Faculty Promotions Span the Curriculum
Twelve dedicated teacher-scholars from wide-ranging disciplines have been promoted to full professor
On the recommendation of President David A. Greene, a dozen faculty members have recently been promoted. Collectively, they exemplify the breadth of a liberal arts education, representing 13 departments across the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary studies.
Effective July 1, the 12 tenured faculty members promoted from associate to full professor are Dean Allbritton, Spanish: David Angelini, biology; Chandra Bhimull, African American studies and anthropology; Megan Cook, English; Daniel LaFave, economics; Damon Mayrl, sociology; Mouhamédoul Niang, French and Francophone studies; Keith Peterson, philosophy; Erin Sheets, psychology; Bill Sullivan, earth sciences; Sonja Thomas, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; and John Turner, history.
“Colby’s newest faculty promoted to full professor are each transformational teachers and inspired scholars,” said Provost Denise Bruesewitz, the Clara C. Piper Professor of Environmental Studies. “Their exceptional dedication to our students, paired with their commitment to scholarship and creative pursuits, is a cornerstone of our community. Each of them has also stepped into leadership roles across campus, and I look forward to seeing the impact they continue to have at Colby in the years ahead.”
Dean Allbritton, Professor of Spanish
Dean Allbritton is a scholar of contemporary Spain whose research examines the cultural histories of health and sexuality in Spain, with particular attention to HIV/AIDS, visual culture, and social change. His recent monograph, Feeling Sick: The Early Years of HIV/AIDS in Spain (2023), examines the cultural history of the epidemic in Spain from 1981 to 1987 and the emergence of new cultural responses to illness, stigma, and community.
Since 2021, Allbritton has served as director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities, where he has expanded opportunities for student engagement through a variety of initiatives, including the “Big Ideas” and “Humanities Scholars” programs. Nationally, he serves as executive director of the New England Humanities Consortium and leads the Liberal Arts Colleges and Small Universities network of the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes, helping strengthen connections among humanities centers regionally and nationally while advancing the role of the humanities in higher education.
Allbritton joined Colby’s faculty in 2011 and was awarded tenure in 2018. He received his doctorate in Hispanic languages and culture from Stony Brook University, where he also completed a certificate in women’s and gender studies.
David Angelini, Professor of Biology
Dave Angelini is an evolutionary developmental biologist who uses genetic and genomic methods to understand how animal development and evolution respond to the environment and lead to animal diversity. His work, conducted in the EcoEvoDevo Lab, seeks to understand the interactions and functions of genes in various insect models, including beetles, bugs, and bees. Since receiving tenure in 2018, he has published five peer-reviewed articles and secured external funding, including a Maine IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Pilot Project grant.
As chair and associate chair of the Department of Biology, he has managed a large faculty and handled complex curriculum updates. Professionally, his leadership roles include serving as secretary of the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology and as division chair for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. His dedication to community building and citizen science is exemplified by Bugs in Our Backyard, an educational outreach and collaborative research program that provides K-12 students and teachers with project-based learning opportunities.
Angelini came to Colby in 2012. He earned his doctorate in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from Indiana University.
Chandra Bhimull, Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz and Sheldon Toby Katz Professor for Distinguished Teaching in Anthropology and African American Studies
Chandra Bhimull is an anthrohistorian who combines ethnographic and archival methods at the intersection of aviation, technology, and the African diaspora. She conducts fieldwork in the Caribbean, Europe, and the transatlantic skies to explore air cultures, Black Atlantic worlds, Black British studies, and decolonization. Her 2017 book, Empire in the Air: Airline Travel and the African Diaspora, examines the racial politics of flying, while her more recent work explores aviation and the concept of “the not there” through an empirical study of insignificance, race, and knowledge production. The Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, Ford Foundation, and others have supported her research.
From 2019 to 2025, Bhimull served as chair of the Department of African American Studies, during which she led a successful campaign to have interdisciplinary programs recognized as academic departments. In 2010, the senior class selected her for the Charles Bassett Teaching Award. Throughout her time at the College, she has advised students of color and provided a vital resource for faculty developing courses on race.
Bhimull earned her doctorate in anthropology and history from the University of Michigan in 2007, the same year she joined Colby’s faculty. She earned tenure in 2015.
Megan Cook, Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of English
Megan Cook is a book historian, a scholar of medieval literature, and an expert on Chaucer. Her scholarship focuses on the material production and reception of premodern English texts, and she researches and writes about the fate of Middle English texts and books in the early modern period. Since receiving tenure in 2020, Cook has published essays on medieval miscellanies, heraldry, and the Chaucerian apocrypha. She is also a textual editor: she has co-edited Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women as part of a new critical edition of his collected works, and she is also co-directing a team for a new edition of the shorter works of the 15th-century poet John Lydgate, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant.
Cook has served as co-chair and associate chair of the Department of English during a period of high activity and faculty growth. Beyond Colby, she has served as president of the New England Medieval Consortium and holds leadership roles in the Bibliographical Society of America and the New Chaucer Society.
Prior to joining Colby in 2013, Cook was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Bowdoin College. She earned her doctorate in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania.
Daniel LaFave, Professor of Economics
Dan LaFave is an economist interested in the interplay among health, human capital, and labor markets in developing economies worldwide. His research focuses on how households navigate market failures, environmental shocks, and social norms, research he shares via publications in premier journals such as Econometrica and the Journal of Development Economics. LaFave enjoys collaborating with students, and since receiving tenure in 2019, he has coauthored multiple publications with students.
As chair and associate chair of the Department of Economics, LaFave navigated explosive enrollment growth and faculty expansion. He also demonstrated leadership through data-driven decision-making and a commitment to institutional equity, helping to build community and strengthen governance. Since 2017, he has served as a faculty athletics liaison, and he played an outsized role in College-wide governance as chair of the Athletics Advisory Committee. Currently, he serves as Colby’s faculty athletics representative to the NCAA.
LaFave joined Colby’s faculty in 2012, shortly after earning his doctorate in economics from Duke University.
Damon Mayrl, Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology
Damon Mayrl is a sociologist who uses comparative and historical methods to illuminate how culture, religion, politics, and law intersect and interact. Since receiving tenure in 2020, he has published 12 peer-reviewed articles, including the award-winning “The Funk of White Souls,” three book chapters, and the co-edited volume After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology (2024). His current research projects include a study of how local religious and government leaders understand and negotiate church-state law, a collaborative project funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
His service to the College includes serving as chair of the Department of Sociology since 2023, acting as Posse mentor for the Class of 2024, and service on numerous other committees. On a national level, he is a former officer of the Social Science History Association and of two sections of the American Sociological Association, and currently serves as a consulting editor at the American Journal of Sociology and on the editorial boards of Sociology of Religion and the Sociological Quarterly.
Mayrl came to Colby in 2017, having taught for five years at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. He earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mouhamédoul Niang, Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Mouhamédoul Niang is a scholar and writer who studies representations of gender, body, and space in Francophone African cinema and literature. His work focuses on narratives of identities and ideologies, as well as innovative literary aesthetics, the African couple, and alternative modernities.
Since earning tenure in 2017, Niang has authored a revised monograph on space in African and creolist literatures (2020), a novel (2021), a poetry collection (2026), a book chapter, and three peer-reviewed articles in academic journals, such as Research in African Literatures, the premier journal in African literary studies, and the Journal of the African Literature Association. His contributions include public humanities works with the publication of news articles for online platforms based in Dakar, Senegal, and Portland, Maine.
For four years, he served as chair of the Department of French and Italian Studies, extending his term to provide stability during a transitional period. Currently, he is chair of Colby’s Cultural Events Committee and has been a member of the Global Studies Advisory Board for more than a decade. Niang also serves as a mentor for the Colby African Society and as a board member for the Maine Humanities Council. He has played a significant role in the external review of the Department of French and Francophone Studies at a midwestern liberal arts college, along with tenure and promotion reviews for other peer institutions.
Niang joined Colby’s faculty in 2009 after earning his doctorate in French and Francophone studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Keith Peterson, Professor of Philosophy
Keith Peterson focuses his research and teaching primarily on environmental philosophy and Continental (European) philosophy, from Kant to the present. Other areas of interest include philosophies of nature and environment, value theory, and philosophical anthropology. Peterson is also an internationally renowned scholar of the 20th-century German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann, credited with returning Hartmann’s thought to contemporary philosophy. Since earning tenure in 2016, he has published nine peer-reviewed articles (among them the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Hartmann) and two books—a monograph in environmental philosophy titled A World not Made for Us: Topics in Critical Environmental Philosophy (2020) and Ontology: Laying the Foundations (2019), a translation of Hartmann’s Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (1935).
He has served as chair of the Department of Philosophy, spearheading structural improvements to the department and enhancing its online presence. Notably, he cofounded the Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities in 2019, which hosts week-long gatherings of environmental humanities scholars from top-tier research institutions worldwide. From 2017 to 2020, he led Colby’s Faculty Seminar in Environmental Humanities, setting an institutional precedent for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.
Peterson came to Colby in 2008. He earned his doctorate in philosophy from DePaul University.
Erin Sheets, Professor of Psychology
Erin Sheets runs a robust research program on the impact of stress and belonging on mental health during emerging adulthood, ages 18-25. Among her post-tenure accomplishments is a Spencer Foundation-funded randomized controlled trial of a social-belonging intervention to reduce depression and improve academic outcomes in first-generation-to-college and BIPOC students. Results from the first-of-its-kind study, in which Sheets personally conducted 122 clinical interviews, were recently published in Clinical Psychological Science.
Sheets mentors junior faculty as chair of the Department of Psychology, and she has served as co-chair of the Advisory Committee on Faculty Personnel Policies, where she advocated for equitable family leave. Externally, she serves as vice chair of the MaineGeneral Community Care Board of Directors and is on the editorial board of a top clinical psychology journal.
After joining Colby’s faculty in 2010, she was awarded tenure in 2017 and is a licensed psychologist in the state of Maine. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and received specialized training in mood disorders and perinatal mental health as a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and Butler Hospital.
Bill Sullivan, Whipple-Coddington Professor of Earth Sciences
Bill Sullivan studies structural geology, focusing on the physical and chemical mechanisms that localized deformation in Earth’s crust, the evolution and strength of large fault zones, and the rock record of earthquake-generating fault slip events. Other academic interests include plate tectonics and the structural geology of western North America. Sullivan was a lead investigator on a National Science Foundation grant that secured a scanning electron microscope with state-of-the-art analytical capabilities for Colby, which became a game-changer for geological research in Maine. Since receiving tenure, he has published six peer-reviewed articles, many of which have student coauthors.
During his eight years as chair of the Department of Geology (now Earth Sciences), Sullivan led a major departmental revival, mentored several junior faculty through the tenure process, and facilitated a complete overhaul of the introductory curriculum. He also chaired the Faculty Course Evaluation Committee in the difficult process of replacing the College’s 20-year-old teaching evaluation instrument.
Sullivan came to Colby in 2007 as a visiting instructor, received tenure in 2014, and was named the Whipple Coddington Associate Professor in 2020. He earned his doctorate in geology from the University of Wyoming.
Sonja Thomas, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Sonja Thomas is a South Asian feminist whose research focuses on gender, race, caste, and Christianity in India and the U.S. Thomas is a global figure in anti-caste education who spearheaded efforts to make caste a protected category at Colby.
Since receiving tenure in 2019, she has published 11 peer-reviewed articles and five op-eds. Her second book, Indians and Cowboys, on Catholic priests from India in rural America, is forthcoming from UW Press. Thomas was the research consultant for Ayodele Casel’s award-winning play Diary of a Tap Dancer. She served as secretary for the National Women’s Studies Association, is an associate editor of the Journal of South Asian Studies, a member of Waterville’s K-12 Social Justice group, and an appointed commissioner with Maine’s Permanent Commission on Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations.
A faculty member since 2012, her service to Colby includes chairing the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for more than six years, serving on numerous major elected committees, with the Oak Human Rights Institute, and as faculty advisor for student groups, including Colby Dancers, Vuvuzela, South Asia Society, the Women’s Network, and the Women of Color Alliance.
Thomas received her bachelor’s from the University of Minnesota and her doctorate from Rutgers University.
John Turner, Professor of History
John Turner, a scholar of Middle Eastern history, explores medieval Islamic history, focusing on the intersection of political and religious authority within Muslim societies. His book Inquisition in Early Islam examines these issues as they pertain to the Mihna, an inquisition in the early ninth century. His current project, a large-scale book under contract, The Medieval Middle East, is about power, authority, and legitimacy in the Middle East from the sixth to the 16th centuries. Since receiving tenure in 2012, he has published a number of peer-reviewed articles in the Encyclopedia of Islam, along with journal articles and book chapters. He is a long-standing member of the invitation-only School of Abbasid Studies.
Trained interdisciplinarily as a Middle East area specialist, his teaching crosses the boundaries between religious studies and history, for which he received the Bassett Teaching Award. He is currently serving as dean of faculty, a position he took on in 2025 after years of service to the College. In addition to committee work, he chaired the Department of History for seven years, served as associate director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs for four years, was a faculty marshal for five years, and has supervised the Fulbright Arabic Program at Colby for more than a decade.
Turner joined Colby in 2006, having earned his doctorate in Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
