Penn Arts & Sciences Welcomes New Faculty

Penn Arts & Sciences welcomed 18 new standing faculty members for the 2019-2020 academic year.

The School is pleased to welcome:

Karun Adusumilli, Assistant Professor of Economics. Adusumilli studies various topics in econometrics including causal inference, missing data and dynamic treatment allocation. He received his Ph.D. from London School of Economics.

Francesco Agostinelli, Assistant Professor of Economics. Agostinelli studies applied microeconomics, labor economics, applied econometrics, specializing in child development and the determinants of children’s skill formation, public economics, and education. He received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

Julia Alekseyeva, Assistant Professor of English. Alekseyeva studies global activist media, film history and theory, including avant-garde documentary tradition in Japan and France in the 1960s, transnational and comparative arts, global graphic narratives. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Anne Berg, Assistant Professor of History. Berg studies modern German and European history, specializing in urban history, the history of the welfare state, and history of food, waste, and war. Her Ph.D. is from University of Michigan.

Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Associate Professor of Romance Languages. Casamayor-Cisneros studies Afro-diaspora and Blackness in the Americas, twentieth-century and contemporary Caribbean, Latin American and Latino literatures and cultures, and post-Cold War Latin America. She comes to Penn from University of Connecticut and earned her Ph.D. from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

Yun Ding, Assistant Professor of Biology. Ding studies phenotypic novelties resulting from genetic changes during evolution with a focus on how behavioral diversity arises through genetic changes that alter neuronal function. Her Ph.D. is from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Reyhan Durmaz, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. Durmaz studies Syriac Christianity, Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, religion and society in late antiquity, hagiography, storytelling, and forms and expressions of popular piety. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University.

Simcha Gross, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Gross studies ancient Judaism, Rabbinic literature, Syriac Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and Babylonian Jewish society. He comes to Penn from University of California, Irvine and earned Ph.D.s from Yale University and Yeshiva University.

Sukaina Hirji, Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Hirji studies ancient philosophy, with a particular focus on Aristotle, ethics, the application of ancient philosophical thought to contemporary issues in ethics, political philosophy, and metaphysics. She comes to Penn from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and received her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Jasmine Johnson, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies. Johnson studies diaspora theory, dance and performance studies, ethnography, black feminisms, West African politics and culture, and urban renewal and gentrification. She comes to Penn from Brown University and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Margaux Luflade, Assistant Professor of Economics. Luflade studies applied microeconomics, economics of education, labor economics, econometrics, school choice mechanisms, and applicant behavior. She earned her Ph.D. from Duke University.

Anna Papafragou, Professor of Linguistics. Papafragou studies experimental semantics and pragmatics, exploring how language relates to other cognitive systems and interacts with the development of children’s cognitive and communicative abilities. She comes to Penn from University of Delaware and her Ph.D. is from University College London.

Wendy Roth, Associate Professor of Sociology. Roth studies sociology of race, ethnicity, and immigration, specializing in Latin America, transnational processes, multiracial populations and identities, and the implications of genetic ancestry testing for conceptions and attitudes about race. She comes to Penn from University of British Columbia and earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Martin Salzmann, Associate Professor of Linguistics. Salzmann studies syntactic theory, syntax-morphology interface, syntax-semantics interface, micro-variation, understudied languages and varieties such as Germanic dialects and Finno-Ugric languages. He comes to Penn from University of Leipzig and received his Ph.D. from University of Leiden.

Anna Schapiro, Assistant Professor of Psychology. Schapiro studies cognitive neuroscience and memory. Learning, neural network modeling, sleep, consolidation, and hippocampal-cortical interactions. Her Ph.D. is from Princeton University.

Benjamin Shestakofsky, Assistant Professor of Sociology. Shestakofsky studies the sociology of work, especially how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange; technology and society, economic sociology, qualitative research methods, organizations, and sociological theory. His Ph.D. is from University of California, Berkeley.

Xi Song, Associate Professor of Sociology. Song studies the origins of social inequality from a multigenerational perspective, social stratification and mobility, demography, population studies, family, and China and East Asia. She comes to Penn from University of Chicago and earned her Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles.

Daniel Wodak, Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Wodak studies metaethics, philosophy of law, and social and political philosophy, as well as the ethical dimensions of using generic terms for social groups, conflicts in social and legal norms, and ethical issues at the center of public policy. He comes to Penn from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.