This month we are delighted to welcome five new scholars, some early career and others with a wealth of academic experience. Their research fields include literature, rhetoric, disability studies, American history, criminology, evolutionary psychology, education and computer science. Welcome one and all!
Kristeen Cherney is a recent PhD graduate in English, Rhetoric and Composition from Georgia State University where she also taught first-year writing classes for three years. Her dissertation, "Autism Literacy: A Rhetorical and Social Inquiry Through Archival Research" chronicles the early history of autism literacy exchanges in the United States. Her primary research interests include Disability Studies, Mental Health Rhetorics, and Literacy Studies.
Brittney Lynn Ingersoll was awarded her MA in American History (with Distinction) in May 2018, and also earned a Certificate in Public History, both from Rutgers University, Camden. She is currently putting these to good use in her work as Curator for the Warren & Reba Lummis Genealogical and Historical Research Library at Cumberland County Historical Society.
Michael Jay Lewis was until recently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Berry College, Rome, GA, following a stint as Visiting Lecturer of English at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) and his specialisms are modernism, fictional narrative, and the rhetoric of the nonhuman. Dr Lewis gained his PhD on Concentration in Literature from Indiana University following an MA in English Literature at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Anne Montgomery earned her PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven (Belgium) following an MSc in Criminological Sciences. She has been a Research Associate at KU Leuven and Visiting Scholar at the Graduate chool of Education at Fordham, NYC. Her research interests include executive functions, learning processes in children, and related media effects (videogames, coding) and evolutionary psychology. In 2018 Dr Montgomery founded Gallica Research, which provides market research, research design, and data analysis.
Ahmet Artu Yildirim is a computer scientist working in algorithms, cloud computing, big data analysis, GIS and data mining. Following an MSc in Computer Engineering from Cankaya University (Turkey), and a PhD in Computer Science from Utah State (USA) he did a postdoc at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Dr Yildirim has held senior posts at Oracle Inc. (Seattle WA) and at Amazon Web Services.