Professional Leadership | Grants & Awards | Keynotes & Invited Talks
Associate Professor of Computer Science Ewa Syta has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar award for 2024-25 to conduct research in her native country of Poland. In collaboration with researchers at Poland’s National Research Institute (NASK) under the supervision of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, Syta plans to develop a long-term strategy for the implementation of a digital identity wallet for Poland.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, has been appointed director of the American Association of University Professors’ new Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Funded by a two-and-a-half-year $1.5 Million Mellon Foundation grant to the AAUP, Isaac will be responsible for collaborating with AAUP staff and outside experts to research and write a “threat assessment” and disseminate the research to varied audiences.
Susan DiVietro, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology
• Selected as an honoree for the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s “First 100 Plus” Class of 2023, which recognizes leaders working across Connecticut to improve the lives of domestic violence survivors and their children.
Lucy Ferris, Writer-in-Residence, Emerita
• Named the president of Afghan Female Student Outreach, an international collective of 70 professors teaching remote, synchronous classes to approximately 400 university women within Afghanistan who were expelled from university by the Taliban.
Scott Gac, Professor of History and American Studies
• Named to Board of Trustees, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Conn.
• Member of the Glastonbury MLK39 Mural Project Community Advocate Group, Glastonbury, Conn.
Francisco Goldman, Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature
• Appointed to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Honorary Council, a leading research and advocacy organization advancing human rights in the Americas.
Susan A. Masino, Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science
• Received the 2023 Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award, honoring an individual who has significantly promoted the professional development of women in neuroscience through teaching, organizational leadership, public advocacy, or other efforts that are not necessarily research-related.
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Professor of History
• Elected president of the Northeast Conference on British Studies.
• Completed a two-year term as a member of the Board of Education in Wethersfield, Conn., in November 2023.
Craig W. Schneider, Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology, Emeritus
• Appointed Vice President Overseas of the British Phycological Society, London.
To view a comprehensive list of external grants awarded to Trinity faculty, visit the Grants Office website.
Catina Bacote, Assistant Professor of English
• Recipient of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellows program to develop new work while sharing expertise and learning from the university community.
Dang Do, Assistant Professor of Political Science
• Recipient of a $20,00 grant from The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving under their 2024 Civic Engagement and Get Out the Vote initiative for his project, A Civically-Engaged Approach to Social Network GOTV in the Hartford Community.
Kent Dunlap, Professor of Biology
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Predator Effects on the Brain, Spring 2024.
Claire Fournier, Senior Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator in Biology
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Exploring the Causes of Dyskinetic Syndrome in Spiders, Fall 2023.
Hebe Guardiola-Diaz, Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Uncoupling of Structure-Function Relationship within Fibroblast Growth Factor Subfamilies, Fall 2023.
Amanda Guzmán, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
• Recipient of the Young Scholars Grant, from the International Council of Museums, International Committee for Museology, Transnational Island Museologies Conference, St. Andrews, Scotland, 2024.
Christopher Hager, Hobart Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English
• Recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for research and writing leading to the publication of The Public Library and the Unfinished Civil War, a book on how the ascendancy of U.S. public libraries during the Reconstruction Era (1863–1877) has shaped their subsequent history.
Britney Jones, Visiting Assistant Professor of Educational Studies
• Recipient of a $63,154 grant from the Connecticut State Department of Education/University of Connecticut for her work on Equity in Academic Recovery. This grant is part of the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration (CCERC).
Eureka Joshi, Thomas McKenna Meredith ’48 Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Science
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Biosolids Land Application: Effects on Soil Health and Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems in New Hampshire, Fall 2023.
Kirsti A. Kuenzel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: An Attack on Vizing’s Conjecture, Fall 2023.
Timothy Landry, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Willful Things: Encountering Sorcery and the Ontological Alive in West Africa, Fall 2023.
Rebecca Pappas, Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: We Are Destroying Ourselves: A Dance Wrecking, Spring 2024.
Dan Román, Associate Professor of Music
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: “DVXNS,” Fall 2023.
James Staples, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Radical Reflections: The Revolutionary Influence of The Mirror of Simple Souls in Late-Medieval Europe, Spring 2024.
Christopher Swist, Visiting Lecturer in Music and Director of Recording Arts
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: “Equal Simplicity,” Spring 2024.
Ewa Syta, Associate Professor of Computer Science
• Recipient of a grant supplement from the National Science Foundation to fund research experiences for two students for her NSF-funded project, Applied Cryptographic Protocols with Provably-Secure Foundations.
Johnny E. Williams, Professor of Sociology
• Recipient of the 2024 Lee Founders Award, the highest award presented by Society for Study of Social Problems.
Jenny Wu, Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts
• Faculty Research Grant, Trinity College: Hexagon Shaped Sculptural Painting, Fall 2023.
Barbara Benedict, Charles A. Dana Professor of English
• “Jane Austen Panel on ‘The Collected Works of Jane Austen’ play,” The Playhouse on Park, West Hartford, Conn., October 1, 2023.
• “Jane Austen” for The College Club of Hartford, The Hartford Golf Club, West Hartford, Conn., September 29, 2023.
Hasan Cömert, Maloney Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Economics
• “‘Dilemma’ in Action in Turkey,” Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) Conference, University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 22, 2023.
• Workshops: “Understanding the Turkish Economy in the Aftermath of Recent Earthquakes from a Macroeconomic Perspective” and “The Transformation of Politics and Economics Under the Justice and Development Party,” Izmir, Turkey, June 16-23, 2023.
Scott Gac, Professor of History and American Studies
• “The Post-Civil War Global Gun Market” (for the panel “18th and 19th century Gun Manufacturing in New England”), 2023 Arsenals of History Symposium, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Springfield, Mass., August 25, 2023.
Laura Holt, Professor of Psychology
• “Understanding and preventing prescription stimulant misuse in college,” Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, Conn., February 2024.
Tasmin Jones, Ellsworth Morton Tracy Lecturer and Associate Professor of Religious Studies
• Plenary Address: “Revelation and Practices of Reception,” Phenomenology and Revelation Conference 2023, Huntington, New York, August 16, 2024. Publication forthcoming in the Journal of Continental Philosophy of Religion.
Timothy Landry, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies
• Keynote: “Willful Things: Encountering Sorcery and the Ontological Alive in West Africa,” Conference on Methods and Media of the Absent/Present: Visual Approaches to Vodun and Vodou, University of Zürich, Switzerland, September 14-15, 2023.
Seth Markle, Associate Professor of History and International Studies
• Moderator: “Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters by Olatunde Sobohehin and sam seidel,” Academic Innovation for Public Good: A Series of Book Conversations Over Zoom, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., August 2023.
Priscilla Meléndez, Professor of Language and Culture Studies
• “Ser y no ser es la respuesta’: La máscara del humor en el teatro de Sabina Berman,” Feria Internacional del Libro de Monterrey, Monterrey, México, October 11, 2023.
Garth Myers, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies
• Keynote: “Urbanization Trends in Africa,” U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, October 30, 2023.
Diana R. Paulin, Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of English and American Studies
• “Blackness, Autism and the Neurocolorline,” Disability Studies Working Group, Cogut Center, Brown University, February 28, 2024.
Amber Pitt, Associate Professor of Environmental Science
• “Effects of climatic variation on growth rate and sex ratio of freshwater turtles,” 31st International Congress for Conservation Biology, Kigali, Rwanda, July 23-27, 2023.
• “Ecology at a turtle’s pace: Insights into the effects of exploitation, habitat degradation, & climate change,” Fall 2023 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Seminar Series, Department of Biology, San Diego State University.
Sarah Raskin, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Charles A. Dana Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
• “Cultural Considerations in Assessment of Brain Injury after Interpersonal Violence,” a talk comparing women who speak Spanish to those who speak English in terms of memory, attention, and problem-solving after experiencing interpersonal violence, International Neuropsychological Society, New York, February 16, 2024. Co-authored with current and former Trinity students.*
Mary Sandoval, Seabury Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy
• “Can the Hodge Spectra Distinguish Manifolds from Orbifolds?,” Algebra and Geometry Seminar, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M., March 28, 2024.
Craig W. Schneider, Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology, Emeritus
• “On the application of European binomials for western Atlantic marine macroalgae by 19th century taxonomists,” with G.W. Saunders, 8th European Phycological Congress, Brest, France, August 20-26, 2023.
Trinity College celebrated the dedication of staff and faculty members who are this year marking milestone anniversaries between five and 35 years.
Telling Trinity's story each month through photography that offers a glimpse into the many presentations, performances, and competitions held during the academic year.
President Joanne Berger-Sweeney and Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Sonia Cardenas congratulated everyone who received recognition at the 73rd annual Honors Day ceremony.
