Faculty Accomplishments

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored a new paper titled "Rebooting a failed promise of climate finance." Published in Nature Climate Change, the paper finds flaws in the current United Nations finance accountability mechanisms and proposes a new climate finance pledge that could reinvigorate climate talks.

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch contributed an essay for the newly released Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World: Emotion, Contrition and Penitence in the Middle Ages. Her chapter is titled "Peter’s Three Tears” and was inspired by a comment made by a participant during a trip she led for Colby alumni. In fact, she acknowledges this person on the first page of the book. "I am grateful to Allen Jenkins for drawing my attention to Peter’s three tears during our visit to Notre-Dame des Fontaines in October 2017." Plesch also contributed the photo that adorns the book's cover.

Kerry Sonia, visiting assistant professor of religious studies, was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of a book project currently underway. Sonia's book, her second, will explore the social and ritual dimensions of childbirth in ancient Israel. 

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has co-authored a new paper linking restorative justice to climate-related loss and damage. Published in the journal Third World Quarterly, the paper argues that litigation cannot deliver all types of justice and so an alternative paradigm is needed. In this regard, restorative justice can provide a number of benefits, including respecting the rights of and meeting the financial needs of victims, particularly small island developing states. The paper was coauthored with D'Arcy Carlson '21.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Adam Giannelli has been awarded a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Giannelli was one of the 35 awardees of the NEA Literature Creative Writing (Poetry) Fellowship, receiving a $25,000 award aimed to enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. "As part of the first grantmaking announcement of FY 2021, the National Endowment for the Arts announced $1.2 million in FY 2021 Literature Fellowships to creative writers and translators, supporting both the development of new works of American literature and the translation into English of literary prose, poetry, and drama from writers around the world," according to its website.  

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has been invited to join the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN). The CSSN is an international network of social science scholars focused on understanding the cultural and institutional dynamics of the political conflict over climate change. There are currently more than 110 scholars from 25 countries in the network. Brown University's Institute for Environment and Society coordinates CSSN activities and serves as the institutional hub.

Associate Professor of Economics Daniel LaFave was the lead author of the paper "Impacts of improved biomass cookstoves on child and adult health: Experimental evidence from rural Ethiopia," published in volume 140 of the journal World Development. The paper reports on the three-year impact of the introduction of the Mirt stove on households in rural Ethiopia. Their project found that a "treatment status is associated with a precisely estimated 0.3–0.4 standard deviation improvement in height-for-age of young children exposed to the stoves during their first years of life—a substantial effect with implications for greater health and well-being throughout the life course."

On Jan. 25, 2021, Professor of Art Véronique Plesch delivered a lecture, “The Jesup Memorial Library’s Roundels in Context," at a virtual evening organized by the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, Maine, on “Medallion Mystery Talk." Her presentation discussed the bronze medallions depicting early printers' devices that grace the library's façade and considered them within the context of library architecture and of the Gilded Age elite's interest in book collecting. A publication is planned.

Assistant Professor of Art Marta Ameri was awarded a prestigious fellowship at the Rare Book School. The M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources will allow Ameri, who teaches courses on Islamic art, to augment her teaching of the art of the book in the Islamic world. The fellowship is "a two-year program designed to animate humanities teaching and equip educators to enlarge their students’ historical sensibilities through bibliographically informed instruction with original historical sources," according to the Rare Book School's website.

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has contributed an essay to the book The Colors of Photography (De Gruyter, 2020), edited by University of Zurich professor Bettina Gockel. Sheehan’s essay, “Color Matters: Rethinking Photography and Race,” examines the assumptions about and expressions of racialized power that she argues are built into the material and technological foundations of photography. Since the 19th century, photographers around the world have imagined nonwhite bodies as posing technical difficulties, particularly when it comes to lighting. Sheehan demonstrates the persistence of this idea, with recent examples from popular culture, while turning to international contemporary art to critique the sociopolitical roots of photography’s race problem. Several essays in The Colors of Photography, including Sheehan’s, originated as invited papers at an international conference in Zurich, Switzerland, organized by Gockel in October 2015.