Many �ֲ���ý faculty have received grants, awards, and other acknowledgements of their strong teaching and research. Earlier, we highlighted two English faculty — Jessica Anthony and Myronn Hardy — who received Guggenheim Fellowships and two faculty Fulbright grantees — Elena Maker Castro and Michel Droge. Read on for more great faculty news. 

Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Carrie Diaz Eaton received support from the Hewlett Foundation. Diaz Eaton leads the Institute for a Racially Just, Inclusive, and Open STEM Education (RIOS Institute). The Hewlett Foundation renewed their support for RIOS with a two-year, $1-million fund for general operating support.

Associate Director of Counseling & Psychological Services Allison Brown was named one of the 2026 Harriett Copher Haynes Leadership Mentoring Award winners. This award, given by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, comes specifically from the Inclusive Excellence and Equity Committee. The award celebrates and supports “talented mental health professionals who belong to an identity group that experiences systemic barriers.”

Emily Kane, professor of sociology, was awarded the Periclean Faculty Leader course grant. This program is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the Eugene M. Lang Foundation. The Periclean Faculty Leader grants support enhancements to an existing course — in this case, “Sociology of Gender” — to “empower students to make positive change in their communities and help revitalize democracy.”

Media love for the upcoming �ֲ���ý Dance Festival from The Boston Globe, Portland Press Herald, and WBUR 

From July 10 through 31, campus will be buzzing with activity from the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival — a yearly dance experience that offers dance training and performances from renowned artists and draws audiences from Maine and beyond. 

In May, as a “not-to-miss” cultural event happening in Maine this summer. Also that month, The Boston Globe featured BDF on their list of

Then in June, WBUR sang BDF’s praises — “bracing for a bold program” — in a piece headlined . They highlighted “The Marthaodyssey,” which former Martha Graham Dance Company member Jesse Factor will present on the Schaeffer Theatre stage. The mishmash of drag performance and Graham technique imagines what might have happened if Graham had choreographed Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition tour. “A trip to Maine may be in order for those who enjoy contemporary dance,” writes WBUR’s Shira Laucharoen.

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Members of the �ֲ���ý College Youth Community Action and Transformation Lab urge adults to talk politics with young people in the Portland Press Herald

Nathaniel Zuckerberg ’26 and Linnaea Herring, a senior at Yarmouth High School, authored a piece for the Portland Press Herald Both Herring and Zuckerberg are members of the Youth Community Action and Transformation Lab led by �ֲ���ý Assistant Professor of Psychology Elena Maker Castro. This lab conducts research for the Can We? Project — an initiative that provides Maine high schoolers with the communication tools needed to participate as engaged citizens in a democracy. Zuckerberg and Herring “ask every adult with a young person in their life to start that political conversation you may have avoided” because they have found that teenagers are “ready and eager to practice dialogue.”

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�ֲ���ý Film Festival covered by News Center Maine, WGME

News Center Maine and students Shelter Gimbel-Sherr ’27 of Seattle and Nate Shore ’27 of Kennebunkport, Maine, about the 2026 �ֲ���ý Film Festival. The festival, which ran from May 12 to 17 and was entirely organized by �ֲ���ý students, featured over 45 films as well as panels of filmmakers, professors, and students.

Gimbel-Sherr and Shore highlighted how the festival has a special interest in promoting work from filmmakers and actors from Maine, including a Maine filmmakers panel that featured distinguished guests such as screenwriter Desi Van Til, and actors Dustin Tucker, Matthew Delamater, and Xander Berkeley. Shore talked about focusing on bringing together student filmmakers from Maine schools such as Southern Maine Community College, Colby College, and �ֲ���ý College. He said, “it should make a really great collaboration between the colleges.”

On WGME, students how the festival hopes to bring film to the larger Maine community. One way they do this is by making the festival completely free and open to the public. Manogue said that the festival board wants to “make film more accessible to all of our community members,” and Benningfield added that accessibility is “one of the driving factors in our mission.”  

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The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education covers appointment of Victoria Neason Wallace 

In a story headlined , The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education features Victoria Neason Wallace, who was just named vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid.

“She comes to her new role from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she has been serving as executive director of strategic initiatives within the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid,” the paper writes. “Before Colby, Neason Wallace was senior assistant director for student volunteers in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.”

Neason Wallace will join �ֲ���ý on July 1.

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Portland Press Herald and Maine Public highlight Phyllis Graber Jensen’s career retrospective at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art

Phyllis Graber Jensen — director of photography and video for the college — is the subject of a career retrospective on display at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art from June 12 to Sept. 19 called Phyllis Graber Jensen: Picture Stories.

The Portland Press Herald on display at Maine art museums this summer. This retrospective features photos from throughout Jensen’s career, and the Herald notes that “throughout, what emerges is her commitment to the medium as a critical mode of communication and historical preservation.”

Maine Public’s State of the Art featured Graber Jensen in a . Titled “Picture Stories,” host Heather McDougall leads Graber Jensen through a 28-minute interview about her life (including her groundbreaking advocacy for women in sport as a teenager) and her career. McDougall asked about Graber Jensen’s transition in 1995 from a hard news environment in Boston, working for the Boston Herald and shooting breaking news and icons such as Leonard Bernstein, to communications and marketing work at �ֲ���ý in 1995: “Was it something you were seeking out or did it just sort of happen and then you just leaned into it?” 

“I was skeptical that I could make the transition from being a journalist to being a marketing photographer,” Graber Jensen said. “But in the end I think the people that I work with, some of whom had journalism backgrounds, and the place that �ֲ���ý is, allowed us to realize that we’re not journalists, but we use the tools of journalism in terms of storytelling. And I think that’s where the exhibition title came from in terms of ‘Picture Stories.’

“I also believe that �ֲ���ý understood the value of using images to tell the story of �ֲ���ý. And at one point I worked with a colleague who was also a talented photographer, Mark Glass. And so we were producing a lot of photography and that became part of the storytelling tradition and we had an editorial director who was very supportive — Jay Burns — of visual storytelling. It became easier and easier for me to be who I was and pursue my interests and way of telling the story.”

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Commencement in the Sun Journal: Regalia and reveling

In a , photographer Russ Dillingham captured moments of joy, hilarity, bystanders playing hacky sack, and the classic moment of “check the mirror” before walking across the stage at Coram to receive a diploma. Not to mention speakers Sebenele G. Lukhele ’26 and bestselling author and honorand Deborah E. Harkness. 

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Mara Tieken talks about the challenges faced by rural students once they land at elite colleges, to Inside Higher Education and Education Week.

In an article, headlined “,” Inside Higher Education Editor-in-Chief Sara Custer draws on Professor of Education Mara Tieken’s work as inspiration for an opinion piece. 

Custer references a conversation Tieken had on IHE’s podcast The Key throughout her piece, including the way Tieken advocates for colleges to rethink how they support rural students once they arrive on campuses far from their homes, not just in terms of miles, but in cultural markers. 

Tieken argues that colleges need a vocabulary around the rural experience, not unlike the way they approach the influence of race and class on students’ access and experience of higher ed. “We don’t have that vocabulary for how geography matters,” Tieken told The Key on 

Through her research, Tieken also found that identifying as rural can help students see the benefits of their background that may be hidden by negative stereotypes about rural communities in pop culture and the media. “Whether or not it’s a part of your identity, you’re still facing the same barriers that are tied to those identity markers. And so, if you don’t see it as such you internalize it [and think], ‘It’s about me. It’s my fault. I’m not right. I’m just not good enough,’” she said. “They need to hear these messages where their rurality is actually celebrated and they can see how it is an asset in their life.”

Tieken was also quoted in a June 11 story in Education Week headlined Tieken is an expert on the pitfalls of school closures, which are often perceived as a way to save money.

“The assumption is just so baked into the logic of closure decisions that it’s assumed closures will save money, so it can be really hard for leaders to combat that thinking,” Tieken told Education Week. “This is a really important piece of evidence as districts navigate these conversations and decisions.”

Sun Journal, Mainebiz highlight new fitness and well-being center

The Lewiston to construct a new $45-million fitness facility, the Stoddard Fitness and Well-Being Center. A $10 million donation from �ֲ���ý alumni Jon W. ’90 and Jocelyn Stoddard Brayshaw ’88, P’25 brought the project within $4 million of its $31 million fundraising goal, the Sun Journal reported. 

, sharing that the college is set to break ground on the project on May 1. The 8,500-square-foot facility will include upgrades to preexisting facilities, new locker rooms and coaches’ offices, and a yoga and Pilates studio, among other infrastructure supporting fitness and well-being. 

High-Profile announces news of Bonney Science Center’s architectural Honor award

The Boston Society for Architecture recognized the Bonney Science Center and its designer, Boston-based architecture firm Payette during the society’s annual award gala, . 

Payette’s design for Bonney earned an Honor award, the highest category of design award bestowed by the BSA, for Built Design, Educational Facilities. Bonney’s construction, completed in 2021, marked a significant advancement in �ֲ���ý’ scientific facilities. The center is home to cutting-edge teaching and research spaces for chemistry, biology, and neuroscience, in addition to classrooms and study spaces.

The BSA bestowed a total of 31 design awards to structures in and around Boston to “collectively recognize the power of the built environment to empower communities, promote change, and build a more sustainable and equitable Boston,” High-Profile wrote. the news.

Alabama Public Radio features Anelise Hanson Shrout in its St. Patrick’s Day coverage

Alabama’s WBHM, a public radio station, highlighted Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Anelise Hanson Shrout’s research about unlikely philanthropists during the Great Famine in Ireland in the mid-19th century. Reporter Andrew Gelderman, who hosts Alabama’s All Things Considered, asked Shrout about a group of enslaved people from Lowndesboro, Alabama, whose story she included in her 2024 book .

This group raised money for the starving Irish, after their enslaver, Morgan Smith, asked them in the spring of 1847 to sacrifice for the Irish.

“He doesn’t suggest that they give money,” Shrout told Gelderman. “He suggests that they give up one meal a day to aid the starving Irish. These enslaved people go away and confer with one another and they come back and they say, ‘No, we’re not gonna give up one meal a day, but what we will do is give you this $50 that we have.’”

To learn more about why this act of generosity was so remarkable, listen , which aired on March 17. 

Carolina González Valencia premieres her film How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps to accolades at the True/False Film Fest

Carolina González Valencia, associate professor of art and visual culture, premiered her film How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps at the in Columbia, Missouri, earlier this month to glowing reviews and mentions in multiple publications. The film is about her mother Beatriz, a Latin American domestic worker who has long resided in the U.S. and was the family’s sole breadwinner when González Valencia was growing up. González Valencia recently told �ֲ���ý News that her goal was to create a narrative that fully captured her mother’s experience — as a domestic worker in the U.S., but also as a full and complex person.

At the True/False festival, which was celebrating its 23rd year, reviewers lauded her efforts, with publications such as naming How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps one of the five best films at the festival and The Criterion Collection’s The Daily for receiving the 2026 True Life Fund selection for her directorial debut. 

recommended the documentary (which includes fantastical elements) as one of “four world premieres (and one North American) that are worth checking out, whether you’re on the ground at this epicenter for non-fiction fanatics or are just keeping your eyes peeled for these films’ future festival stops.” Their mini review: 

“Carolina González Valencia’s debut feature feels particularly potent amid our current political climate. Confronting the prospect of being separated from her mother Beatriz, a Latin American domestic worker who has long resided in the U.S. and is the family’s sole breadwinner, Valencia copes by creating a work of fiction that’s rooted in truth. Elements of docu-fiction, dance and quotidian routines culminate in a story that is as personal for Valencia as it is her and Beatriz’s overarching community. The result is an attempt to disrupt preconceived notions about labor, immigration, and belonging by way of sparking creative joy. “

In a thoughtful, , The Maneater said González Valencia’s “blending and blurring of reality leaves the audience questioning their interpretation of the film and of the people they overlook in their own lives.” Meanwhile St. Louis magazine, which described the whole festival as long feeling like “a homecoming for hip Missourians,” about immigration. Reviewer Max Havey said, “The magic of this film is the way it consciously removes and applies layers of artifice along the way to tell Beatriz’s story.”

Mara Tieken discusses school closures in The Maine Monitor, Bangor Daily News

Professor of Education Mara Tieken spoke to The Maine Monitor about school closures in Maine, offering context for a . 

Enrollment in Maine’s public schools has dropped 6.6 percent over the past decade, the Monitor reported, leading to school closures or consolidation and leaving a host of empty school buildings across the state, particularly in rural areas. Declining enrollment, likely a result of Maine’s aging population, and financial challenges are the primary reasons why schools close, Tieken said. 

“There are less young families, less young children,” she said.

Schools in smaller communities, with smaller tax bases, may be driven to closure when they can’t afford to fund school improvements, Tieken explained. At the same time, as a school’s enrollment drops, the state will decrease funding for the school per Maine’s cost-per-pupil formula. 

Lawmakers in the Maine State Legislature are currently debating whether to create a $5 million fund that would help towns turn vacant school buildings into housing. the story.

Women in Academia Report publicizes �ֲ���ý faculty tenure among women professors

Among the seven �ֲ���ý faculty members who earned tenure and promotion to associate professor this spring, five were women, the . (There were nine total promotions announced at �ֲ���ý this semester.)

They include Yunkyoung (Yun) L. Garrison, associate professor of psychology; Lisa R. Gilson, associate professor of politics; Seulgie Claire Lim, associate professor of politics; Zhenzhen Lu, associate professor of Chinese; and Sarah B. Lynch, associate professor of classical and medieval studies and history. Their expertise includes everything from psychological well-being among people of color to literature in imperial China to education in medieval France.

Kennebec Journal covers career-best basketball performance for Mya Hicks ’27

Women’s basketball player Mya Hicks ’27 of Ann Arbor, Mich., gave a career-best performance during a game against Smith College on March 7, the . Hicks scored 19 points and hit five 3-pointers, leading �ֲ���ý to an 18-point comeback and victory in overtime — and securing the team’s spot in the NCAA Division III tournament’s Sweet 16, the Journal reported.

Hicks, who the Journal calls a “utility-type player,” only took the game-tying shot, which was drawn up for another player, because she ran the play wrong. With a split-second decision, Hicks stepped up to the challenge.

“My role is very specific on this team, and I do that role with pride,” Hicks told the Journal. “In that moment, I knew my teammates had all the confidence in me. I had all the confidence in that moment.” 

Head Coach Alison Montgomery, who describes Hicks as “very strong,” was not at all surprised by her fantastic performance.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course she did that,’ … just knowing how capable she is,” Montgomery told the Journal.

Theri Pickens’ poetry collection recommended in The Seattle Times

In advance of April’s poetry month, The Seattle Times ran a recommendation from the Seattle Public Library of four poetry collections, including Charles A. Dana Professor of English and Africana Therí Pickens’ debut collection of poetry, What Had Happened Was, published by Duke University Press in March 2025. 

Pickens, librarian writes, “seamlessly explores personal narrative, Black American life, systemic injustices, pop culture, history and chronic disability.”

See . 

Michael Rocque comments on a controversial bad neighbors case in the Bangor Daily News

Michael Rocque comments on a controversial bad neighbors case in the Bangor Daily News

News stories about some high profile poisonings of trees by homeowners in posh Maine locations who apparently wanted better views have captivated national readers. The New York Times reported on incidents in Camden and in Rockport in recent years and the fallout — along with fines — continues. The Bangor Daily News , who studies criminology, about the poisoning in Camden, where a “Missouri couple paid more than $1.8 million in fines, settlements, and cleanup costs after they poisoned a neighbor’s trees and contaminated the town’s only public beach in the process.”

Rocque told the BDN, “It was a bit of a stunning example of somebody who’s just like, ‘The rules don’t apply to me.’” Neighborliness and sharing natural resources are values widely shared in Maine, Rocque said. Seeing people act in ways that violate those norms is “a shock to the senses.”

reports on Valerie Smith ’75 retiring as Swarthmore College president

Valerie Smith ’75 is retiring as president of Swarthmore College at the conclusion of the 2026–2027 academic year, .

Smith has held the role since 2015, when she became the college’s first Black president. She also serves as Swarthmore’s inaugural Roy J. and Linda G. Shanker Presidential Chair.

“Serving as Swarthmore’s 15th president has been one of the great privileges of my life,” said Smith in a statement to the Swarthmore community. “Swarthmore is defined by the students whose curiosity and conviction inspire us all; the faculty whose teaching and scholarship expand the boundaries of knowledge; by the staff members whose dedication sustains our shared work; and by alumni, families, and friends.”

Prior to joining Swarthmore, Smith was dean of the college and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University, and a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Vermont Daily Chronicle on Hannah Sessions ’99 launching a Vermont Senate campaign

Hannah Sessions ’99 is running for a seat in the Vermont Senate representing Addison County, the .

“I am running because my life experience has taught me not only to work hard but also to ask questions and listen, three skills that will help me represent you in Montpelier,” Sessions said in her campaign announcement on social media. “I want to build pragmatic coalitions to help improve the lives of current and future Vermonters.”

A Democrat and native of Addison County, Sessions now owns and operates goat dairy farm Blue Ledge with her husband. If elected, Sessions would be the first full-time farmer in the Vermont Senate, the Chronicle reported.

Sessions, who is also a painter, studied studio art and political science at �ֲ���ý before moving home to Vermont, where her family ties date back generations. Her father William Sessions is a federal court judge in Vermont.

Hadley Blodgett ’26 of Buckfield, Maine, spends a lot of time thinking about just that — time.

In a laboratory in Carnegie Science Hall, as she conducts research for her senior thesis, Blodgett gazes over 7,000 years of history condensed into a sediment core extracted from a lake in northern Greenland. As a double major in earth and climate sciences and music, with a minor in religious studies, Blodgett enjoys reflecting on the way that time has constructed and altered her fields of study. Sometimes, when the immensity of the sediment sample’s past hits her, she thinks, “How am I holding this?”

“To think about the scale of what’s in front of me is just kind of crazy,” Blodgett says.

How exactly did sediment buried deep beneath Arctic waters find its way to the surface, then to �ֲ���ý? The story crosses oceans and icebergs, tundras and deserts, but connects to �ֲ���ý through Blodgett’s thesis advisor, Associate Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Nick Balascio.

As a paleoclimatologist, Balascio studies how Earth’s climate system has changed across millennia, primarily through analyzing lake sediment cores, which are layers of mud, dirt, and organic material extracted from the bottom of lakes in long tubes.

“Those lakes are natural history books that record what’s going on around the watershed of the lake as well as within the lake itself,” Balascio says. 

In 2022, Balascio helped launch the Wandel Dal Project, a multi-national scientific effort investigating climate conditions of ancient Greenland, with support from a National Science Foundation grant. The project is studying Wandel Dal — a remote, uninhabited arctic desert valley less than 500 miles from the North Pole in Greenland’s Peary Land. Beneath its icy facade, Peary Land is a wealth of Greenlandic history, the one-time home of the island’s first people who crossed into the region from northern Canada. 

Over the past 4,500 years, Peary Land was inhabited and then abandoned by three different groups of indigenous people. The Wandel Dal scientists hypothesize that migration in and out of the region corresponded with climate fluctuations — people occupied the area in warmer climate periods, then left when the climate began to cool again and the area became more difficult to live in because of dwindling natural resources. 

“These are people with stone tool technology living in a pretty harsh and foreboding environment,” Balascio says.

By understanding Peary Land’s past climate contexts, scientists will gain a better overall understanding of how changing climate conditions affect the Arctic, which is already warming about four times faster than average global warming rates under anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change.

“There is very little coverage of this high Arctic region in terms of what we know about the past climate history,” Balascio says. “It’s right at the margins of the Greenland ice sheet, so understanding the sensitivity to climate change is really important.” 

In the summer of 2024, Balascio and colleagues traveled to Peary Land to collect lake sediment cores. They flew to Svalbard, Norway, then chartered a plane to eastern Greenland, flew in a prop plane to Wandel Dal, and finally rode in a helicopter to their research site, where stone tools and tent sites made by ancient humans still littered the barren landscape.

“Working in these extremely remote and remarkable landscapes is inspiring as an earth scientist, to see the natural beauty that the earth has,” Balascio says.

It was the end of July, the beginning of the brief and only time of year when Wandel Dal’s lakes are not frozen, a necessity for obtaining lake sediment cores. Balascio and colleagues set up coring platforms on inflatable rafts and guided large, heavy tubes called corers overboard into the 200-foot-deep lakes to collect six-meter long sediment samples.

The sediment cores, several of which are now stored in �ֲ���ý’ core storage facility in Carnegie’s basement, have been a fantastic resource for students, Balascio says. In addition to Blodgett, Fletcher Libre ’26 of Alta, Utah, and Zach Van Dusen ’25 also used the cores for their senior theses in earth and climate sciences. The samples “are very precious,” Balascio says. “I feel fortunate that we have those here at �ֲ���ý and that �ֲ���ý students can literally put their hands on these really remarkable records and learn about an environment that they might never travel to but can experience in some way.” 

While Blodgett hasn’t been to the Wandel Dal region, she did have the opportunity to visit Greenland during a trip with Balascio to Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, for Greenland Science Week in November 2025. The trip was funded by Balascio’s NSF grant, which includes funds for supporting student research and mentorship. Blodgett was so excited by the opportunity that she hardly allowed herself to believe it was real until she was on the way to Greenland. 

“This is just too cool to happen,” Blodgett thought to herself. “And then, I was on a plane.”

Presenting her thesis research during the conference and at a community outreach event, Blodgett contributed new scientific discoveries that could have implications far beyond her own project. 

When she began her thesis research on the sediment cores in the summer of 2025, Blodgett was surprised by how clearly she could tell time from changes in the sample’s composition. The sediment follows a fairly consistent pattern — denser sediment for what were likely warmer climate periods, less dense sediment for cooler periods — until the top four centimeters.

Blodgett initially thought she was doing something wrong when she began analyzing that top section and had trouble pulling out a “plug,” a sample of sediment removed for detailed analysis. She took a closer look and observed thick, laminated layers of sediment building up the top and newest portion, strikingly different from the millimeter-sized, less dense layers of sediment that comprised the rest of the sample.

“Something in the climate is causing the environment to react in such a way that it makes this sediment deposit in a different way than it has for the entire rest of the record,” Blodgett says. 

She’s hypothesizing that this top portion of the sample is reflecting changes caused by anthropogenic climate change.

“I don’t know why [sediment cores] fascinate me, but I just really enjoy working with them,” Blodgett says. “Before I started all this, I had no clue what they were. I’m always open to doing new things.”

Trying new things has defined Blodgett’s �ֲ���ý career. She arrived on campus planning to major in history but pivoted to earth and climate sciences after taking the Short Term course “Soil Geography of New England” and realizing how much she enjoyed working with soil — and the way that this work allowed her to discover more about the Maine land she grew up exploring.

“I definitely have an appreciation for just how important [the land] can be culturally and the need to treat it with respect,” Blodgett says. 

This idea of respect for the land and awareness of its value to its inhabitants, past and present, is a central tenet of the Wandel Dal Project. As a cradle of the country’s civilization, Peary Land is of great cultural significance to the Greenlandic people. The Wandel Dal scientists are supporting a Greenland National Museum initiative to rename the region — currently named for American explorer Robert Peary — to “Inutoqqat Nunaat,” meaning “land of the ancient people” in Greenlandic. A team of archaeologists are also a part of the Wandel Dal Project and investigating the human history of northern Greenland. 

When he began his career as a paleoclimatologist, Balascio wasn’t particularly focused on the human aspect of the landscapes he was studying. But, over time, as he began collaborating with archaeologists to study Viking settlements in Norway or the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, where human impact on the land is undeniable, Balascio became more and more interested in understanding how human history is interlaced with climate history. Working with the archaeologists in Wandel Dal in particular “became a very enriching experience and gave me a new perspective on this field of study that I had been working on previously for a decade,” Balascio says.

During Greenland Science Week, while chatting with scientists and archaeologists, and showing eager kids artifacts from Wandel Dal, Blodgett, too, was reminded of the key role that people and culture play in her field.

“You get so disconnected from the ‘people part’ sometimes in climate science, even though people are such an important part of it,” Blodgett says.

The trip to Nuuk was also an opportunity for Blodgett to field advice from scientists about graduate school and research as she prepares for life after �ֲ���ý. Balascio has been an attentive mentor in that sense as well, Blodgett says. While guiding her through her thesis research, he’s helped her explore opportunities at �ֲ���ý and beyond. 

“No matter where I end up after May,” Blodgett says, “I know for certain that the trajectory of my career has been changed because of the guidance shown to me by Professor Balascio and so many essential people in the �ֲ���ý community.”

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Numbers 2524995 to �ֲ���ý College and 2126047 to College of William & Mary. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Theater Martin E. Andrucki, a beloved and brilliant teacher and scholar who secured a seat at the liberal arts table for �ֲ���ý theater, died Feb. 8, 2026, at age 80. A faculty member for 47 years, Andrucki was among the longest-serving �ֲ���ý professors in the college’s history.

Raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Andrucki earned a bachelor’s degree in English, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia University and a doctoral degree in English from Harvard University. 

Andrucki’s arrival at �ֲ���ý for the 1974–75 academic year coincided with theater becoming a major for the first time. Yet the department, which at the time housed both theater and rhetoric, was at a low point due to retirements and departures. “It was on the verge of expiring,” recalled Andrucki in 2021. Some at the college were openly questioning the legitimacy of theater as a liberal arts discipline. 

As with other young professors who joined �ֲ���ý in the 1970s and 1980s and helped to build academic programs, Andrucki arrived brimming with gusto; an early student described him as bringing “a fierce intellect and a wise-ass New York City sense of humor” to �ֲ���ý.

The task before him 50 years ago, Andrucki recalled, was to “create a curriculum that emphasized literature and theory and producing serious drama on our stages. We wanted our majors to be broadly educated in theater and drama and to see theater as one of the liberal arts.”

During retirement events in 2021, proof of his success resounded in the words of theater alumni. Theater at �ֲ���ý “equipped me with hands-on experiences I apply nearly every day in life,” recalled Bobbi Bell Birkemeier ’78. “Time management and making deadlines, thinking quickly on one’s feet, improvisation, how to take criticism and direction in a positive fashion, how to direct and delegate, and how to ‘play nicely with others’ in working collaboratively.”

And from his first days on campus, his students felt Andrucki’s intellect and generosity, his lofty standards coupled with a belief in their potential for success. “Marty was completely invested in our work in the classroom and onstage,” Sarah Pearson ’75 said in 2021. “Marty made me believe that anything was possible, and his confidence in me — in all of us — was invaluable and gave me the boost I needed to face the next stage of life.”

“He always seemed to focus on the big picture, the big idea, if you will. Plot. Character. Thought. Diction. Music and spectacle,” said James Lapan ’86. For Amanda San Roman ’17, Andrucki was a “steady and grounding force in my �ֲ���ý experience. His subtle humor, wealth of intelligence, and supportive nature never went unnoticed by anyone he interacted with.”

Andrucki rose swiftly through the academic ranks. In 1975, he was promoted to assistant professor and that year began his decades-long service as department chair. He earned tenure in 1983, was promoted to full professor in 1990, and in 2001 was appointed to a Dana Professorship, one of the most prestigious faculty honors at �ֲ���ý.

Though �ֲ���ý theater was ripe for renewal in the mid-1970s, Andrucki was building on a firm foundation. Two years before his arrival, �ֲ���ý had named its theater on College Street in honor of Lavinia Miriam Schaeffer, who retired in 1972 after leading the �ֲ���ý theater program since 1938.

As Andrucki noted in 2021, Schaeffer was a champion of the Little Theater Movement that emerged in the early 1900s in the U.S., which emphasized authenticity over grandiosity, “aiming to produce challenging drama in an intimate atmosphere,” he said. The vibe always resonated with Andrucki. “Let’s remember Lavinia and those values as we move ahead,” he said in 2021.

At �ֲ���ý, he taught courses on theater history, dramatic literature, directing, and playwriting. He directed more than 50 theatrical productions at �ֲ���ý, in the U.S., and abroad. His directing ranged widely: classical and Shakespearean works such as Antigone, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; European modern and political theater including Three Sisters, Endgame, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle; American and contemporary plays such as Bus Stop, The Skin of Our Teeth, Eurydice, and Love/Sick; as well as original and experimental projects including his own Marie and the Nutcracker and the radio-play production Radio Waves. 

His can-do spirit inspired his students. In 1981, he scoured local junkyards to find the right prop for a production of Sam Shepard’s The Unseen Hand: a busted-up 1957 Ford sedan, hauled straight into the Schaeffer Theatre carpentry shop, where Andrucki chose to stage the avant-garde play.

Every other Short Term from 1999 to 2019, Andrucki and Kati Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, led students to Budapest and Prague for the course “Central European Theater and Film,” the college’s longest-running off-campus Short Term program. “And yes, Marty learned to speak and read Hungarian,” said Vecsey, a Hungarian herself, noting the difficulty that English speakers have with the language.

“Marty and I watched many great, and many boring, theater productions together over the years,” Vecsey said. “When we would go to the theater, Marty always made sure to get an aisle seat, to make sure he had a quick way to escape if the show was unbearable.”

Learning Hungarian was just another example of Andrucki’s smarts, streetwise and otherwise. “There was this mysterious skill that fired his intellectual life,” Vecsey said, “a capacity to explore new territories without forgetting the old ones.” Andrucki brought “profound knowledge, wisdom, and humor into every room [he] entered, both as a director and as a professor,” said Maddy Shmalo ’19.

While he could be the smartest person in the room, Andrucki was often the most welcoming. “He seemed an untouchable mad genius to me at times, but at the same time a friend to sit and shoot the breeze with,” Chuck Richardson ’86 said during the 2021 retirement celebration.

A course with Andrucki, recalled writer Elizabeth Strout ’77 during a 2019 visit to campus, was not only one of her favorites, but also influenced her writing as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of fiction. In the course, Andrucki guided his students through plays by classic American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. “He loved those people so much that I loved them,” Strout said. 

From reading the plays, Strout learned a valuable lesson about writing authentic dialogue. 

“When you write dialogue in a story or a novel, there has to be a translation between what people are actually saying to the page. You can’t write what people are actually saying, because it’s too boring. You’ve got to translate it to the page in a way that sounds authentic.”

In 1979, Andrucki was named a Mellon Fellow to conduct research into the teaching of theater. In 1987 he joined a directors’ forum at Columbia University, doing advanced studies with Liviu Ciulei, Lee Breuer, Adrian Hall, and others. He was a professor of English at the Harvard Summer School from 1993 to 1996. In 2002, he earned a Fulbright Scholar award for research in Hungary.

He wrote four plays, including Manny’s War. Staged at �ֲ���ý in 2000 in collaboration with The Public Theatre of Lewiston, the play helped a local man, Murray Schwartz, reconcile his feelings of failure as a World War II soldier.

Schwartz, like Andrucki, was a New Yorker transplanted to Maine. He had headed to war with pride as an avenging Jew, and earned a Combat Infantry Badge, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, but then felt shame when, as a prisoner of war captured during the Battle of the Bulge, he resorted to stealing a fellow prisoner’s bread. “The play caught the inner struggle,” Schwartz said. “Not the generals’ strategies, but the betrayal of the will.” 

As Andrucki wrote in �ֲ���ý Magazine, the play’s opening night at Schaeffer Theatre saw Murray Schwartz “watching his wartime pain, psychological and physical, played out on stage. He was surrounded by family and friends, �ֲ���ý people and Lewiston–Auburn citizens, a full house serving witness to a fellow American’s story.” The play was nominated for the New Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association. 

Andrucki was a prolific writer. He wrote a series of 15 critical essays published by the Portland Stage Company on topics ranging from love and lying in Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love to the handicap of virtue in Ted Tally’s Terra Nova. Among his hundreds of essays were 108 audience guides as a humanities scholar and dramaturge for two of Maine’s professional theaters, Portland Stage Company and The Public Theatre.

His writing appeared in Modern Philology, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, and The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. In the early 1990s, he was host and writer of Wide Angle, a weekly television show on Maine Public focused on Maine filmmakers. 

Not all his writing was theater-focused. In January 1981, he wrote a nostalgic essay recalling his childhood in the Bronx, and the memories of heating a home with coal, a fuel that made a resurgence during that historically cold winter. “It’s the childhood I really had,” he wrote. “For me, the rattling chute and dusty bin, the gritty ashcans and the pungent smell, are all redolent of New York in the last days of its unruffled pre-eminence, when televisions had round screens and no one had heard of the Sun Belt.” 

Heating with coal in his Maine home created a connection with his son, Max, then 3 years old, the young boy being dazzled by the heat that poured forth from a pile of black rocks, “a moment of connection between my childhood and his, a New York memory for my son from Maine.”

When he retired in 2021, Andrucki had served �ֲ���ý for 47 years, a tenure matched only by the late Karl Woodcock, professor of physics. To honor his career, the college’s black box theater was then named the Martin Andrucki Black Box Theater. 

Andrucki treated theater, and his teaching of theater, as both an intellectual discipline and a lived experience. “I teach because I like working in a profession and at a place where intellectual and aesthetic values prevail, where telling the truth, as one understands it, is the objective,” he said, during a retirement event. Drawing on the thinking of the late Princeton scholar and poet Michael Goldman, he went on to explain theater’s power to deliver “total education.”

For students, that meant discovering their “entire being rather than the intellect alone.” Theater, Andrucki said, “engages the whole self,” whether as actor, director, designer, or playwright, in the deepest sense of education: the Latin educare, to lead forth, to draw out what is already present and waiting to be revealed. “Which is what college is supposed to be all about.”

�ֲ���ý has welcomed a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors joined the college during the 2025-2026 academic year. �ֲ���ý News has been introducing them in groups over this semester. This fifth and final installment introduces you to the last of our new faculty hires at �ֲ���ý this year. 

Wesley Gillis, assistant professor of physics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

Collaboration is at the heart of both my teaching and my scholarship. In the classroom, I am focused on implementing team-based learning across the physics curriculum. This approach helps students build effective team dynamics, develop collaborative problem-solving skills, and engage deeply with complex, real-world problems through shared inquiry and discussion.

My research similarly centers on collaborative engagement within a large, international scientific community. As a member of the nEXO collaboration — comprising approximately 200 scientists worldwide — I contribute to the research and development of a next-generation, underground experiment designed to investigate the fundamental nature of the neutrino. Specifically, my lab studies the detection mechanisms, hardware design, and data analysis of vacuum ultraviolet light in liquid xenon. Together, our work aims to answer one of physics’ most profound questions: Is the neutrino its own antiparticle?

What is most exciting in your first year at �ֲ���ý? 

I was excited to play Dvorak’s 9th symphony, the New World Symphony, with the �ֲ���ý College Orchestra in November.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

When a class full of teams has been given a challenging problem, the volume ramps from a dull rumble to a clamorous cacophony of engagement. This is when I know good learning is happening.

Eugene Choo, professor of economics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I specialize in empirical industrial organization and econometrics, with a research focus on marriage matching and the economics of household formation. My work combines structural modeling and econometric identification to study matching markets. Before joining �ֲ���ý College, I taught econometrics, industrial organization, mathematical economics, and intermediate microeconomics. 

What is most exciting in your first year at �ֲ���ý? 

I am excited about joining the vibrant liberal arts community and engaging with �ֲ���ý students. I am also looking forward to exploring the beautiful state of Maine.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students discover economics and how it is used to look at everyday life.

Charlotte Connop, assistant professor of earth and climate sciences

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I’m a metamorphic petrologist and geochronologist. These are fancy words to say that I date the formation of (usually pretty old) metamorphic rocks and try to figure out how these rocks formed. These rocks can help us figure out the driving mechanisms behind processes that happen deep within the Earth that we are unable to directly observe. I’m especially interested in investigating processes that lead to the movement of elements within the Earth, including things like partial melting — where temperatures increase enough to melt rock, with the molten rock able to migrate through the Earth, leading to the transportation of material to a new location.

My teaching focuses reflect these research interests — in my classes, students learn about the rocks that make up our planet and the land we live on, and the different processes that formed and modified these rocks over time. Students learn how elements join together on the atomic scale to make minerals and how those minerals are combined in different proportions to produce different rocks. We focus on connecting these different rocks to tectonic environments to disentangle Earth processes that we are unable to observe ourselves. 

What is most exciting in your first year at �ֲ���ý? 

I’m most excited about getting to know everyone in the �ֲ���ý community! Whether it’s students in class, swinging by office hours or completing a senior thesis with me, or seeing my fellow faculty and staff around campus or in the Den grabbing lunch, everyone has been so welcoming so far. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone more and becoming part of the �ֲ���ý community.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students pull together information from across the semester (and across their courses) to grapple with complex scientific questions. We think about a lot of different time and length scales in earth and climate sciences and to have students be able to think from the nano scale to the macro scale and beyond requires integrating a lot of different concepts, which can be hard to grapple with at times, but so rewarding when put together correctly. 

Carolina González Valencia, associate professor of art and visual culture, was tired of the ways that she saw representations of women like her mother on the screen. She was weary of the ways that she did not see her mother Beatriz on the screen. She hated seeing dynamic people like her mother — who is funny, creative, and opinionated — portrayed as quiet and humble domestic workers. Her mother has a “big personality,” and González Valencia, who is accustomed to using art and film to reach an audience, wanted to create a narrative that captured the complexity of her mother’s experience — as a domestic worker in the U.S., but also as a full and complex person. 

The result is How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps, which is in final post-production this month, and will be complete by the end of the year. A recent grant from Unbound Philanthropy gave the final push to bring the film toward completion. In its early stages, though, the biggest obstacle was finding how to authentically tell a story featuring domestic workers that felt new … and true. 

When González Valencia began the process, she sat down to talk to her mother, Beatriz Valencia, about her work. In these early conversations, she saw her mother shrink into a prescribed role. There didn’t seem room for her mother’s complexities to show up in a film when she approached it as a documentarian. She also was aware of “the complicated waters of having this power of representing another person.” González Valencia began really thinking about how to approach this project — meant to represent a domestic worker in the U.S. — collaboratively. 

González Valencia has frequently drawn on collaboration to access authenticity. In an installation in Beirut in 2018, she posted a question (“Are you afraid you’ll keep moving forever?”) on flyers that hung across the neighborhood where she was in residency and invited responses via text. Her 2019 “Video Postales” featured photographs and videos shared by artists to accompany lines from González Valencia’s writing. The result was surprising and beautiful — accessing something more true than she could have created alone. Tapping into her collaborative instinct as well as her background in performance art, González Valencia engaged her mother in some improvisatory exercises. 

“Let’s pretend I’m a journalist and I’m here to interview you and you’re a very, very accomplished person,” González Valencia said to her mother during the early stages of the film. “What do you want to be very accomplished at?” Her mother immediately responded that she would want to be a famous writer. What emerged was a central fictional character around which the collaborative genre-bending film took shape. 

As soon as the fictional writer emerged as a character that Beatriz played, her mother spoke more freely and truthfully to her daughter. “That fiction allowed us to be more honest,” González Valencia said.

González Valencia likely already knew that this film was going to push against boundaries. Documentary is a complicated genre that sometimes poses as simple or straightforward. 

“I was really interested in pushing what we can do as a documentary. It’s a form that needs to be questioned because it comes from a legacy of a very colonial way of looking at the ‘other.’” González Valencia was not traveling to a new land to represent another culture, but she knew that she could still fall into the patterns of misrepresentation if her mother was not empowered as a collaborator.

González Valencia notes that other artists have blurred genres — drawing from fiction to access the truth. Author Claudia Rankine, for example, is creating a sort of “collage” in her writing, which has served as a model for González Valencia in her art. She also cites two Belgian filmmakers as influences: Chantal Akerman, who explored her own relationship with her mother in genre-blurring documentary films, and Agnès Varda, who blurred fiction and fact in her documentary films. Models like these allowed González Valencia to collaboratively create a documentary about her mother as a domestic worker, who is playing the role of a famous writer in parts of the film. 

As the semester wrapped up, González Valencia traveled to Splendor Omnia just outside of Mexico City, which she described as a dream studio. This is her first feature-length film, so the experience at Splendor Omnia will not only allow her to finish the film in a very high-end way, but it is also offering González Valencia an education. “It’s kind of like a school to me,” she said. 

How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps is the result of what happened when González Valencia and her mother dared to let go of the factual in favor of the truth. Of course deciding upon an approach for the film was only the very beginning. González Valencia’s project has received a slew of grant support. The production of the film has been made possible by support from sources that include the Sundance Film Festival, Abundant Futures Fund, and the LEF fund. The most recent $50,000 grant from Unbound Philanthropy enabled the film to move into post-production.

González Valencia has high hopes for the impact that her film can make. Primarily, she wants to contribute to ongoing conversations about narrative structure, domestic work, and immigrant rights. 

“I don’t believe in the single story,” González Valencia said. And when you are part of a group that gets represented by a superficial, single story, the stakes are higher. “I’m interested in being part of the conversation that complicates it, that shows that there is not one story.”

González Valencia and her mother are certainly pushing back against a single narrative created “from the perspective of pain and trauma.” González Valencia hopes that this film can show that “when we talk about immigrants, when we talk about domestic workers — we are people full of joy and laughter.” Especially now, she hopes the creativity and joy of the film — which includes a musical sequence —  will “help people to feel closer.” 

Basketball (and family) history makes TV and newspaper news

During a 70-66 overtime win against the University of Southern Maine, Elsa Daulerio ’26 became the 22nd �ֲ���ý women’s basketball player to score 1,000 career points, and the  and all reported on the event. Her teammates swarmed the court after the game to celebrate Daulerio, who is the 2025–26 team captain.

The achievement has made Daulerio and her mother, �ֲ���ý Associate Director of Athletics Adrienne Shibles ’91, the second-documented mother-daughter duo in the country to both earn 1,000 career points at the same institution. 

“It means so much,” Daulerio told the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel. “I love her so much. She’s been my idol since I was a little girl. I always looked up to her, and she’s been my No. 1 supporter, along with my family. It’s just so special and I’m honored to be up there with her. She’s the hardest worker I know.”

Like her daughter, Shibles was team captain at �ֲ���ý — twice. She ended her college career with 1,005 career points and went on to coach basketball at Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and Dartmouth before returning to �ֲ���ý.

A �ֲ���ý alum talks to national press after her reality show jackpot

In November, Perla Figuereo ’21 was featured in an after winning Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2, a competitive reality television show based on the fictional thriller Squid Game. Figuereo entered the game with her twin brother Jeffrey Figuereo and her “gameplay came down to being her ‘most authentic self’ and tapping into her emotions,” Marie Claire reported.

The prize for winning the show was $4.56 million, which Figuereo plans to split with her brother. As , Figuereo “was made to play against her brother Geoffrey [sic], putting them both in a difficult position. He decided not to take part, instead encouraging his sister to go on and win the game for the both of them. And she did just that.”

In an, Figuereo discussed her win and reminisced on her time in Lewiston, which she calls her “second home.”

“My strategy was just to be myself,” Figuereo told the Sun Journal. “I’m a very social person. Genuinely one of my passions in life is people, so my strategy was just to get to know people like I do in my everyday life.”

The show, , and , among other outlets, also covered the news.

Francesco Duina visits Maine Calling to talk about inequality

Francesco Duina, professor of sociology, was featured on Maine Public’s Maine Calling program on December 2.

Duina’s new book The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World analyzes the ways in which people think about economic inequality—and the reasoning that leads many to accept the disparities around us. Co-edited with Luca Storti, an associate professor of economic sociology at the University of Turin, Italy, Duina’s collection includes voices from across the globe contributing their perspectives on why we justify and accept economic inequality.

Maine Calling host Jennifer Rooks asked Duina why he chose to look at the logics, or justifications, people have for the great inequality in the world now. 

“The logics or the justifications, are drivers or these inequalities,” Duina responded. “So if we want to understand where they come from or why they are sustained, we want to understand why some people are okay with them. A surprisingly large number of — and diverse — number of people support, to varying degrees, inequalities. We are talking specifically about economic inequalities here. Inequalities of wealth or income.”

Rooks asked Duina about his process, including how he challenges his �ֲ���ý students to consider the topic. “I suspect that people, sometimes, if they are asked, outright, ‘Do you support income inequaity’ might have a different answer then the answer you get when you start to dig down,” Rooks said. 

Duina agreed. “Most people, I think, would probably say ‘No,’” he said. “Though some people will say, ‘I’m perfectly comfortable,’ for whatever reasons. But it’s also true that, as I investigate with students, and I kind of challenge them, it’s also true that most people don’t want perfect equality either. So then the question is, at what point do people become uncomfortable, and at what point do people continue to accept economic inequalities?”

To listen to the full conversation, which included two guest panelists,
Marc Dixon, professor of sociology from Dartmouth College and Megan Tobias Neely, assistant professor of sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, visit �ֲ���ý News interviewed Duina about the topic in November.

�ֲ���ý football success featured in the Portland Press Herald

Head Football Coach Matt Coyne was featured in which ran in the Maine Trust for Local News publications, including the Portland Press Herald, in late October. Coyne noted that �ֲ���ý football is at a turning point this year. “We’ve played, you know, much better complementary football across the board, offensively and defensively,” Coyne said. “I think the biggest thing is in critical moments in some of those games against the top-half teams, we made the plays against Amherst and Tufts; then in some other games, we didn’t.” Coyne pointed to the team’s depth in both offense and defense calling out junior linebacker Ryan Rozich of Cromwell, Conn. leading the NESCAC with 89 tackles, and sophomore Carmel Crunk of Chatsworth, Calif. with 63 tackles.

In the Sun Journal, Darby Ray visualizes a community gathering spot

Lewiston community members are considering the future of The Red Shop at Simard-Payne Memorial Park. Built in 1938, the building was once a machine shop for the mill. Discussions about the possible uses for the building are underway. Darby Ray, who serves as director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and is the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement, was interviewed in a , where she shared her ideas for the future of the building. Ray imagines people coming together at The Red Shop–for family reunions and other celebrations, saying “I think we need more spaces where folks can come together on a chilly winter day like today and maybe share ideas about something, have a forum or a conversation or a square dance. We need places to gather that are easily accessible and low barrier in terms of expense.”

Kamal Kariem in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

Kamal Kariem, assistant professor of anthropology who joined the faculty at �ֲ���ý this year, was . Kariem, a graduate of Connecticut College, earned his masters and PhD at Princeton University in anthropology. Kariem is noted as a scholar of global Indigeneities and “comparative imperial formations as these intersect with nature protection.” Kariem is currently teaching “Cultural Anthropology” and “Indigeneity Today.” He shared that he looks forward to working with students to consider their own engagement with Indigenous scholars, considering “convergences and divergences” that emerged in his own work studying Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Russia.

Muncie’s Star Press features alum’s appointment at Ball State

Bette Smith ’87 was of Muncie, Ind. for her new appointment at Ball State University. Smith was named director of Ball State University’s Center for Innovation and Collaboration. Originally from New York, Smith was a Russian major at �ֲ���ý before earning a masters in sociology at University of Colorado, Denver. Smith has spent more than two decades working in higher education, and will use her experience to focus on organizational change and partnership development. In her new role, Smith will help shape the center’s initial organizational structure and expand Ball State University’s partnerships with the community and local industry. Smith has served as principal of Destra Consulting Group since 2013, supporting clients on transformation initiatives, stakeholder engagement, and leadership alignment.

In “Economic Sociology,” Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina presents students with a social and philosophical question. 

“I ask, ‘How many of you like a lot of inequality?’ Usually none of them raises their hands. But then I say, ‘How many of you would want perfect equality?’” He shakes his head. “Nobody raises their hand. They’ve never thought of that.” 

Duina brings questions like these to his classes, never revealing much about his beliefs because his focus is on helping students examine their own tendencies. 

“So, where are you and why? Why do you accept some degree of inequality?” he asks.

Students are thus encouraged to understand or at least see their own ways of justifying the world around them, including inequalities. His most recent book has a similar aim. 

The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World (Oxford 2025), a collection that Duina co-edited with Luca Storti, an associate professor of economic sociology at the University of Turin, Italy, dives in deep on why people across the world accept economic inequalities (understood to be those related to income and wealth). The question is all the more salient because over the past several decades economic inequalities have in most cases grown a great deal. In other words, the real issue is actually not why small inequalities are accepted, but why massive amounts of inequalities are in fact accepted, and even approved of, by significant amounts of people. 

Using four logics of acceptance as a framework for the vastly different contexts across the globe from which their 19 contributors write, the book makes visible to readers the assumptions, biases, and worldviews that people bring to their thinking about inequality. 

This interview with Duina has been lightly edited for clarity and space. 

Meredith McCarroll: You write, in the introduction, that while there is a range of feelings about increased economic inequalities, the aim of the book is to focus on “the logics by which these inequalities are accepted.” How did you and your co-editor come to determine the need for this volume? 

Francesco Duina: Inequalities have gone up in most cases, and so we chose this because there’s so much written about how bad these things are and why they’re bad and what we can do about it. And there isn’t a whole lot written about why people accept them when they do. We were very eager to understand that acceptance — it is, after all, a major factor that sustains those inequalities and something that we may want to grasp if we in fact want to do something about those inequalities.  

MM: So why an edited collection? 

FD: Because matters are so complicated. If you’re really interested in the question of why economic inequalities are accepted across the world by a wide variety of people, you need extensive knowledge and expertise. No single person can have that. Who am I to write about Southeast Asia and Latin America and Scandinavia and the United States and China? We figured that if we collect various perspectives and voices, and we get a much bigger umbrella and better coverage, then we can really figure things out a little bit.

Of course, we recognize that there are works in different disciplines, such as economics or psychology, that point to single logics of acceptance. Our goal was to identify and contrast and compare all the major logics, and to see what we can conclude by doing so.  

MM: You outline in the introduction four logics of acceptance: market/economic, moral, group, and cultural. Can you briefly describe those four logics? 

FD: Sure. In a shorter piece that we are publishing about the book, by the way, we are actually calling them “justifications” for the inequalities. The term might be a little easier to grasp than ‘“logics” of acceptance. 

So, when it comes to market/economic logics, people accept inequalities because they believe that they are byproducts of a well-functioning economic system. Trying to eliminate inequalities would mean that wealth production overall would be reduced, investments would go to the wrong places, innovation would be discouraged, and philanthropy would suffer. Importantly, these sorts of logics do not see inequalities as desirable but as inevitable outcomes to be tolerated given what else is being promoted.

Next, we have moral logics, which are based on notions of fairness and justice. In this case, inequalities are seen as actually something that is desirable. There is something good in them. For instance, if you worked hard you deserve to have more. And of course they take different articulations, including inheritance, where one might say, “Well, it’s my grandfather’s.” If asked, what does it have to do with you, we hear, “Well, in the end, it is fair that it comes to me rather than to somebody else because I am of that lineage.” 

Group logics offer a third ground for acceptance. These are the hardest to see in practice … at least in their purest form. They are predicated on the idea that a group is, by virtue of who they are and not necessarily what they have done, entitled to more. The clearest example I can think of is the caste system in India. It’s preordained religiously. So the upper caste should have more — it doesn’t matter if they sit around and just do nothing — by virtue of who they are. You see articulations of this in Scandinavia. The Danes believe they are more entitled to the welfare system than immigrants. For instance, they resist giving those immigrants many years of unemployment benefits. Why? Well, some would say that it’s “because we’re Danes. They’re not.” Of course here many would quickly add that they have worked hard to contribute to that system — and in this regard their logic is also moral. 

Racial distinctions are also at work in group logics. Gender distinctions, age distinctions, and even class distinctions fit into this mindset. 

The fourth set of logics is cultural. In the case of the United States, for instance, the American Dream is a pervasive set of ideas that most people know about. Most of us grew up with it, and assume it is a fair description of what life in this society is like. You’re going to go from poor to rich if you do the right things. It is easy to see how someone who is born and raised in this cultural milieu might be quite likely to tolerate inequalities. Inequalities “make sense’” given what Americans know about their society and world. 

MM: What is new about your volume? What contributions do you see it making to the field or beyond?

FD: Multiple perspectives and an appreciation for the fact that income and wealth inequalities manifest themselves in different settings. And that the same inequality means different things in different places, comes from different places, is or is not problematic in different ways, and is sustained in similar or different ways. Sometimes we find the same logics at work across the world. Others can be more very peculiar to a place. The collection offers an ability to see how the logics themselves compare to, and differ from, each other.

MM: What role do you hope the book might play in terms of solutions to this problem of growing inequality? 

FD: There is already so much written on solutions. We knew that if we wanted to stay consistent with the message of the book, we needed to focus on the logics. We are therefore asking whether there are things in the logics themselves that someone interested in reducing inequalities could tackle. Are there unfounded biases in the logics? Are there faulty assumptions? If the logics themselves inherently have contradictions and or faulty elements, highlighting those things could dissuade some people at least from embracing them  

MM: Are there ways that this approach shows up in your teaching? Is part of your work making the invisible visible? Just allowing students to see that this is part of what’s shaping their core understanding of inequality or fairness? 

FD: Yes. I think my role is to shed light on things. Then students can draw their own conclusions, but the light helps to dissipate the cloudiness and the fog. That’s my goal.

�ֲ���ý is welcoming a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors will join the college over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year. �ֲ���ý News is introducing them in groups over this semester. Part 1 ran in our newsletter of September 25, part 2 went out in our October 3 newsletter and Part 3 appeared in our October 10 newsletter.

Scotty Farley, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My background is in chemical biology: developing and using chemical tools to help solve intractable problems in biology, specifically, for me, virology. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites and need to get all of their resources from the cells they infect (ours) and often manipulate the way our cells work in order to do that. One of the things that has been very historically difficult to study has been the way that viruses manipulate the lipid composition of cellular membranes. My research uses common cold coronaviruses — related to the familiar SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, but much less pathogenic — to investigate how the coronavirus family as a whole manipulates the lipid metabolism of infected cells and what aspects of that are essential to the viral life cycle. I teach a range of classes in the chemistry department, including organic chemistry, biochemistry, and biochemistry of virus replication.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at �ֲ���ý?

I taught here as a visiting professor last year and had a great time in the classroom and getting to know �ֲ���ý students. This year, in addition to teaching in the classroom, I am thrilled to get to mentor thesis students in my lab. I’m excited to share my research with my students and try to convince them that lipids are as cool as I think they are.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I teach a lot of classes that have a reputation of being hard and scary and unapproachable — organic chemistry, especially. A lot of the students are often worried that they’re not smart enough or are not cut out to understand these “hard” topics. I love being able to frame things to make them approachable: to make it obvious how understanding such abstract ideas as where electrons like to be are directly relevant to things that they care about, like how antibiotics work. I equally love making an environment where everyone gets the tools they need to understand what’s going on. The moments when someone who has been struggling or has been reticent about speaking up begins to participate in class discussions are when I feel like I’ve succeeded as a teacher.

Halla Attallah, assistant professor of religious studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My focus is in Qur’anic and early Islamic studies. I am also interested in teaching classes on the scriptural traditions, religion and feminist studies, and disability studies and religion. My scholarship examines the stories of the Qur’an within the context of gender and disability studies. Currently, my work examines the Qur’an’s annunciation stories — the stories of the miraculous birth of a son to Abraham, Sarah, the virgin Mary, and Zachariah. Relying on these texts, I consider how the Qur’an and its original seventh century audience imagined the embodied experiences associated with reproduction and infertility.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at �ֲ���ý? 

I am most looking forward to getting to know students and colleagues.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is when you see the “aha moments” happening from a reading or concept being discussed in class. This can show up in student questions, comments, facial expressions, and even struggles with the materials showing that there is always so much more to learn.

Lauren Buisker, assistant professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies and director of debate

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I teach rhetoric classes that examine how discourse distributes power and explore how activists use rhetoric to create a safer, more inclusive society. I’m currently teaching “Public Discourse” and I’m excited to teach “Introduction to Argumentation” and “Social Advocacy and Activism” in the winter. Similar to my teaching, my research investigates how activists against sexual violence use rhetoric to challenge harmful narratives surrounding victimhood and aim to create a world in which marginalized people can live free of violence. 

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at �ֲ���ý? 

I’m very excited about three things: 1) office hours, because I enjoy talking one-on-one with students about how they can make connections between their specific interests and general course content; 2) traveling around the globe — Oxford, United Kingdom, and Sofia, Bulgaria, this year with the Brooks Quimby Debate Council as the new director of debate; and 3) lunches in Commons because I love the sense of vibrant community that emerges in a space where people really seem to know one another and care about each other. The soft serve ice cream in Commons is also incredible! 

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I love course sessions when I feel like I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me. I enjoy creating classroom environments that are active, noisy (in the best possible way), and engaging. In these moments of chaotic rigor, it’s an absolute privilege to witness students come to understand a concept so effectively that their contributions expand and energize my own intellectual curiosities.