Meet 12 of our new Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences faculty and hear why they chose their respective fields and what they are working on at Boston College this year.
Marsin Alshamary
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Ph.D.
MIT
Where did you grow up?
Everywhere! I was born in Iraq and lived there briefly, as well as in Jordan, Michigan, Georgia, California, Minnesota, and Kansas. Of all those places, my idyllic childhood memories exist across San Diego's ice cream trucks and mountains and Minneapolis' snowman-building and sledding.
What is your favorite pastime?
Reading novels.
What made you decide to go into your field?
Family history, really. It's a long story, but you can read about it in my profile for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
My article "Iraq's Struggle for Democracy," which was published in the Journal of Democracy.
What will you work on this year?
I will be working on a book on the role of Iraqi clerics in protest movements from 1914 to 2020. It is tentatively titled A Century of the Hawza: How Clerics Shaped Protest and Politics in Iraq.
Emma C. Brace
Assistant Professor, Engineering
Ph.D.
Purdue University
Where did you grow up?
Topeka, Kansas.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Reading fiction, playing tennis, crafting, and spending time with family and friends.
What made you decide to go into your field?
When I was 10, I went to a “Girl Scout Day” hosted by a Society of Women Engineers chapter at a nearby university, and from then on I was set on going to college to study engineering. (As a first-generation college student, this was a big deal!) From there, it was a matter of figuring out what sub-discipline of engineering interested me and how it could help me pursue my interests in renewable energy, bio-products, and designing a more sustainable future.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
The paper "Sustainable Production of Acrylic Acid via 3-Hydroxypropionic Acid from Lignocellulosic Biomass," in which my co-authors and I investigated methods and biorefinery designs to produce acrylic acid from biomass, analyzing their economic feasibility and potential environmental impacts.
What will you work on this year?
I am excited to continue working on bioproducts development and finding ways we can harvest valuable biological and chemical building blocks from plants and biomass and convert them into fuels, food, and more. I am also looking forward to teaching the Third-Year Reflection course for the Human-Centered Engineering major's inaugural class, who are now juniors!
Joshua Byun
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Ph.D.
The University of Chicago
Where did you grow up?
I moved about from Quito, Ecuador to Chicago, Illinois, and then to Seoul, South Korea, following my parents and their work.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Reading history books. I also spend an inordinate amount of time (re-)watching shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I decided to pursue a scholarly career after taking a general elective course titled “What is History?” in my freshman year of college. I then met mentors who helped me learn to reason about important historical questions in terms of abstract puzzles, concepts, and mechanisms—hence my turn toward international relations (IR) theory.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
In the article "More than a Number: Aging Leaders in International Politics" (published in International Studies Quarterly, March 2023), my co-author Austin Carson and I break new ground in IR by analyzing how perceptions of a national leader's agedness or "senility" might impact how they are viewed and treated by foreign partners. Drawing on declassified primary documents, we show that American policymakers' attitudes toward cooperating with key Cold War strategic interlocutors like Syngman Rhee of South Korea and Mao Tse-tung of China were often informed by age-related stereotypes and cues about agedness gleaned during face-to-face encounters.
What will you work on this year?
I plan to work on my first book project, which investigates why great powers like the United States often fail to bring their smaller allies' military postures into alignment with their strategic demands. My intuition is that the answer has to do with the extent to which individual allies are vulnerable to preventive countermeasures from local adversaries and the constraint this imposes on their ability to acquire the kinds of military capabilities prescribed by the leading power. The book draws heavily on archival material from the Cold War period and related historiography. I will also be finalizing a number of article-length projects.
Mycah L. Conner
Assistant Professor, History
Ph.D.
Harvard University
Where did you grow up?
In Michigan, in Okemos and the greater Lansing area.
What are your favorite pastimes?
I bake. I enjoy spending time with friends and my parents, plunging down wormholes about random things that interest me, and listening to music and drinking coffee by a window.
What made you decide to go into your field?
The sources—the letters, narratives, and words of ordinary people in the extraordinary circumstances of the Civil War.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
My dissertation, On this Bare Ground: The Ordeal of Freedpeople's Camps and the Making of Emancipation in the Civil War West, and a seminar paper I wrote in graduate school on the lynching of George Hughes in Sherman, Texas.
What will you work on this year?
I'm working on my manuscript, On this Bare Ground, and an article about freedpeople's struggles in Cairo, Illinois.
Cathy Della Lucia
Assistant Professor, Studio Art
M.F.A.
Boston University
Where did you grow up?
In Michigan, in the Metro Detroit area.
What are your favorite pastimes?
When I’m not in the studio, I love playing racquet sports, especially pickleball and tennis. I also enjoy freshwater fishing and playing the piano. I’m great at cooking one thing only—dill pickle soup.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I was lucky to grow up in a family that valued the arts and supported my creative development from a young age. As a college athlete taking my first sculpture class, I immediately fell in love with the physicality of making and the way sculpture related to the body, object, and space. This time, I was encountering this physicality off the soccer field. It was the first place where I felt like all of my fragmented interests could coexist, and I could explore complex ideas with my eyes, my hands, and my mind together.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
A two-person exhibition with Elspeth Schulze at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery titled A Romance Of..., which explored wood as a medium of affection, metamorphosis, and touch.
What will you work on this year?
I am working towards a solo exhibition at Overlap Gallery in Newport, Rhode Island that opens in June 2024. This sculptural body of work is centered around ideas of modularity, inheritance, leisure, and labor, using scrap and excess material sourced from carpenters, potters, and tradespeople based locally and in Korea.
Gregory Floyd
Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Ph.D.
Boston College
Where did you grow up?
Warren, New Jersey.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Spending time with family and friends, making music with others, summer trips to the ocean, and enjoying the month of October.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I was drawn to philosophy because I liked the idea of getting to start from the “ground floor” of human knowing and experience. I wanted to really figure out what those things are and question our most basic assumptions about what reality is and how we come to understand what is true, what is good, and how we should live. I loved the idea that in philosophy any question is fair game. There’s no human experience that can’t be taken up by a philosopher and investigated and inquired about. For me, that included boht experiences of suffering and of transcendence.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
I'm proud of a recent volume I co-edited, The Catholic Reception of Continental Philosophy in North America. It was rewarding to work alongside a number of senior scholars in my field to tell an important story about philosophy in North America—a story in which Boston College plays an important role.
What will you work on this year?
A book project on the philosophy of critical realism and the fundamental role of meaning in a flourishing human life.
Juan Manuel “Juanma” González Rosa
Assistant Professor, Biology
Ph.D.
National Center for Cardiovascular Research and Universidad Autónoma (Madrid, Spain).
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Málaga, a city in the South of Spain.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Outside the lab, I love cooking, trying new restaurants, and traveling with my wife (often to eat something new). I also enjoy reading—primarily Spanish and South American literature, but most recently biographies and essays.
What made you decide to go into your field?
As a kid, I always dreamed of being a researcher, mainly because I'm incredibly fascinated by nature and have a strong curiosity about how life works. However, the moment that sparked my interest in developmental biology and the cardiovascular system happened in college. After finishing my first semester, I started working in a lab. There, I had the opportunity to see something incredible: a chicken embryo. Through a small opening in the eggshell, I observed the embryonic heart beating and watched the red blood cells flowing through the developing blood vessels. Since that eye-opening experience, I've been dedicated to exploring and understanding the complex processes that govern the development and regeneration of the heart.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
My first research article, which was published in the journal Development in 2011. As a graduate student, I pioneered a procedure called cryoinjury that simulates a myocardial infarction in zebrafish. This technique, which is more physiologically relevant than other alternatives like ventricular amputation, allowed me to discover that cardiac fibrosis and regeneration are not incompatible phenomena, contrary to the hypothesis that had prevailed in the field for decades. The cryoinjury model is currently used worldwide to study heart regeneration in zebrafish.
What will you work on this year?
We will continue exploring the mechanisms that drive cardiac regeneration in zebrafish. We are incredibly fortunate to have funding from the NIH to support our research. My lab is particularly interested in the interplay between inflammation and fibrosis, and we are very keen on developing new genetic tools to pinpoint the role of new genes in development and regeneration.
Catherine Hoar
Assistant Professor, Engineering
Ph.D.
Columbia University
Where did you grow up?
New York.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Biking, hiking, gardening, and listening to live music with friends.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I was drawn to environmental engineering because the field incorporates and applies so many different disciplines that I’m interested in—including biology and chemistry—and has the goal of protecting the environment and public health, which I find particularly motivating. Having teachers and mentors who were passionate about environmental engineering definitely inspired me to join the field as well.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
The work I completed in collaboration with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and other academic researchers to track SARS-CoV-2 in New York City’s sewage. I learned so much from the experience and the entire team.
What will you work on this year?
I plan to continue investigating ways to improve detection of emerging pathogens in wastewater and ways to interpret the resulting data to guide public health responses. I’m also looking forward to opportunities for new collaborations here at Boston College.
Riikka Pietiläinen-Caffery
Associate Professor of the Practice, Music
Director, Choral and Vocal Performance
Ph.D.
University of Colorado, Boulder
Where did you grow up?
Kemi, Finland, about a hundred miles below the Arctic Circle.
What is your favorite pastime?
Sports in many forms: running, biking, swimming, weight-lifting, skiing. Anything outside, really.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I sang and toured the world with an award-winning Finnish choir called Philomela, under the baton of the pioneer of choreographed choral music, Marjukka Riihimäki. My undergraduate degree was in jazz saxophone, but the pull of choral music was too strong!
What work or publication are you most proud of?
Although it seemed impossible at first, I was able to create music and even commission new works during the pandemic, while I was directing the Bunker Hill Community College choir. Our first pandemic production—Refuge, produced in May 2020—was composed by Washington-based composer Kristin Vining. Choir singers sang, spoke, and rapped about what community means for them. Student artists painted images for the video, student producers added a beat, and student engineers edited tracks recorded in various homes during complete isolation. Finnish choreographer Laura Pietiläinen filmed a dance in Finland, Kristin recorded all piano tracks in WA, and my husband and I studied video editing to pull it all together. It gave us a goal and meaningful refuge during the isolation, and expanded our community.
What will you work on this year?
The Chorale has a busy season coming up, starting with Pops in the Heights at the end of September. In November, our fall concert, Lapsing to Grace, will celebrate the work of poet Rhina Espaillat, who is donating her archives to our libraries at BC! We will present two world-premiere commissions, and Rhina will give a pre-concert lecture.
Lorelle Semley
Professor, History
Director, African and African Diaspora Studies
Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Where did you grow up?
Brooklyn, New York.
What are your favorite pastimes?
I would love to return to some hobbies that I haven't kept up with, including hiking and playing the piano (which probably means lessons). Otherwise, I love traveling—whether it involves my research or not—and reading, especially when it is just for fun.
What made you decide to go into your field?
I completed an African Studies certificate as an undergraduate French major at Georgetown and then took a job as a paralegal with the United States Department of Justice with a plan to head to law school. During my lunch break one day, an impromptu visit to the Smithsonian Museum of African Art convinced me to pursue graduate work in African history instead. Suddenly and simply, I was moved.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
Right now, I am most proud of my second book To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France's Atlantic Empire (Cambridge, 2017). I have always thought of, written about, and taught African history as global and interconnected because of the forced and intentional physical movement of Africans and people of African descent and the ideas that they carried with them. I was happy to find the sources for To Be Free and French to demonstrate that dynamic through the lives and intellectual work of African and Caribbean women and men.
What will you work on this year?
I am working on a book on African and Caribbean communities in Bordeaux, France from the eighteenth century to the present. That project has also inspired me to try to write a companion piece of historical fiction that explores the gaps and loud silences in the same historical sources.
Jason Welle
Assistant Professor, Theology
Ph.D.
Georgetown University
Where did you grow up?
Albany, Minnesota.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Running marathons, music (guitar and voice), and reading.
What made you decide to go into your field?
My study abroad experience as an undergrad cemented my passion for the field.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
Two co-edited volumes for the 50th anniversary of Vatican II. I am proud not just of the books, but also of the many hours of labor I did alongside two good scholar friends.
What will you work on this year?
I will continue working on several smaller projects that are already in course and start a comprehensive study of the Franciscan family's engagement with Muslims.
Anna Wittstruck
Associate Professor of the Practice, Music
Director, Boston College Symphony Orchestra
Ph.D.
Stanford University
Where did you grow up?
Asheville, North Carolina.
What are your favorite pastimes?
Playing cello and dancing around the living room with my kids.
What made you decide to go into your field?
In high school, I played cello in the Asheville Symphony. I remember reading through Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem for the first time. As off-stage brass, orchestra, and chorus collided in the Tuba Mirum section, I realized I was part of something bigger than myself. Studying conducting and historical musicology, I discovered that the more fully I understood the music I was performing, the more I loved it, and the more I wanted to embody and share it with others. Directing a collegiate orchestra program brings everything together for me: the chance to move through music; to move others through music; and to foster students' critical listening, creativity, and accountability to their community.
What work or publication are you most proud of?
My article, "Embodying Eroica: Pregnancy and Performativity on the Podium," which I presented last year at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. The article is forthcoming this year in Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture.
What will you work on this year?
I'm excited to get to know Boston College, to develop relationships with people and programs within the Music Department and across campus, and to explore a diverse array of orchestral music with the students of the Boston College Symphony Orchestra. My goal is to create excellent and affirmative spaces for people to come together through music, and for students to participate in classical music as a living tradition. Future projects include launching a commissioning project to support and perform music by Boston-based composers, publishing my recently presented work on culturally responsive pedagogy, and conducting archival research on the conductor-composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.