Yiyun Li is the new Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University, where she has taught as a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts since 2017. She has also served as director of Princeton’s creative writing program. She is the author of a dozen books, including the recently published Things in Nature Merely Grow (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2025).
Born in Beijing, China, Professor Li came to the United States to complete a master’s degree in immunology from the University of Iowa. She later transitioned her career to writing, earning a master of fine arts degree in creative non-fiction from Iowa’s Writers Workshop.
Verity Harte, the George A. Saden Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Yale University, has been named the George Eastman Professor at Oxford University for the 2025-2026 academic year. A specialist in ancient philosophy, she focuses her work on the philosophical thought and writings of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the history of philosophy throughout the period of Greco-Roman antiquity.
Dr. Harte received her bachelor’s degree in classics and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge.
Pavithra Prabhakar has been named the Cleve Moler and MathWorks Endowed Chair in Mathematical and Engineering Software at the University of New Mexico. She comes to her new position from Kansas State University, where she currently holds the Peggy and Gary Edwards Chair in Engineering. She also serves as a program director in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Prabhakar received her bachelor’s degree from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, and her master’s degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science. She earned a second master’s degree in applied mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Sarah Bilston is the new Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. A scholar of Victorian literature, Dr. Bilston has been a faculty member at the college for the past two decades. She has published three books, most recently The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession (Harvard University Press, 2025).
Dr. Bilston holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English literature from the University of London. She earned a second master’s degree and a doctorate in English literature from the University of Oxford.
Linda Tropp was named the Endowed University Chair in Peace Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she has taught since 2006. She is a full professor of social psychology and a faculty associate in public policy. In her research, she examines how members of diverse groups interact with each other and how differences in status and power affect cross-group relations.
Dr. Tropp received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and Spanish from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the top-ranked women’s liberal arts institution in the United States. She earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Christina Ramos has been named a Georgie W. Lewis Career Development Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She currently serves as an associate professor of history and director of the medical humanities program. As a scholar, she studies the history of medicine and public health through the lens of empire, religion, and colonial institutions. She is the author of Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
Dr. Ramos holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis, a master’s degree from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Terry Kind is the Frank N. Miller Distinguished Teaching Professor in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. A full professor of pediatrics, she currently serves as the school’s associate dean for clinical education and is a practicing pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital in Anacostia. She previously served as the university’s director of pediatrics medical student education.
A graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Dr. Kind received her medical degree from the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and her master’s of public health from Columbia University, both in New York City.