Office for Sponsored Faculty Projects

Associate Professor of History Eliza Ablovatski has received an Honorable Mention for her recently published book, "Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919," by the Heldt Prize Committee of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. The competition was for the Best Book by a Woman-Identifying Scholar in Any Area of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2022).

Associate Professor of Physics Aaron Reinhard has received a NSF Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) grant of nearly $200K for his project “Demonstrating Control Over State-Mixing Interactions in Rydberg Excitation Near Förster Resonance,” along with co-PI Professor of Physics Paula Turner.

Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Department of History Amanda Gibson has been awarded a 2023 James Buchanan Fellowship. This fellowship supports scholars in any discipline who have recently graduated from their doctoral programs to critically engage ideas in the political economy of Adam Smith and the Austrian, Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy.

Assistant Professor of English Orchid Tierney has been awarded a fellowship from the Black Earth Institute. BEI is dedicated to supporting art that re-forges the links between spirit, earth and society, for art and its makers create the space for changing minds and the world.

Amanda Gibson, a postdoctoral fellow for CSAD, has been awarded the Gillder Lehrman Center Fellowship. The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) is part of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Melissah Pawlikowski has been awarded the Newberry’s Susan Kelly Power and Helen Hornbeck Tanner Fellowship supporting scholars of American Indian heritage with residential research using the Newberry Collection at the University of Chicago.

Aybike Seyma Tezel, Visiting Instructor of History, has published “Diplomatic relations on the Tang Frontier: Pugu Yitu Tomb Inscription” in Diogenes, October 2022.

Claudia Esslinger, Professor of Art, along with Royal Rhodes, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, are featured in the exhibition Specimens and Reflections at the Bellarmine Hall Galleries September 16 – December 17, 2022. The gallery is located at the Fairfield University Art Museum in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Bruce Hardy, Professor of Anthropology, has published an essay “Did Neanderthals Make Art?” in SAPIENS, a highly visible online anthropology magazine, August 2022.

Marcella Hackbardt, Professor of Studio Art, has photographs included in Mirror Mirror, an exhibition featuring contemporary women artists who focus on issues of identity. Curated by Dr. Christine Fowler Shearer, this exhibition will run from October 22, 2022 – March 18, 2023 at the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Erin Leatherman, Associate Professor of Statistics, published an article “Analysis of overlapping count data” with co-authors Kenneth J. Ryan (West Virginia University), Michaela S. Brydon ‘20, and Michael S. Hamada (Los Alamos National Laboratory), in Communications in Statistics – Simulation and Computation, October 2022.

Katherine Elkins, Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities, has published a chapter, ”Wordsworth’s Literary Sublime,” in Fictional Worlds and Philosophical Reflection, edited by Garry Hagberg, February 2022.

Sarah Petersen, Ashby Denoon Associate Professor of Neuroscience, has published an article “Peripheral nerve development in zebrafish requires muscle patterning by tcf15/paraxis” in Volume 490 of Developmental Biology, October 2022. Student co-authors include Lauren Limbach ’22, Madde Hyland ’22, Erika Pontillo ’24, Afomia Ayele ’21, and Kristen Pitts ’19. Additionally, Rudy Casseday ’20 contributed as a post-bacc lab technician. Petersen’s NSF CAREER Award supported the project in part through Kenyon Summer Science stipends (Lauren, Madde) and the lab technician position (Rudy).

Yutan Getzler, Professor of Chemistry, has published “An efficient synthesis of the inimer gamma-(2-bromo-2-methylpropionate)-epsilon-caprolactone (BMPCL)” with co-authors Shannon E. Wright ‘16, Aidan Clarkson ‘22, Jenna M. Korns ‘19, Ellie Haljun ‘23, Lila Lofving ‘24, and Meheret Ourgessa ‘23, in Volume 15, Issue 3 of Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews, September 2022.

Patrick Ewell, Associate Professor of Psychology, published an article, “You teach me and I’ll teach you: The role of social interactions on positivity elicited from playing Pokémon GO” with co-authors Adri Khalis, Mario Anthony Ferrari, Sophie Smit, and Amori Yee Mikami in Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, Vol.16,No.4 (2022).

Austin Johnson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is the lead author on a new report: Coming of Age as an LGBTQ Southerner: Family, Faith, Education and Health, A Report of the 2021 Survey of Southern LGBTQ Experiences. Professor Johnson also served as a PI on the survey, which was co-sponsored by Campaign for Southern Equality and Campus Pride.

Irene Lopez, Associate Professor of Psychology, has co-edited The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement with Professor Deirdre Johnston of Hope College. The book features examples of globally-connected courses that were done with our international partners through the Global Liberal Arts Alliance.

Iris Levin, Assistant Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies, has published “Correlated evolution of eggshell maculation with social breeding and nest type in Hirundinidae” in the July issue of Ibis. Levin’s co-authors include Stephanie L. Kaufman ‘23,Sophia E. Knaysi ‘24, Olivia G. Rataezyk ‘24. Professor Levin explained that this paper began as a BIOL 110 (intro lab) project while working with two first-year students and one sophomore, who were all studying remotely. The result of this creative independent project has become her “favorite pandemic silver lining.”

Anna Aydinyan, Associate Professor of Russian, has published a book Formalists against Imperialism: The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar and Russian Orientalism with the University of Toronto Press, May 2022.

Wade Powell, Professor of Biology, has published an article “Dioxin Disrupts Thyroid Hormone and Glucocorticoid Induction of klf9, a Master Regulator of Frog Metamorphosis” with co-authors David Han ‘21 and Weichen Zhao ‘20 in Toxicological Sciences, April 2022. A grant from the National Institutes of Health provided support for Professor Powell’s research.

Ruth Heindel, Dorothy & Thomas Jegla Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, has published the article “Elevated Nitrogen Deposition to Fire-Prone Forests Adjacent to Urban and Agricultural Areas, Colorado Front Range, USA” in the July issue of Earth’s Future with co-authors Sheila Murphy, Deborah Repert, Gregory Wetherbee, Alexander Liethen, David Clow, and Toby Halamka.

One of the primary aims of the OSFP blog and Twitter feed is to share your accomplishments and achievements with the broader Kenyon community and beyond. Send your publications and honors to OSFP@kenyon.edu.