Wesleyan Welcomes New and Visiting Faculty Members

On Monday, Aug. 26, we welcomed 18 new permanent faculty and 51 visiting faculty to campus for the 2024-25 academic year. The work of these distinguished academics spans a wide range of disciplines and expertise, from civic engagement and public life, design and engineering, chemistry, climate change and sustainability, psychology, molecular biology and biochemistry, theater, music, physics, history, economics, biology, Jewish studies, earth and environmental science, philosophy, among many others.

Our new faculty include Khalilah Brown-Dean, who is the Rob Rosenthal Distinguished Professor of Civic Engagement and Executive Director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. Brown-Dean, also the host of the award-winning NPR podcast Disrupted, is spearheading several civic engagement and pro-democracy initiatives as we look ahead to election day in just two months. She recently described her team’s exciting work in a co-authored blog post with President Michael S. Roth ’78.

Darius Jones joins our faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Music. A New York-based composer and saxophonist, Jones was recently featured on the cover of the music magazine, The Wire. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Nicholas Whittaker brings his expertise as a scholar of Black aesthetics with a fascinating focus on horror.

Our new visiting faculty include Valentina Ramia, who is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of American Studies. Ramia is former Under-Secretary of Social Policy in Ecuador who oversaw the creation of the nation’s first department of justice and first public defense system. Mira Seo is a Provost’s Distinguished Equity Fellow who will apply her expertise in the humanities and the global study of antiquity to help shape the future of Classical Studies at Wes. Seo most recently served as Vice Provost at the Fulbright University of Vietnam.

We provide the full list of new faculty and links to bios below:

Permanent Faculty

Khalilah Brown-Dean

Elizabeth Chang-Davidson

Natalia Gonzalez-Pech

Darius Jones

Grace McKenzie-Smith