Faculty Accomplishments

Assistant Professor of Education Lauren Yoshizawa published a paper titled "The Imposition of Instrumental Research Use: How School and District Practitioners Enact Their State’s Evidence Requirements" in the American Educational Research Journal. "The Every Student Succeeds Act builds on prior efforts to bridge the gap between research and practice through the imposition of evidence requirements. This article presents findings from a small-scale micro-process study of three districts in one state during their first year of implementing those requirements," Yoshizawa writes in her abstract.

Professor of Philosophy Lydia Moland wrote a piece published in The American Scholar titled "Freedom Tales" about activist and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. In addition to writing novels, Child wrote books for children to help them understand America's racial transgressions. "Her stories guaranteed young readers that honesty, ingenuity, and integrity were their birthright, characteristic of every American from the local farmer to George Washington," Moland wrote. "The overall message was clear: American children should treasure the ideals of freedom and equality they had inherited and pass them on."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has published an article titled "Climate justice for small island developing states: Identifying appropriate international financing mechanisms for loss and damage." Appearing in the journal Climate Policy, the article qualitatively analyzes the appropriateness of five of the international financial mechanisms that scholars have argued should be urgently considered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: levies on (1) airline travel, (2) fossil fuel extraction, (3) greenhouse gas emissions, (4) bunker fuel usage, and (5) financial transactions. The results indicate that, of the five mechanisms, levies on airline travel and fossil fuel extraction would most appropriately account for and meet the needs of small island developing states from a climate justice perspective. Matthew Lai '22 is the first author. Emmanuel Salas '21, William Thao '22, and Anna Shorb '22 are the other coauthors.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has published a paper titled "The dynamics of institutional arrangements for climate change adaptation in small island developing states in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans." Appearing in the journal Sustainability Science, the paper uses semi-structured interview data to construct "networks of action situations." It finds that there are a few strategic actors involved in multiple, mutually reinforcing, and sometimes conflicting arrangements, which are simultaneously being shaped and reshaped at different scales. It also finds varying patterns of power, politics, and participation that act as both drivers of and barriers to adaptation in these countries. D'Arcy Carlson '21 is a coauthor.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has published an article titled "We are a people": Sovereignty and disposability in the context of Puerto Rico’s post-Hurricane Maria experience." Appearing in the Geographical Journal, the article highlights the impact of historically enduring colonial structures of non-sovereignty on post-hurricane response and recovery in the Caribbean and argues that Puerto Rico’s status as a Commonwealth of the United States influenced the nature and outcome of the U.S. Federal Government’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. Tilly Peck '22 is a coauthor.

Obelisks, the latest book by Professor of Art Gary Green and Associate Professor of Italian Gianluca Rizzo, was reviewed in PhotoBook Journal. "In a very real sense Obelisks is indeed a guidebook. But Green and his collaborator, poet Gianluca Rizzo, perform a deft shift in this book by foregrounding not only questions of space, but questions of time as well," reviewer Steve Harps writes of the 4 ½” x 9” softcover book that feels like a guidebook in his hand.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Ayomikun "Ayo" Adeniran has won an AMS-Simons Travel Grant from the American Mathematical Society. The competitive grant supports an early-career mathematician with $2,500 per year for two years to be used for research-related travel. Adeniran joined Colby in 2021 and researches graph theory and combinatorics, a field of mathematics concerned with problems of selection, arrangement, and operation within a finite or discrete system.

A new book, Obelisks, by Professor of Art Gary Green and Associate Professor of Italian Gianluca Rizzo has been released by Danilo Montanari Editore. With poems by Rizzo and photography by Green, the book explores what makes obelisks so irresistible to builders of empires. "Green’s photographs explore the relationship between Rome, its Egyptian obelisks, and the people who move through the city’s piazzas and side streets as part of an ever-changing landscape representing thousands of years of history," while "Rizzo’s poems contemplate the forms this ancient symbol has taken across the United States."

Assistant Professor of Government Carrie LeVan and scholars from the University of Maine have won a research grant from the Maine Chapter of the Scholar Strategy Network to study election protection. Specifically, they're looking at how to mobilize more poll workers and volunteers who help run Maine’s elections. LeVan and her colleagues political scientist Rob Glover and psychologist Jordan LaBouff are preparing the study this summer with plans to implement it this fall.

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, was featured on the New Books Network discussing her latest book, Militarized Global Apartheid. "Exploring the different manifestations of global apartheid, Besteman traces how militarization and securitization reconfigure older forms of white supremacy and deploy them in new contexts to maintain this racialized global order," New Books Network writes.