Aaron Roussell, women’s basketball head coach, was named the 2025 Kathy Delaney-Smith Mid-Major Coach of the Year, presented by Her Hoop Stats. The award recognizes the most outstanding mid-major head coach in the country.
Julietta Singh, professor of English and women, gender, & sexuality studies, directed The Nest, a feature-length documentary, which will make its world premiere at the upcoming Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Canada.
Sandy Williams IV, assistant professor of art, designed the large bronze sculpture, Arthurs and Architects, as a memorial to the role of slavery in the life of Roanoke College. Learn More.
Olivier Delers, professor of French, and Mimi Hanaoka, associate professor of religious studies, have been named Associated Colleges of the South Mellon Academic Leadership Fellows for 2025–27.
John Peters, a biology professor at the University of Richmond, has received a $502,981 National Science Foundation award to support his neuroscience research on the mechanisms of learning and memory.
David Wilkins, professor of leadership studies, published the chapter "Moving Past the Flawed Equations of Blood and Property" in the edited volume "Beyond Blood Quantum: Refusal to Disappear" published by Fulcrum Publishing.
Ryan Conway, adjunct instructor of education and director of the Center for Education and Human Development at Glen Allen High School, was among four awardees from various Richmond organizations recognized as rising stars by Richmond Magazine. Last year, Conway received a R.E.B. Award for Teaching Excellence from the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond to study teaching and learning in Asia.
Kendall Hunt, adjunct instructor of education and middle school literacy specialist for Henrico County Public Schools, received the 2025 Literacy Teacher of the Year Award from James Madison University’s College of Education at the JMU Literacy Leader Awards ceremony held earlier this year.
Julian Hayter was promoted to professor of leadership studies. He is a historian whose research focuses on modern U.S. history, American political development, African-American history, and the American civil rights movement.
Christopher von Rueden was promoted to professor of leadership studies. An anthropologist with expertise in traditional human societies, his research focuses on how humans form status hierarchies, why we evolved to do so, and the demographic and ecological factors that cause our hierarchies to be more or less coercive.
Lauren Henley, assistant professor of leadership studies, published “Review of 'Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation' by Bruce Dorsey” in The Journal of American History.
Jennifer Bowie was promoted to professor of political science. Bowie specializes in judicial decision-making in federal, state, and comparative court, and is the former editor of the Law and Politics Book Review.
Mary Finley-Brook was promoted to professor of geography, environment, & sustainability. Finley-Brook specializes in environmental policy, climate justice, public health, energy transition, affordable access to renewable energy technologies, and equity in environmental, climate and energy governance.
Carrie Wu was promoted to professor of biology. Her research investigates the mechanisms of adaptive differentiation and speciation and examines how environmental variation influences phenotypic and genetic variation among natural plant populations.
Andy McGraw was promoted to professor of music. He has published extensively on Southeast Asian music, music and ethics, and rhythmic analysis. He is an active performer and directs a gamelan orchestra for the Richmond community.
Janelle Peifer was promoted to associate professor of psychology. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, and her research examines intra- and inter-cultural processes of college students’ intercultural competence development.
Stephanie Spera was promoted to associate professor of geography, environment, & sustainability. Her research seeks to understand landscape-level human-environment feedbacks regarding social, economic, and environmental drivers and consequences.
Jonathan Richardson was promoted to associate professor of biology. Jonathan integrates ecology, evolution and genomics to study applied issues related to urban ecology, epidemiology, and wildlife conservation.
Carrie Wu, professor of biology, published "Effects of experimental warming on floral scent, display, and rewards in two subalpine herbs" in Annals of Botany.
Tom Shields, associate professor and chair of graduate education & associate professor of leadership studies, presented the Can We Learn & Live Together 2.0: Housing & School Segregation in the Richmond Region report at the National Coalition on School Diversity 5th National Conference on School Diversity at Georgetown University Law Center.
Daniel L. Hocutt, SPCS web manager and adjunct professor of liberal arts, presented “Shifting Rhetorical Agency in Complex Information Deployment with AI” at the 14th annual Symposium on Communicating Complex Information (SCCI) held at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Agnieszka Szymańska, associate professor of art history, has been awarded membership to the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world's foremost centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Learn more.
Sandy Williams IV, assistant professor of art, features six new sculptures that embrace and elaborate on the nuances of time in their inaugural solo exhibition Life in Ellipsis with the Palo Gallery in New York. Their exhibition was also featured in Wallpaper*. Learn more.
Stephen Ferguson, visiting assistant professor of biology, published "Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology" in BMC Biology.
Ignatius G.D Suglo, assistant professor of rhetoric & communication studies, was elected to the board of directors of the West African Research Association (WARA).
Kurt Beals, visiting associate professor of German studies and humanities fellow in literary translation, published a new translation of Erich Maria Remarque's classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
Melinda A. Yang, assistant professor of biology, published "East Asian Gene flow bridged by northern coastal populations over past 6000 years" in Nature Communications.
Laura Knouse, professor of psychology, published "Avoidant Automatic Thoughts Are Associated With Task Avoidance and Inattention in the Moment: Replication in a Community Sample" in Journal of Attention Disorders along with Aditya Narayanan, ‘25, and Yueyi Fan, ‘23.
Julietta Singh, professor of English and women, gender, & sexuality studies, was interviewed in special issue on "Reckoning, Repairing, Reworlding" in Studies in Social Justice.
Peart co-publishes article on how economist James Buchanan might have viewed debt repudiation and reparations to African Americans
Jonathan Dattelbaum, professor of chemistry, published "Expanding the BASIL CURE" in The Biophysicist.
Volha Chykina, assistant professor of leadership studies, co-published "An Empirical Concern of the First Amendment: An Essay on the Benefits of Academic Freedom" in The Journal of College and University Law.
Miles Johnson, associate professor of chemistry, and Kelling Donald, Clarence E. Denoon Jr. Chair in the Natural Sciences, along with students Jack Hoskins-Harris, ‘26, Kiiko Kotera, ‘19, Donovan Hoilette, ‘25, William Apostolou, ‘24, Vicky Osenga, ‘24, Jared Thomas, ’21, published “Synthesis, Structure, and Reactivity of Copper(I) Proazaphosphatrane Complexes” in Inorganic Chemistry.
Colleen Carpenter-Swanson, assistant professor in biology, was named to the Serve Virginia Honor Roll in recognition of service in Virginia and the University of Richmond.
Angela Leeper, teaching faculty of education, was selected by the United States Board on Books for Young People to serve on its 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Committee, which oversees nominations for the world’s largest prize for children’s and young people’s literature.
Rick Mayes, professor of health policy, presented “Social and Environmental Drivers of Health” for Shenandoah University’s Physician Assistant Program.
Rick Mayes, professor of health policy, presented “Medicare Advantage’s Role in Accelerating the Expansion of ‘Big Med’” at the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Sciences (IAPHS) 2024 Annual Meeting.
Laura Fernandez, Assistant Professor of Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Studies, presented "Las Raras: The New Gothic Latina Trope in US Popular Media," at Colby College's Center for the Arts & Humanities Play! Seminar.
Rick Mayes, professor of health policy, presented “5 Key Facts about U.S. Healthcare and Their Ethical Implications” for the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.
Kathryn Jacobsen, William E. Cooper Distinguished University Chair and professor of health studies published “The burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors by state in the USA, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021,” as part of the Global Burden of Disease Collaborators in The Lancet.
Miriam McCormick, professor of philosophy, presented "Wondering with Impunity: Why it is (almost) Never Wrong to Wonder," at Zhejiang University.
Kathryn Jacobsen, William E. Cooper Distinguished University Chair and professor of health studies published “Global, regional, and national burden of HIV/AIDS, 1990–2021, and forecasts to 2050, for 204 countries and territories: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021” as part of the Global Burden of Disease Collaborators in The Lancet HIV.
Miriam McCormick, professor of philosophy, published Belief as Emotion.
Dan Chen, associate professor of political science, published "Legitimacy on Air: How Chinese Local Television News Performs Governance" in Made in China.
Mary Finley-Brook, associate professor of geography, environment, & sustainability, published Climate Crisis, Energy Violence: Mapping Fossil Energy’s Enduring Grasp on Our Precarious Future with Elsevier Press.
Mary Finley-Brook, associate professor of geography, environment, & sustainability, along with Charles S. Mullis, ’23, published “Circular economy, methane capture, and climate education in US HEIs” in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.
Jennifer Bowie, associate professor of political science, along with Nico Ellis, '23, published "An Analysis of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Use of Emotive Language in Her Authored Dissenting Opinions” in Open Judicial Politics: Decision Making, Public Opinion, Media, Policymaking.
Courtney Blondino, assistant professor of health studies, published “Latent Classes of Comorbid Substance Use and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms and Their Stability in U.S. Adults Over Time: Findings from the PATH Study Waves 1–3 (2013–2016)” in Substance Use & Misuse.
Sam Director, assistant professor of leadership studies, published "Bipolar disorder and competence" in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Christopher Shugrue, assistant professor of chemistry, along with undergraduate students Andrew Watts, ‘25, Caitlyn Hughes, ‘26, Gavin Clausen, ‘25, Pamira Yanar, ‘24, Evan Wolff, ‘24, Phoebe Rubio, ‘25, and Natalie Stuart, ‘25, published “Electron-rich Anilines as cleavable linkers for peptides” in Bioorganic Chemistry.
Grant Rissler, assistant professor of organizational studies, presented “Megaphone or Modulator? Examining The Role of Non-Profit Organizations in Amplifying the Voices of Immigrants” at the annual conference of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
