: Political Science

Alex Marko

Center/Institute: Joukowsky Institute

Sean Monahan

Department: Political Science

Emily Monty

Department: History of Art and Architecture

Jon Nelson

Department: Sociology

Michelle Rose

Department: Political Science

Miriam Rothenberg

Center/Institute: Joukowsky Institute

Simeon Simeonov 

Department: History

Jan Stockbruegger

Department: Political Science

Yuezhu Sun

Department: Anthropology

Tanner Walker

Department: Religious Studies

James Wang

Department: History

Christopher Yates

Department: English

Brett Zehner

Department: Theatre and Performance Studies

Jatan Burch

Department: Physics
Course: Space Invaders: Astroparticle Probes of Dark Matter Physics

Nikole Bonacorsi

Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Course: 500 Million Years of Land Plants

John Krantz

Department: Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
Course: Sustainability and Mineral Resources

Ross Parker

Department:  Applied Math
Course: Applied Dynamical Systems

Ian Russell

Department: Hispanic Studies
Course: Queer Aesthetics and Intimacies en Español

Silvia Stubnova

Department: Egyptology and Assyriology
Course: Life on the Nile: Ancient Egypt Beyond the Pharahos

Virginia Thomas

Department: American Studies
Course: Queering Oral History: Theory and Practice and Building Alternative Archives

Alyssa Anderson

Department: American Studies
Dissertation Title: Violence and the Repertoire: Coming of Age in the Age of Mass Shootings
Course: From Eternal Sunshine to Lieux de Mémoire: Memory and Forgetting in Popular Culture

Claudia Becerra-Mendez

Department: Hispanic Studies
Dissertation Title: Personas, Animales y Objetos: Hacia una Ética de la Relación en la Poesía Latinoamericana de los Sesenta y Setenta
Course: Animals and Poetry: Toward a 20th century Latin American Bestiary

Benjamin Chilson-Parks

Department: Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
Dissertation Title: The Geochemistry of Cenozoic Volcanism in the Andean Southern Volcanic Zone, 34⁰S-38⁰S: Evaluating the Role of Subcontinental Lithospheric Mantle in Alkali Magma Petrogenesis
Course: Assembling Rhode Island

Mamikon Gulian

Department: Math
Dissertation Title: Discovering and Solving Fractional Partial Differential Equations: Machine Learning and Monte Carlo Methods
Course: Machine Learning of Differential Equations

Rebecca Haubrich

Department: German Studies
Dissertation Title: Mourning (M)others: Images of a Maternal Education
Course: Mis(s)Education: Feminist Undoings of the German 'Bildungsroman'

Tavid Mulder

Department: Comparative Literature
Dissertation Title: The Peripheral Metropolis: The City, Montage and Modernity
Course: The Torn Halves of Modernism

Brian Stankus

Department: Chemistry
Dissertation Title: Ultrafast Chemical Dynamics: Photochemistry in Real Time
Course: CHEM0330: Equilibrium, Rate, and Structure

Joseph Skitka

Department: Physics
Dissertation Title: Quasilinear Modeling of Planetary Boundary-Layer Turbulence
Course: Introduction to Fluids

Group photoAlyce de Carteret

Department: Anthropology
Dissertation Title: The Craft of Housebuilding among the Classic Maya
Course: Ancient Worldviews: The Archaeology of Belief and Ritual

Andrew Dufton

Department: Archaeology & the Ancient World
Dissertation Title: Processing the City: Urban Change and Social Transformation in Roman North Africa (246 BCE- 193 CE)
Course: Worlds divided: Towards an Archaeology of Inequality

Patrick Heck

Department: Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences
Dissertation Title: The Role of Uniqueness Motivation in Self- and Social- Judgement
Course: Social Judgement & Decision Making

Virginia-Eirini Kilikian

Department: Applied Math
Dissertation Title: Developing Mathematical Models of Chemotaxis by Motile Bacteria
Course: Introduction to Scientific Computing

Natalie Lozinski-Veach

Department: Comparative Literature
Dissertation Title: Creaturely Constellations: Animals, Literature, and  Critical Thought after Auschwitz
Course: Species Matters: Animals in Literature, Film, and Theory

David Mittlemann

Department: Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
Dissertation Title: Skepticism and the Limits of Knowledge in Modern Brazilian Narrative 
Course: The Future of the Past: 21st-Century Fiction from the Portuguese-Speaking World

Philip Zucker

Department: Physics
Dissertation Title: Novel Probes Topological Orders
Course: Topological Matter 

Group photoNatalie Adler

Department: Comparative Literature
Dissertation Title: Beyond the Poetic Principle
Course: Convulsive Beauty: Hysteria in the Arts

Mark Cetilia

Department: Computer Music and Multimedia
Dissertation Title: Schaulust: A Study in Light and Sound
Course: The Art of Sound: Applied Synthesis Techniques

Müge Durusu

Department: Archaeology and the Ancient World
Dissertation Title: Occupy Hattuša: Views from the Borderlands of the Hittite Empire
Course: From Gilgamesh to Hektor: Heroes of the Bronze Age

Rachel Gostenhofer

Department: History
Dissertation Title: The Pursuit of Priority in Enlightenment Paris
Course: Piracy, Patents, and Intellectual Property

Elizabeth Makrides

Department: Applied Mathematics
Dissertation Title: Structure and Stability in Localized Patterns
Course: Quantitative Models of Biological Systems

John McNeill

Department: Economics
Dissertation Title: Essays on Menu Preference: Flexibility and Commitment
Course: Behavioral Economics

Rijuta Mehta

Department: Modern Culture and Media
Dissertation Title: The Anticolonial Snapshot: South Asian Disruptions
Course: Colonial Visions

Martin Willis Monroe

Department: Egyptology and Assyriology
Dissertation Title: Advice from the Stars: The Micro-Zodiac in Seleucid Babylon
Course: Theory and Thought in the Ancient World

Timothy Raben

Department: Physics
Dissertation Title: Regge Scattering and Applications to Strong Coupling Phenomenology
Course: Quantum Technology and Information: How Quantum Mechanics Permeates Society and Paves the Way for the Future

Nathaniel Trask

Department: Applied Mathematics
Dissertation Title: High Order Meshfree Methods for Direct Numerical Simulation of Incompressible Fluid Mechanics
Course: Finite Volume Method for Computational Fluid Dynamics: A Survey