December
Elisabeth Austin, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, coedited Adaptation and the Edge Effects of Latin American Cultures (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) with Elena Lahr-Vivaz. Her individual contributions to the volume were: “Introduction: Latin American Adaptations on the Edge” with Lahr-Vivaz and “Cosmopolitics and the Edges of Adaptation in Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s Las aventuras de la China Iron,” pp. 15–36 and 147–71, respectively. Included as well were contributions by: Catalina Andrango-Walker, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, “Adapting and Questioning History and the Historical Archive in La venganza de las cautivas [The Revenge of the Captives],” pp. 39-62, and Jacqueline Bixler, Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita of Spanish, “Re/Made in Mexico: The Performance and Politics of Adaptation in the Theatre of Sabina Berman,” pp. 219–44.
It is with sadness that the College notes the death of former Virginia Tech student Nicolas “Nico” Braun, a Criminology major. Baugh was enrolled at Virginia Tech during the 2024–2025 academic year. In Spring 2025 he was an intern with the football equipment staff. A celebration of his life was held November 29 at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, Massachusetts. Additional information can be found in the funeral home obituary and the Virginia Tech In memoriam.
David Brunsma, Sociology, coedited Arbiters of Race: Cultural Intermediaries, Racism, and Consumer Industries (Oxon, United Kingdom, and New York, New York: Routledge, 2025), with Erik T. Withers. His individual contribution to the volume was “Introduction: Arbiters of Race? Instilling Race Into Our Understandings of Cultural Intermediaries” with Withers, pp. 1–12. The eBook is available here.
Ralph Buehler, Public and International Affairs, gave three keynote addresses: “International Lessons for Promoting Walking, Cycling, and Public Transport” at the mobility zero emissions session of the IESE Business School and Autoritat del Transport Metropolità de Barcelona event titled Territori en Moviment (Territory in Motion), which took place October 29 in Barcelona, Spain; “Cycling for Sustainable Cities: An Overview on International Trends and Best Practice” at the Data Driven Approaches for Understanding and Advancing Urban Cycling Workshop, which was held November 7 at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany; and the keynote for Making Cycling Irresistible: 25 Years of Progress in Europe and North America, which took place November 24 at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada.
Joseph Eska, English, was one of three recipients of the 2025 Jacob A. Lutz III Award for Eminent Scholars. The award, established in 2024, is Virginia Tech’s first named university-level research award. It recognizes long-term, substantive contributions to research and creative scholarship in one of four disciplinary categories: science, engineering, and technology; health and life sciences; humanities and social sciences, and arts and design. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, Eska is a historical linguist whose scholarship explores how and why human languages evolve. He was recognized as a Jacob A. Lutz III Eminent Scholar for: his expertise on ancient Celtic languages of France and Italy; scholarship spanning Celtic, Latin, Greek, Germanic, and Native American languages; and integrating classical linguistic methods with contemporary theory. Award recipients were honored during the Office of Research and Innovation’s annual awards ceremony, Celebrating Scholarly Excellence, on November 6. Each received $10,000 in unrestricted funds to support professional or personal endeavors.
ASPECT doctoral student Elhom Gosink presented “Sites of Enclosure: The Contemporary University and the Commodity of Education” at the International Studies Association Northeast Region Annual Conference, which took place November 7–8 in Providence, Rhode Island.
Aarnes Gudmestad, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, published “The Development of Sociolinguistic Competence in Spanish: Insights From Study-Abroad Research, Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 12.2 (2025): 137–49.
ASPECT doctoral student Onur Karabicak presented “Theorizing Hyperreality and Visual Securitization: The Case of Turkish TV Series Resurrection Ertugrul and Payitaht Abdülhamid” and “Power as Visibility: Reframing the Ontology of Power in International Relations Theory” at the Northeastern Political Science Association conference, which was held November 6–8 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rachelle Kuehl, Education, received the 2025 Early Career Scholar Award from the Children’s Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English. The award recognized Kuehl’s contributions to children’s literature scholarship during the past several years, with various publications exploring the intersections of race, geography, sexuality, and immigration status in middle grades realistic fiction as well as how teachers can use children’s literature in classrooms as a force for social justice.
Barbara Lockee, Professor of Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) in the School of Education and Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, IDT alumna Rebecca Clark-Stallkamp, and Linda Wiley received the 2025 Outstanding Publication Award (Book Chapter) from the Culture Learning and Technology Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) for “Reading Between the Lines: A Herstory of Instructional Design and Technology,” AECT at 100: A Legacy of Leadership, ed. Christopher T. Miller et al., Leadership and Best Practices in Educational Technology Management 6 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2023), pp. 36–72. The award was presented at the AECT annual conference, which took place October 20–24 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
ASPECT doctoral student Rebekah Mui Pei Ern presented “Speaking Into the Silence: Purity Culture and Sexual Abuse Among ‘Complementarian’ Mennonites” at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, which was held November 22–25 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Carol Mullen, Education, published “Elementary Principal Perceptions of Intraschool-Supported Teacher Peer Observation: No Silver Bullet Needed,” Journal of Research on Leadership Education 20.4 (December 2025): 374–98, with Educational Leadership and Policy Studies alumna Kelsey Pacer.
Corinne Noirot, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, and coauthors François Lecercle et al. were awarded the 2025 Association des Amis d’Agrippa d’Aubigné Book Prize for their edition of the plays of the La Taille brothers, Jean de La Taille et Jacques de La Taille: Théâtre complet (Paris, France: Classiques Garnier, 2024). The award is given in recognition of works dealing directly with d’Aubigné, more broadly with the period in which he lived, or the major issues addressed by him.
ASPECT doctoral student Shreya Hari Nurani presented “Temple as a Space for Narratives and Disputes” at the New York Conference on Asian Studies, which took place October 3–4 at SUNY Brockport in Brockport, New York; “Temples as Boundaries: Political Patronage and Spatial Negotiation at Mahakaleshwar in Ujjain” at the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, which was held November 7–9 at Texas A&M in San Antonio, Texas; and “Temples as Thresholds: A Case Study of the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain” at the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies Conference, which was held November 15–17 at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
ASPECT doctoral student Estefania “Nia” Perez-Vera, along with School of Visual Arts MFA student Daryl Norman Soh, and School of Performing Arts MFA student Nicole Bennett-Tuel, was awarded a grant from the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology to produce “The Anthropocene: The Time is NOW” an MFA student project in collaboration with Climate Change Theatre Action 2025. Perez-Vera served as scenic designer on the production, which was held November 8–9 in Theatre 101.
Dimitris Tsarouhas, Political Science, published “Path Dependence, Institutional (Non-)Change and Politicisation: The EU-Turkey Customs Union and the Evolution of German-Turkish Trade Ties,” German Politics 34.4 (2025): 752–75.