Princeton University Announces the Promotion of Six Women Faculty Members

Dara Strolovitch was promoted to full professor of gender and sexuality studies. Prior to joining the faculty at Princeton, she was an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Professor Strolovitch is the author of Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Dr. Strolovitch is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she majored in political science. She earned a Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.

Jessica Delgado was promoted to associate professor of religion. She joined the faculty at Princeton in 2012. Her research focuses on the history of religion in Latin America with a focus on Mexico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dr. Delgado is the author of Laywomen and the Making of Colonial Catholicism in New Spain, 1630-1790 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Dr. Delgado earned a Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of California, Berkeley.

Irene V. Small was appointed associate professor of art and archaeology. Her areas of specialization include experimental practices of the 1960s and ’70s, abstraction, and art and theory in Latin America, particularly Brazil.  She is the author of Hélio Oiticica: Folding the Frame (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Dr. Small is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she majored in English literature and women’s studies. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University.

Bridgett vonHoldt was promoted to associate professor of molecular biology. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2013. Dr. vonHoldt’s lab is the home of the North American Canine Ancestry Project. Dr. vonHoldt is a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she majored in psychology. She holds a master’s degree in biology from New York University and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mengdi Wange was named associate professor of operations research and financial engineering. She is also affiliated with the department of computer science and Princeton’s Center for Statistics and Machine Learning. Her research focuses on data-driven stochastic optimization and applications in machine and reinforcement learning. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013.

Claire White was promoted to associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. She is affiliated with the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Dr. White came to Princeton in 2013 after doing postdoctoral research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. White holds bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and physics and a Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Melbourne in Australia.