Graduate School
Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program
Deans’ Faculty Fellows Nominations
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 2025, who commit to completing all requirements for the degree (including completing, defending, and depositing the dissertation) by December 1, 2025. 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 semester will receive a salary for 4.5 months. The position enables graduate students to continue their health insurance policy that they began in fall semester. For graduate programs that did not pause admissions for 2021-2022 admissions cycle, funding for positions will be drawn primarily from departmental resources.
- March 3, 2025: Application opens in UFunds
- March 21, 2025: DFF applications are due
- March 28, 2025: 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
- Olivia Lafferty
English - Courtney Lau
Theatre Arts and Performance Studies - Fosca Maddaloni
History of Art and Architecture - Sarah Pearlman Shapiro
History - Noah Tetenbaum
Religious Studies
Past 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
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
Ethel 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
Alyce 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
Natalie 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