Newsmakers

Highlighting the professional and academic accomplishments of College of Liberal Arts students, faculty, and staff.

Newsmakers are a quick and easy way to acknowledge the professional and academic accomplishments of RIT students, faculty, and staff, such as publishing an article in a scholarly journal, presenting research at a conference, serving on a panel discussion, earning a scholarship, or winning an award. Newsmakers appear in News and Events as well as the "In the News" section on faculty/staff directory profile pages.

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September 2026

  • September 17, 2026

    Silvia Benso, professor of philosophy and director of the women's, gender, and sexuality studies program, presented “Reconfiguring Power and Subjectivity through Carla Lonzi’s Feminism” at the international workshop on Thinking War Otherwise: Critical and Genealogical Perspectives at the New School for Social Research on Sept. 14. The presentation explores notions of power and subjectivity that allow for collective empowerment without turning into oppressive forms of imposition, domination and exclusion.

  • September 16, 2026

    RIT Libraries received a 2026 Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian planning grant for the project ”Building Workforce Capacity in Emerging Imaging Technologies for Library Professionals,” led by Greg Decker, manager of metadata and digital scholarship services, and Juilee Decker, director of the museum studies program. Project team members include Tom Rieger, Professor of Practice in the College of Liberal Arts Nicholas Paulus, digital initiatives specialist for RIT Libraries; Michael Buffalin IV, director of the SHED Makerspace; and peers from University of Rochester and Colgate University. The two-year project will assess workforce needs, develop and pilot openly licensed educational resources and training, and create a scalable model to help library professionals implement sustainable, standards-aligned digitization programs.

  • September 16, 2026

    Richard Fadok, assistant professor, and Conerly Casey, associate professor, both in the School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Sciences, were recognized by the Central New York Humanities Corridor with inaugural Outstanding Working Group Awards on Sept. 14. Fadok co-organizes the Urban Natures working group, and Casey, the War Ecologies group.

  • September 14, 2026

    Michael Peechatt, computing and information sciences Ph.D. candidate, presented “Modality-Time Masking for Robust Multimodal Confusion Detection” at the 2026 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference in Puebla, Mexico. The research was co-authored by Reynold Bailey, professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Cecilia Alm, professor of psychology and artificial intelligence program director.

  • September 9, 2026

    Eunju Kang, senior lecturer of public policy, presented at the annual American Political Science Association meeting, Sept. 3-6, in Boston. Kang's papers, “The Political and Institutional Factors of Extreme Heat Vulnerability,” and ”Capacity to Collaborate across Jurisdictions,” both explored local and state governments in the United States.

  • September 3, 2026

    Ben Willmott, director of operations and administration in the School of Performing Arts, has been elected to the Executive Committee of Arts Administrators in Higher Education (AAHE) as vice chair for 2026-2027 and chair for 2027-2028. AAHE is a network of arts administration professionals across roles and disciplines from colleges and universities around the country.

  • September 2, 2026

    Jessica Hardin, department chair and Honorable Barber B. Conable Endowed Chair in Global Futures, co-edited the metabolic injustice issue of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography's. Her research traces how scientists and popular media have repeatedly used Nauru’s high rates of obesity and diabetes as a cautionary tale about modernization, diet, and Indigenous bodies.

August 2026