The College of Arts & Letters at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana has announced the appointment of nine scholars to department chairs. Five of these appointments went to women.
Ying ‘Alison’ Cheng has been appointed chair of the department of psychology. She holds the Sweeney Family Collegiate Chair of Quantitative Psychology and Education. A quantitative psychologist, Dr. Cheng directs the Learning Analytics and Measurement in Behavioral Sciences Lab. She joined the university’s faculty in 2008. Dr. Cheng holds two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China. She earned a master’s degree in statistics and a Ph.D. in quantitive psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Emilia Justyna Powell has been appointed chair of the department of political science. An international relations scholar, she is also a professor of law. She has written extensively on international law, international courts, territorial and maritime disputes, international dispute resolution, the Islamic legal tradition, and Islamic constitutionalism. Dr. Powell is the co-author of the award-winning book, The Peaceful Resolution of Territorial and Maritime Disputes (Oxford University Press, 2023). She joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2011 after teaching at the University of Alabama and Georgia Southern University. Professor Powell holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from Florida State University. She earned a law degree from the University of Nicholas Copernicus in Torun, Poland.
Marisel Moreno, professor of Spanish, has been appointed chair of the department of romance languages and literatures. Her research focuses on Latino/a/x literature, Hispanic Caribbean literature, and gender, race, and ethnicity. She is the author of the award-winning book Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art (University of Texas Press, 2022). Dr. Moreno began teaching at Notre Dame in 1998. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in French, Professor Moreno earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic literature from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Anne García-Romero, professor of theatre, has been appointed chair of the department of film, television, and theatre. She is a playwright, screenwriter, translator, and theatre studies scholar. Professor Garcia-Romero is the author of The Fornés Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of María Irene Fornés (University of Arizona Press, 2016) and co-editor of María Irene Fornés in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Dr. Garcia-Romero, who joined the university’s faculty in 2012, is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she majored in theatre arts. She holds a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from Yale University and a Ph.D. in theatre studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dianne Pinderhughes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science, will serve as interim chair of the department of Africana studies. Her research addresses inequality with a focus on racial, ethnic, and gender politics and public policy in the Americas. She is the former president of the American Political Science Association. Dr. Pinderhughes is the co-author of Uneven Roads: An Introduction to US Racial and Ethnic Politics (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2014). Professor Pinderhughes is a graduate of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.