2024 Faculty Bios

Nejla Asimovic

Nejla Asimovic is an incoming Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Before joining Georgetown, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University. While at NYU, I was also a Research Affiliate at the Center for Social Media and Politics, a role I continue to hold. My research, which draws from political psychology and computational social science, examines the interplay between digital technologies and intergroup relations in deeply divided societies globally.

Zenobia Chan

Zenobia Chan is a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and will join Georgetown University as an Assistant Professor of Government in Fall 2024. She specializes in international political economy and quantitative methods. Her substantive research focuses on understanding why and how states employ economic statecraft and influence operations to shift other states’ behavior in their favor. Her book project, Alms and Influence, investigates when economic inducements—such as foreign aid, large-scale investment initiatives, and discounted sales of natural resources—can effectively buy influence abroad.

Zenobia also co-directs a multi-year project on Chinese and Russian influence operations funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative. Her methodological work includes developing machine learning algorithms and software for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects in both experimental and observational data.

Zenobia received her PhD in Politics from Princeton University in 2024. She also holds master’s degrees from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Sciences Po Paris, and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to her doctoral studies, she led an analytics team at Google, Inc. and worked at the United Nations, World Bank, and OECD on development assistance, infrastructure financing, and energy and environmental policy.

Andrea Carosso

Andrea Carosso is an incoming Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Physics. He received a BS in Physics and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Delaware, followed by a PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focused on new methods for extracting large-scale physical properties from computer simulations of quantum field theories — theories of elementary particles such as QCD (“quantum chromodynamics”), which describes the interaction of quarks and gluons (the constituents of protons and neutrons). He was then a postdoctoral researcher nearby at the George Washington University for three years, working to address the problem of reformulating theories like QCD to be suitable for simulation on quantum computers. He has also published work in the history and philosophy of physics. Recently, he has turned primarily toward teaching and has taught several introductory courses at GWU.

Ross Cooper

On December 31, 2023, Mr. Cooper retired from Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc., a Fortune 500  publicly traded roofing and building materials distribution company (NASDAQ: BECN). Beacon  has over 550 locations throughout the United States and Canada, over 7500 employees, and  annual revenue of approximately $10 billion. From May 2021 until his retirement, Mr. Cooper  was responsible for all of Beacon’s mergers and acquisitions activities. From May 2006 until  May 2021, Mr. Cooper was Beacon’s Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary,  responsible for all of Beacon’s legal affairs including employee relations, union negotiations,  acquisitions, SEC reporting, corporate governance, ES&G, insurance procurement, commercial  leasing, and litigation and claims management. Mr. Cooper was one of Beacon’s Named  Executive Officers and sat on the company’s Executive Committee. He attended all of Beacon’s  Board of Directors meetings and counseled the Board and its Committees on all legal issues  confronting public company Boards of Directors. Included among his Board of Directors  experience is coordinating the corporate governance efforts of the Nominating and Corporate  Governance Committee, advising the Compensation Committee on compensation practices and  disclosure issues, and advising the Audit Committee on SEC compliance and other regulatory  matters. Mr. Cooper led Beacon through over 50 transactions with a total enterprise value of  over $5 billion, including two individual multi-billion dollar acquisitions of Beacon’s next largest  competitors.  

Since his retirement, Mr. Cooper has joined the faculty of McDonough School of Business at  Georgetown University, where he leads the business law program. He previously was on the  faculty of the Kogod School of Business where he taught from 2017-2024. He also has been on  the faculty at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and St. Mary’s College  of Maryland. 

Prior to joining Beacon, Mr. Cooper was the Chair of the Business Litigation Practice Group of  Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker, the largest suburban Washington, D.C.-area law firm.  His practice consisted of general business, contract and construction litigation; securities;  antitrust; employment discrimination; intellectual property; and government contracts. He had  extensive experience before federal and state trial and appellate courts throughout the United  States. Prior to joining Shulman Rogers in 1999, Mr. Cooper served in both the public and  private sectors, with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he received the Attorney General’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 1993-95, and thereafter with the Washington, D.C. office of  Kaye, Scholer, LLP. Mr. Cooper began his legal career in 1990 with the Washington, D.C. office  of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. 

Mr. Cooper graduated from Cornell University in 1987 with a BS in Civil Engineering and  received his JD, with High Honors, from The George Washington University in 1990. He is a  member of the bar in the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania.  

Mr. Cooper has been married to his wife Beth for 32 years. They have two sons Jordan (28)  and Zachary (25). Mr. and Mrs. Cooper have a home in Georgetown, Washington, DC but also  enjoy spending time at their home on the Chesapeake Bay in Shady Side, Maryland. 

Stephan Davis

Dr. Stephan Davis is the incoming director of Doctor of Nursing Practice education and an associate professor at Georgetown University, School of Nursing. A Georgetown alumnus and an award-winning healthcare executive and educator, Dr. Davis returns to the Hilltop from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where he has served as the associate dean of inclusive excellence and belonging for the College of Health Professions and the School of Nursing, leading diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives across nine health professions disciplines for approximately 2,000 students, hundreds of faculty and staff, and thousands of alumni stakeholders. He also served as the inaugural executive director of inclusive leadership education for the VCU Department of Health Administration. Dr. Davis is a fellow and national faculty member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). He previously chaired the ACHE LGBTQ+ Healthcare Leaders Community and has served as an ACHE Regent-at-Large, a role created to foster diversity in the governance of ACHE. For his significant and sustained contributions to ACHE and the profession of healthcare management, he was bestowed the organization’s Exemplary Service Award, the association’s highest national honor for professional service. He is also a 2023 recipient of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration’s Teaching Excellence Award for his contributions related to DEIB and social justice. That same year, he led the VCU College of Health Professions to achieve its inaugural Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Health Professions award from Insight into Diversity Magazine, distinguishing the college as the first and only academic unit on the VCU Health Science Campus to receive the honor.  

In addition to fellowship with ACHE, Dr. Davis is a distinguished scholar and fellow of the National Academies of Practice, a fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, an inaugural and founding fellow of the Academy of Diversity Leaders in Nursing, and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. In September, he will be inducted as a fellow of the National League for Nursing’s Academy of Nursing Education. He also holds several board certifications related to executive healthcare and nursing leadership and administration, leadership coaching, healthcare finance, healthcare quality, and executive diversity leadership. His graduate education includes a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree in healthcare leadership and policy from Yale, a post-graduate certificate in evidence-based teaching in the health professions from Johns Hopkins, and a master’s degree in health systems administration from Georgetown.

Rush Doshi

Rush Doshi is an Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. Doshi’s research focuses on China’s foreign policy, grand strategy, cross-Strait issues, and Indo-Pacific security issues. Before arriving at SFS, Doshi was the Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs on President Biden’s National Security Council, where he served three years from 2021-2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first-ever China directorate. At the NSC, Doshi advised the President and National Security Adviser on China and Taiwan policy, staffed their meetings with PRC counterparts, drafted the Administration’s China strategy, formulated U.S. policy on cross-Strait issues, and coordinated the negotiations that launched AUKUS.

Doshi is also a Senior Fellow for China and Indo-Pacific Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to his government service, Doshi worked as a fellow at the Brookings Institution and Yale Law School’s China Center. His first book, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford University Press, 2021), won the Mershon Center’s Edgar S. Furniss book award, was a finalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award and the Lionel Gelber Prize, and was named a Financial Times “best book” of 2021. He was also the editor of Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World (Brookings Institution Press, 2021).

Doshi has testified before Congress, and his work has appeared in International Organization, Asia Policy, The Washington Quarterly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs, among other outlets. Doshi received his PhD from Harvard University and his bachelor’s degree in public policy from Princeton University with a minor in East Asian Studies. He was also a Fulbright fellow in China and is proficient in Mandarin.

Caroline Efird

Dr. Caroline R. Efird (she/her) is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Health at Georgetown University. Her research seeks to promote health equity by addressing social and structural drivers of health disparities and inequities. As an interdisciplinary social scientist, she primarily uses mixed-methods to investigate how whiteness and racism influence the health and well-being of racially majoritized and minoritized populations. She recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Justice and Equity Research at the Racial Justice Institute at Georgetown University. She holds a Ph.D. and MPH in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. Prior to her career in health equity research, Dr. Efird earned a B.S. (with highest honors) in Elementary Education from Appalachian State University and she worked with children and families in public schools and non-profit settings for over 9 years.

Jonathan Fine

Prof. Jonathan Fine is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy. His research and teaching focus on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and the history of western ethics and aesthetics. Jonathan is currently writing a monograph on Plato’s concept of beauty (to kalon), Virtues of Appearance, and has published on ancient Greek notions of beauty, love, and honour in such venues as the British Journal of Aesthetics, Classical Quarterly, Phronesis,and the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Beauty in Antiquity. Before joining Georgetown, Jonathan taught in the Directed Studies and Humanities Programs at Yale University and was an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, where he received the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching and the College of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University. 

Darragh Gannon

Dr. Darragh Gannon is Associate Director of Global Irish Studies and Assistant Teaching Professor of Irish History at Georgetown University. He previously served as Head of Irish Studies at University College Dublin and Vice President of the Global Irish Diaspora Congress.

Dr. Gannon has published widely in British, Irish, and Global History. His books include Proclaiming a Republic: Ireland, 1916 and the National Collection (Irish Academic Press, 2016), Ireland 1922: independence, partition, civil war, with Fearghal McGarry(Royal Irish Academy, 2021), and Conflict, Diaspora, and Empire: Irish nationalism in Britain, 1912-1922 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is currently completing a fourth book – Worlds of Revolution: Ireland’s ‘global moment’, 1919-1923 – to be published as part of Cambridge University Press’ Global and International History series.

Museums, memory studies, and policy are further research interests. Dr. Gannon has served as Curatorial Researcher at the National Museum of Ireland and Historian-in-Residence at Dublin City Council. He is a regular commentator on culture and current affairs for international media outlets, including the BBC, Irish Times, Le Monde, ABC Australia, and TIME Magazine.

Away from the Hilltop, you will find him taking in the latest performances at the Kennedy Center and cheering on the Washington Wizards at the Capitol One Arena!

Song Gao

Dr. Song Gao joins the faculty as Teaching Professor of Chemistry at Georgetown University. His research interests include tropospheric aerosol chemistry and air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, modifying Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-depleting substances with co-benefits that mitigate climate change and plastics pollution. His teaching interests include Chemistry, Earth/Environmental Science, and Science-Based Policy Making. He and his students have participated in field campaigns in upstate New York, central California, eastern Asia and central America, focusing on characterizing the composition and transformation of atmospheric aerosols and gases. Dr. Gao has published at leading journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Environmental Science and Technology, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmosphere. He co-authored two books on environmental science problem solving (by University Science Books, 2022) and stratospheric ozone protection (by United Nations Environment Programme, 2023), respectively. He was awarded the Alan Berman Research Publications Award by NRL and the Edward and Bonnie Foreman Biodiversity Lectureship by Stetson University. He has served as section and associate editors for several environmental science journals. Prior to joining GU, Dr. Gao was Professor of Environmental Chemistry/Global Studies at Duke Kunshan University and Duke University. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington and postdoctoral training on Atmospheric Chemistry at California Institute of Technology. 

Lydia Gibson

Lydia Gibson is a geographer, environmental anthropologist, and Assistant Professor of Race and Technology at Georgetown University. Lydia’s research spans across natural and social sciences to understand how social, political, and ecological change, colonial histories, and the materialisation of environmental discourses and actions come to shape the rituals, livelihoods, and bicultural experiences of traditional forest communities in the Caribbean. Lydia’s research also explores how environmental data practices – e.g. GIS, remote sensing data, and ecological methods – shape and differentiate access and power in environmental spaces. Lydia holds a bachelors degree in Mathematics and Biology from University of Bristol, and two Masters (in Sociology and Anthropology) and a PhD in environmental anthropology from UCL (University College London). Lydia remained at UCL for a postdoc, under the ESRC fellowship she was awarded by the UKRI, before moving to Columbia University for another postdoctoral position. Lydia is particularly interested in the intersection of physics and social theory and works closely with traditional communities to monitor ecosystems and document and resist the exploitation, misuse, and colonisation of traditional and indigenous knowledge. 

Matthew Hawks

Matthew A. Hawks is a Chamberlain Project Retiring Officer Teaching Fellow.

He recently transitioned after 30 years as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He served as a submarine warfare officer and in the Navy’s engineering duty community, deploying overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Desert Thunder, and other national security missions. His last assignment was teaching midshipmen as a member of the U.S. Naval Academy’s Mathematics Department.

He earned his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also earned a Naval Engineer Degree and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA from the University of Memphis, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy.

Matthew’s research interests include statistics pedagogy and graph-theoretic change detection. He serves on the board of the International Christian Statisticians and the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences. He is also active as a Trail Guide for a local Trail Life USA troop. Trail Life USA exists to guide generations of courageous young men to honor God, lead with integrity, serve others, and experience outdoor adventure. He is the proud father of seven children, and enjoys puzzles of all kinds.

Jaynelle Hazard

Jaynelle Hazard is the Director and Chief Curator of Georgetown University Art Galleries and an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art and Art History. Her career has been dedicated to amplifying diverse voices within the artistic canon, bringing audiences together for discovery, and presenting work by pioneering artists.

Hazard’s recent curatorial projects include Quantum Shift, featuring Latinx light and space artist Gisela

Colón, encompassing an in-gallery exhibition and an outdoor public sculpture located in James Monroe Park in Washington, DC. Another notable project is What Makes the Earth Shake, featuring Black figurative painter Dominic Chambers, a Yale MFA graduate recognized by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 as one of the most exciting emerging artists of his generation. Additionally, Hazard recently curated SEED and SOLSTICE, two concurrent exhibitions at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art and The Kreeger Museum, highlighting the innovative work of sculptor and trained microbiologist Kendall Buster.

Previously, Hazard served as the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA), where she led a major rebranding effort and expanded fundraising initiatives. She was also the Director of Exhibitions at Workhouse Art Center, and has worked with celebrated artworks while supporting the corporate contemporary art collection at UBS and during her time at Blank Projects gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.

Throughout her career, Hazard has actively contributed to arts education by collaborating with various universities and supporting emerging arts leaders through roles with ArtTable and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art Alumni DC Chapter. Hazard holds a BA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. She relocated to the Washington, DC area in 2017.

Denise Ho

Denise Y. Ho is joining the School of Foreign Service as an associate professor.  She is an historian of modern China, with a particular focus on the social and cultural history of the Mao period.  She is also interested in urban history, the history of information and propaganda, and material culture.  More recently, she is examining the history of the border between Hong Kong and China.

Dr. Ho is the author of Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China, and co-editor of Material Contradictions in Mao’s China.  She also co-edited a special issue for the Made in China Journal entitled, “Transformation of Shen(zhen)-(Hong) Kong Borderlands, and contributed to the website The Mao Era in Objects.  She is currently completing a book called The Nation’s Gate: A Cross-Border History of Hong Kong and China.

Ho received her B.A. in history from Yale College and an A.M. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.  After college, she served as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow in Changsha, Hunan Province.  During her graduate studies, she was a recipient of a Fulbright Grant and a visiting scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.  She is a member of the fifth cohort of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.  Before coming to Georgetown, Dr. Ho was an assistant professor of history at the University of Kentucky, assistant professor of China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and associate professor of history at Yale University.  

Renanah Joyce

Renanah Joyce is an assistant professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, with a core appointment in the Security Studies Program. Professor Joyce’s research interests include security cooperation, military and economic statecraft, and US foreign policy. Before joining SFS, Joyce was an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University from 2022-2024, where she taught courses on international relations and US foreign policy.

Joyce’s current book project, Exporting Might and Right: Security Assistance and Liberal International Order, examines security assistance as a tool of statecraft. The book draws on her dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association’s Kenneth N. Waltz Award for best dissertation in security studies. Joyce’s work is published in International Security, Perspectives on Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Political Science Quarterly, and policy outlets including The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Lawfare, Inkstick, War on the Rocks, and PRISM.

Joyce is an external adviser for the US Institute of Peace’s Security Sector Governance and Reform Program and an adjunct political scientist with the RAND Corporation. Previously, she has held fellowships with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School’s International Security Program, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, and George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies. Joyce received her PhD in political science from Columbia University. Before academia, she worked as a program analyst in the Department of Defense.

Dana Kanze

Dr Dana Kanze holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics, magna cum laude, from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Doctor of Philosophy in Management from Columbia Business School. Her research applies behavioral insights to understand sources of organizational inequality, spanning the areas of entrepreneurship, motivation science, and ethical decision making. Dr Kanze is a member of the Organization Science Editorial Review Board. Her award-winning work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Science Advances, as well as in practitioner outlets such as the Harvard Business Review. Her research has been featured by BBC Radio, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Chicago Booth Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., MIT Sloan Management Review, Pitchbook, Scientific American, TechCrunch, TED, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wharton Magazine.  Accomplished as an ad hoc reviewer and keynote speaker, Dr Kanze started her career as an investment banker and strategic consultant for Citigroup and Winterberry Group, going on to co-found and run a funded tech startup before re-entering education. She was most recently a tenure-tracked Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London School of Business where she taught the popular elective Leading Teams and Organisations to master’s and executive students. Dr Kanze enjoys serving as an advisor, mentor, and trainer to early-stage tech ventures, investment funds, startup accelerators, and public policymakers throughout the world that are seeking to address inequality in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Helal Mohammed Khan

Helal Mohammed Khan, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Justice and Peace Studies program within the College of Arts and Sciences. Before joining Georgetown, Helal taught at the Center for Social Concerns of the University of Notre Dame, where he also completed his PhD in Peace Studies and Anthropology. Helal worked with resettled Rohingya refugees and their interlocutors in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Fort Wayne, and has a background in peacekeeping with the United Nations. He graduated from Bangladesh’s Defence Services Command & Staff College and served in its military and border forces. Helal enjoys skydiving, relishes travel, and, when not working, loves playing soccer.

Jungyoon Koh

Jungyoon Koh is an incoming Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Linguistics. She is a discourse analyst with interests in human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, and digital storytelling. Her work has been featured in journals such as Discourse, Context & Media, Language & Intercultural Communication, and Language@Internet. Jungyoon received her B.A. from Seoul National University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University. 

Jane Komori

Jane Komori is Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Labor, Migration, and Racial Capitalism in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. She holds a PhD in the History of Consciousness, with emphases in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies, from the University of California Santa Cruz. Prior to coming to Georgetown, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia.

Jane’s research focuses on race, labor, and ecology. Her current book project investigates the labor history and self-organization of Asian immigrant and Indigenous workers in Western Canada’s primary resource industries from the 1850s to the mid-twentieth century. The book theorizes the way that racial forms, specifically the racialization of labor, are produced at the intersection of settler colonialism, resource extraction, and resultant environmental change.  

Jane’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Radical History Review, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, Asia-Pacific Journal,and Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences,as well as a number of public-facing venues, including Viewpoint Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Ricepaper Magazine, Matrix Magazine, GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine,and The Bulletin/Geppo. 

Regina LaBelle

Regina LaBelle, JD is a professor in the Master of Science in Addiction Policy and Practice program at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. She also directs the Master’s program, which she founded in 2021.  

Regina is also affiliated with the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown Law, serving as Distinguished Scholar and Director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative. There, she conducts policy research on the intersection of the Americans with Disabilities Act and substance use disorder, treatment for substance use disorder in carceral settings, and US harm reduction policies. 

Regina has a history of public service, having most recently been appointed Acting Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in the first year of the Biden-Harris Administration. Regina previously served during President Obama’s two terms in office at ONDCP.

In 2024, Ms LaBelle was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse by the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.  She also serves as the public authority representative to the Independent Ethics Board of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). 

A magna cum laude graduate of Boston College, Regina received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the Washington State Bar. 

Xiaomeng Lu

Xiaomeng Lu is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, and an Associate Professor of Finance (untenured) at the International School of Finance, Fudan University (FISF). Her research focuses on empirical asset pricing, behavioral finance, FinTech, and household finance, with her work being published in top finance and economics journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics and Management Science. Prior to her current positions, she was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Xiaomeng earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University, and she holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Statistics from Peking University. She has been honored with the “Faculty Recognition Award” from FISF at Fudan University and the “SAIF Teaching Award” from SAIF at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Kelsey Moore

Kelsey Alejandra Moore is a Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of African American History and Black Studies. Her work focuses on rural black southern histories, raising questions about race, religion, and culture in the 20th century. Her current book, What the Dead Witnessed, interrogates how rural development in South Carolina’s Santee-Cooper basin inflicted spiritual, ecological, and epistemic violence against black and indigenous peoples. Through a close examination of the Santee-Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project, What the Dead Witnessed demonstrates how the ritualistic nature of modernization collapsed various notions of time, space, and place.

As an inaugural 2022-2023 Crossroads Research Fellow based at Princeton University, Moore created “We Just Don’t Trust Our Memories to Stone ,” a digital project that remaps cemeteries flooded by the Santee-Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project. In doing so, the digital project remembers various Conjure knowledge(s) necessary to the lives and deaths of black South Carolinians. 

Before coming to Georgetown, Moore received her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University. She received a Dual B.A. in Africana Studies and Public Policy at New York University, where she graduated summa cum laude as the 2019 Valedictorian of the College and Arts and Science. 

When she is not researching, Moore enjoys spending time with her two cats, Liberation and Abolition and baking vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Mirtha Navarro

Mirtha Navarro brings over twenty-five years of experience in academia, international organizations and the private sector, especially in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and her most recent academic position has been as full professor at the University of Costa Rica (UCR). She established there the Bioactivity for Sustainable Development (BIODESS) Group, performing research in natural products at international level, including collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other entities across the world. She has been Vice-Chair of the Unites States Pharmacopeia (USP) Botanicals, Dietary Supplements and Herbal Medicines (BDSHM) Expert Committee and is presently the Chair of the Pan-American Expert Panel at USP BDSHM. She has over forty international scientific publications and she leads research at the Costa Rican National Nanotechnology Center (LANOTEC). Further, she is the co-founder of InnoBiotiQ, a UCR spin-off that has successfully supported companies to asses the quality and contents of their products’ bioactive compounds. Dr. Navarro was previously a Senior Specialist in Science & Technology and coordinator of the Multinational Program for Natural Resources at the Organization of American States in Washington D.C. and has been a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), among others.

Van Tran Nguyen

Van Tran Nguyen is a Vietnamese American artist-scholar, filmmaker, curator, and multimedia artist.

Her research investigates Asian American performance and media(tions) of the diaspora. Tran Nguyen’s monograph-in-process, No Bodies Home: Mediations of Performance in Exile explores Cold War technological advancement and argues that racialized and gendered bodies of the Asian diaspora are the material and technological output of warfare. Her short film, ERIE COUNTY SMILE released in 2021, is available for public access via the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Her first full-length feature film, The MOTHERLOAD, will be released in 2025. She is an Early Career Fellow at the UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice (2024-2025). In the fall of 2024, she joined the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University as the Assistant Professor of Performing Arts. Dr. Tran Nguyen teaches courses across theory and practice including digital filmmaking, Techno-Orientalisms, and autoethnography in performance. She is a member of the Baltimore Potters Guild as a hobbyist ceramicist. She currently lives in Baltimore and with her husband and big orange cat, Gordon Elizabeth.

Bruno Niederbacher SJ

Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Christian Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Freiburg in Breisgau and a MTh from Heythrop College in London. His main research interests are in medieval philosophy and in metaethics, especially in moral ontology and epistemology. Moreover, he reflects the epistemological presuppositions of the Ignatian Spirituality. He is the author of Glaube als Tugend bei Thomas von Aquin (2004), Erkenntnistheorie moralischer Überzeugungen (2012), Metaethik (2021) and the co-editor of Theologie als Wissenschaft im Mittelalter (2006). He has contributed to Personal Identity and Resurrection: How do we survive our death? (2010), The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (2012), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (2014), and The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (2015).

Emily Nix

Emily Nix is a labor economist who studies the economic impacts of violence against women, the gender income gap, and inequality. Her research and expertise have been featured in the Economist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, NPR, MSNBC, and more. She has worked as a consultant to both the Minneapolis Federal Reserve and the World Bank. Nix is also an award-winning teacher who made news in 2020 when she created a DIY light board to enhance the remote learning experience for her students. Nix received her PhD from Yale and her BA from UNC Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar.

Amanda Pinheiro de OIiveira

Amanda Pinheiro (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar of international migration. Her ethnographic research examines migration policy and practice across the Americas, foregrounding race and ethnicity in migration and border studies as well as in policymaking. She teaches and researches global migration, race and ethnicity in the context of international migration, migration across the Americas, Latin American and Latinx studies, critical refugee studies, critical border studies, community-based research, and ethnographic research. When she is not buried in migration books, she’s out there advocating for migrant rights, hitting the trails, or cheering for Liverpool in a DC pub.  

Emma Smith

Emma Smith (she/her) is a development economist with a focus on refugees, migration, and social norms. One main strand of Emma’s research aims to understand how refugees make economic decisions and what interventions can meet the pressing needs of forcibly displaced people. Emma often works in collaboration with humanitarian organizations, and her research has looked at barriers to mental health care-seeking, effectiveness of shelter interventions, and access to remote work opportunities. In a second strand of research, Emma focuses on the effects of social norms broadly, with work on mental health stigma and gender norms. Emma holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in both Economics and Middle Eastern Studies from Wellesley College. Emma was born and raised on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. In her free time she loves to backpack, cook, eat, garden, and climb.

Nefertiti Takla

Nefertiti Takla is joining the Department of History at Georgetown as Assistant Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History. She was previously Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Program at Manhattan College in New York City. She received her Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. 

Nefertiti specializes in the social and cultural history of modern Egypt with a focus on gender and sexuality. Her research interests include the role of race and gender in the historical development of capitalism, transnational discourses of crime and criminality, labor migration in the Mediterranean world, gendered violence, and global feminisms. Her first book manuscript, Raya and Sakina: Femicide and the Coloniality of Gender in Egypt, analyzes how wartime colonial exploitation led to a major femicide in northern Egyptian cities in the early interwar era, and how the coloniality of gender shaped the prosecution and popular portrayals of the femicide. 

Justin Tosi

Justin Tosi is Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona, and has held visiting positions at the University of Michigan and University of Colorado Boulder. He writes about social, political, legal, and moral philosophy, and especially the ethics of public discourse, social morality, and special obligations. He has published two books: Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk (Oxford University Press, 2020), and Why It’s OK to Mind Your Own Business (Routledge, 2023).

Ethan Wilcox

Ethan Gotlieb Wilcox is joining Georgetown as an Assistant Professor of Computational Linguistics. His research seeks to understand the computational mechanisms that underlie language processing and language learning, both in people and in computational systems. Some of the questions he is interested in include: What are the features of the human learning algorithm that allow us to learn language so rapidly? What is universal about the way we process language, regardless of what individual language(s) we speak? And in the age of artificial intelligence, what is unique about the way that people use language? Prior to coming to Georgetown, he was an ETH Postdoctoral Fellow at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland. He obtained his PhD in 2022 in Linguistics from Harvard University and his BA in 2015 from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems and Slavic Languages and Literatures. In his spare time, he enjoys running, hiking, playing the piano, and reading Russian novels.

Molly Wilder

Molly Wilder received her both her PhD in Philosophy (2023) and JD (2016) from Georgetown University and is delighted to return to Georgetown this year as an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department. Her dissertation argued that lawyers can ethically promote the autonomy of their clients when employing a relational understanding of autonomy, and that doing so uniquely positions lawyers to promote and sustain democratic pluralism. Her broader research interests include autonomy, virtue ethics, feminist philosophy, pedagogy, professional ethics of lawyers, philosophy of tort law, and minors’ rights. When not philosophizing, Molly enjoys reading and writing children’s fantasy, playing board and computer games (current favorite is Spirit Island), and bad puns.

Meri Wimberly

Dr. Meri Wimberly is the Faculty Director of the McCourt Policy-Writing Center (MPWC), as well as faculty in the writing programs at the McCourt School of Public Policy and at the English department. She has been teaching postsecondary writing for more than twelve years and is a true believer in writing as a power skill that can change people, their careers, and their lives. Dr. Wimberly has a doctorate in English, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a Master’s in International Studies from the University of Washington. Her research focuses on inclusive pedagogy and language, writing pedagogy, policy writing, and world literature and arts. She is also a novelist and poet.

Xiuquan Zhou

Xiuquan Zhou is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. During his postdoctoral research for at the Argonne National Laboratory, he pioneered a novel rational approach to manipulate building blocks within solid-state materials. This method sheds light on a fresh pathway for materials design at the molecular level, enabling the tailoring of functionalities across a wide range of applications, including batteries, quantum computing, magnetism, energy storage, solar cells and catalysis. Xiuquan received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park. Xiuquan is originally from Yantai, a beautiful and small coastal city located on the Shandong Peninsula in China.

Lucy Zipf

Lucy Zipf (she/they) is an incoming Assistant Teaching Professor in the Master’s of Science in Environment and International Affairs Program (MS-EIA) program administered jointly by the Earth Commons and School or Foreign Service. Lucy received their BS from Brown University and PhD from Boston University. She has served as a visiting faculty member at Muhlenberg College and most recently Wellesley College. Lucy is an ecologist who studies the integrated impacts of climate, habitat, and land management biological communities. She is particularly interested in shifting phenologies and resource availability for birds and insects in human-managed habitats and co-authored a textbook chapter on the subject in the forthcoming “Phenology: An Integrative Environmental Science”.  Outside of science and teaching Lucy has been enjoying long walks to get to know her new city, reading mystery novels, nature-based board games, and spending time with her two sweetie cats Orange and Juice.