The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences has selected faculty members from each of its 19 departments and schools as the 2026-27 recipients of the Robert C. and Sandra Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship.
Their areas of expertise span the natural sciences, humanities, fine arts and social sciences, and the funds from the Connor Fellowship are intended to help each rising academic further their research and professional pursuits.
This recognition comes with an $8,000 award, which fellows use to facilitate travel, expand research initiatives and support classroom activities.
This year, the Connor Fellowship has awarded over $1.2 million in support of faculty development. Since its inception in 2004, the resulting endowment has enabled Fulbright College to recognize 307 Connor Fellows and counting. Many previous Connor Fellows are now university and department leaders, serving in top administrative roles or prominent teaching and research positions with impressive publication records.
“These faculty members represent all 19 of the college’s departments and schools, and their work touches all aspects of the human condition,” said Brian Raines, dean of Fulbright College. “Congratulations to these faculty. We are proud to have you as part of Fulbright College and for the work this funding will produce.”
"The forward-thinking vision of Bob and Sandra Connor continues to support our college and our faculty," Raines said. "Their fellowship reaches faculty at the moment it matters most, when a research trip, a summer in the lab or a semester to write can shape the course of a career. I'm grateful for their generosity and excited to see what this class of fellows does in the future.”
Robert and Sandra Connor established the Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship in 2004 to provide essential faculty development opportunities to up-and-coming academic experts in the college. These faculty members are selected annually by a college committee, including the dean, for their contributions to the college and their departments.
Congratulations to Our 2026-27 Fulbright College Connor Faculty Fellows
Paula Anderson
Instructor, Department of Geosciences
Anderson teaches more than 1,000 students a year in large sections of Physical Geology, and she works to bring current events, relevance and real-world application into class so students see the value in what they're learning. The Connor Fellowship will let her attend conferences and take courses herself, then bring that refreshed knowledge back to her classroom. She also plans to learn videography and travel to geologically significant sites to film virtual field trips, something her students have asked for and a way for students with mobility impairments to experience applied geology, too.
Ashley Attwood
Assistant professor of philosophy, Department of Philosophy
Attwood studies ancient Greek philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, focusing on Aristotle's scientific inquiries into the soul and life. She aims to draw out the philosophical innovations that emerge from those investigations, and she is advancing that work through a comprehensive project on how Aristotle treated his predecessors and the role tradition plays in shaping and measuring progress. Many scholars working on these questions hold appointments in Europe, so most of the field's major conferences meet outside the United States. The Connor Fellowship will help Attwood take part in those conferences and, more importantly, she said, host one of her own.
Owen Brown
Assistant professor of political science, Department of Political Science
Brown, who studies race and colonialism in international relations, will use the Connor Fellowship to complete his book, tentatively titled (De)racialising Order: Race and Resistance in the Production of International Order. The book examines how the construction of international order has been entangled with processes of racialization across international law, security, political economy and migration governance. The fellowship will support additional archival research, let him present portions of the project at conferences and workshops for feedback and help him finalize the manuscript for submission and publication.
Maria Comsa
Teaching assistant professor of French, Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures
The Connor Fellowship will support two digital humanities projects led by Comsa. The first maps the travels of Giacomo Casanova, pairing traditional archival research with data collection, processing and visualization; the funding will take her to key archives to expand and refine her dataset. The second is a database of 18th-century French society theaters, which she plans to grow into an accessible, searchable platform, a resource for her own research and for other scholars of French theater during the Old Regime.
Candace Cunningham
Assistant professor of African American history, Department of History
Cunningham teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the African American experience, and her research focuses on African American history, with emphasis on education, civil rights, gender and the American South. The Connor Fellowship will support two book projects, covering indexing and other expenses for her first book and travel to historical conferences for her second. She will also use the funds to present her research at academic conferences and build connections with scholars in her field, helping her complete her research and grow as a teacher.
Maggie Fernandes
Assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, Department of English
Nearly four years after ChatGPT's public release, faculty across the curriculum are still wrestling with what generative AI means for teaching, learning, critical thinking and literacy. Fernandes is among the writing studies scholars examining resistance and refusal, grounded in the field's long-standing principles for effective and ethical writing instruction. Her work asks what rhetoricians and writing teachers can learn from individual and community resistance to "platform capture" by major tech companies, from community opposition to AI data centers across the country to young people building their own DIY "cyberdecks." The Connor Fellowship will support three related projects: a co-authored monograph on critical, careful engagement with digital technologies, with practical approaches for teaching critical digital literacies in high school and college classrooms; a survey and interview study of faculty comfort with emerging technologies, how instructors decide which ones belong in their classrooms and what that means for academic freedom; and an early-stage study of the community's response to a drone manufacturer in Fayetteville.
LaShawnda Fields
Associate professor, School of Social Work
Fields studies the experiences of people with historically marginalized identities in social work education. She has studied faculty members and doctoral students and will soon launch a study of Master of Social Work students. Though her scholarship has been primarily qualitative, she plans to expand into mixed-methods research, and the Connor Fellowship will support that methodological growth and the studies that follow. The funding will also support her work with the University of Arkansas Press and University Libraries toward a book contract.
Sarah Hetrick
Assistant professor of saxophone, Department of Music
Hetrick leads the Saxophone Studio, where she focuses on applied instruction, pedagogy and chamber music and works to create an environment where students feel empowered to pursue their own artistic interests. She performs as a soloist and chamber musician with ensembles including the sjel duo, Duo Oenomel and the Lyrique Quintette, and she has premiered more than 30 works by contemporary composers. Much of her programming highlights the work and experiences of women at the intersection of music and art. Her research explores gender, saxophone iconography and how those forces shape the experiences of practicing saxophonists, including a lecture on early-20th-century American saxophone advertisements.
Tacy Joffe Minor
Teaching assistant professor, Department of Physics
A third-generation Razorback with deep family roots in Fayetteville, Joffe Minor earned her B.S. and M.A. in physics at the U of A before completing a doctorate at Northwestern University, where she studied high-energy particle interactions on the DZero experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. She went on to Argonne National Laboratory's High Energy Physics Division as a postdoctoral scientist and later an assistant scientist, collaborating on the Soudan 2 experiment and helping design and build the MINOS experiment. Since returning to the U of A in 2011, she has taught everything from physics for non-science majors to a graduate-level introduction to particle physics. One of her children is a U of A graduate, and another is enrolled now. "Few things energize me more than watching a student's expression shift when a difficult concept finally clicks," she said. Joffe Minor will use the Connor Fellowship to strengthen her teaching and her students' learning environment, including travel to teaching conferences.
Reilly Kincaid
Assistant professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology
Kincaid studies social inequality in family, work and mental health, with particular interest in how gender, culture and social psychological processes intertwine with inequality in each. The Connor Fellowship will fund a course release in spring 2027, giving her dedicated research time for three projects: personal and cultural attitudes toward parents' work-family decisions; links between mental labor and family-to-work conflict across national contexts; and attitudes of support and resentment toward workers who take paid parental leave.
Joomi Lee
Assistant professor of mediated communication and director of the Center for Communication Research, Department of Communication
Lee studies how immersive and intelligent communication technologies influence social interaction, psychological experience and digital inclusion. Her current projects center on equitable virtual social interaction, psychological experience and digital inclusion. Her current projects center on equitable virtual social interactions and collaboration between humans and AI. Her work has appeared in leading journals, including the Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Computers in Human Behavior and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. The Connor Fellowship will support research travel and summer compensation, allowing Lee to expand ongoing projects and keep building a human-centered research program on emerging communication technologies.
Nicholas Levis
Assistant professor of evolutionary biology, Department of Biological Sciences
Levis studies how genes and the environment interact to determine the traits organisms develop, both within and across generations. His lab works with microscopic nematode worms and spadefoot toad tadpoles, both of which can develop into distinct predatory forms depending on their diet and their social and competitive surroundings. By combining molecular, developmental and ecological approaches, the Levis Lab aims to uncover the mechanisms behind ecologically driven development and how it shapes adaptation, biodiversity and the evolution of traits. Connor Fellowship funding will cover supplies for laboratory analyses, field sampling and animal husbandry and help move the lab's findings toward publication.
Linda Lopez
Associate professor of art and program director of foundations, School of Art
Lopez, a ceramicist and 2024 United States Artists Fellow in craft, is building a new body of sculpture at the intersection of archaeology, craft and contemporary art. Each piece begins with a historical ceramic shard, a fragment that has survived centuries of use, loss and rediscovery. Lopez researches the shard, scans it in 3D and reproduces it at architectural scale, then covers the oversized form in individually handmade, color-matched tiles, a painstaking mosaic that honors both the original artifact and the labor of making it. The finished works evoke slabs of the walls, floors and surfaces of ancient structures. The project's first phase drew on a private collection of "sea pottery," shards that washed ashore on the coast of Maine across centuries of human presence, and produced three works shown at the Colby College Museum of Art this summer. The Connor Fellowship will carry the research into new collections and histories.
Reetam Majumder
Assistant professor of statistics, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Majumder is a computational statistician whose research focuses on the socioeconomic and health impacts of extreme weather and the use of trustworthy AI in complex statistical problems. His work has appeared in prominent statistical journals, including Bayesian Analysis, Extremes and Spatial Statistics. The Connor Fellowship will support collaborations with researchers beyond the U of A, through his own travel and visits from outside researchers, and will cover open-access publication costs so his findings reach a wider audience.
Stacey Makhanova
Associate professor, Department of Psychological Science
Makhanova studies how people perceive those around them, from family, friends and romantic partners to strangers, and how those perceptions shift from moment to moment or differ from person to person depending on motivation and biology. Her studies often measure participants' hormone levels or immune system activity to connect biological processes with social ones. A past Connor Fellow, Makhanova has used earlier fellowship support to generate pilot data for federal grant applications. This year's funding will support several new studies that will lead to peer-reviewed publications and training for graduate and undergraduate research assistants.
Steven Marzolf
Assistant professor and head of undergraduate acting and recruitment, Department of Theatre
A Wisconsin native, Marzolf has spent more than 20 years as a professional actor and director. His stage credits include The Old Globe, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where he was part of the original production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County. A graduate of the master of fine arts program at The Old Globe and the University of San Diego, he was cast in 2012 in The Fall of the House at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville. "I fell in love with the area, never left, and I'm proud to call Fayetteville my home," he said. Before joining the U of A, Marzolf taught for three years at the University of Tulsa.
Michael McGraw
Assistant professor of organic chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
McGraw's research spans organic, polymer and sustainability-driven chemistry, with an emphasis on new bond-forming reactions, greener polymerization methods and functional polymeric materials. His group pairs fundamental mechanistic chemistry with applied materials development and trains undergraduate and graduate students in modern synthetic and polymer chemistry along the way. McGraw will use the Connor Fellowship to support two undergraduate researchers in his lab over the summer, giving them hands-on experience at an important stage in their development while advancing his group's research.
Joel Reed
Assistant professor of public relations, School of Journalism and Strategic Media
Reed's research explores where public relations, identity and democracy meet, with a focus on long-term, systemic risks to democratic institutions: polarization, political violence, disinformation and the rise of illiberal political movements. In 2024, he and his co-authors won three national awards from the National Communication Association's Public Relations Division for their research on neurodiversity in public relations. Reed will use the Connor Fellowship to conduct focus groups in South Africa and the United States, examining how conspiracy theories spread across borders and the role generative AI has played in spreading them.
Ruslan Yusupov
Assistant professor of cultural anthropology, Department of Anthropology
Yusupov is completing his first book, Rectifying Multiculturalism: Islam, Development and the Menace of Recognition, which examines how China's current assimilation policies toward Sinophone Muslims are reshaping the socialist multiculturalism that emerged during the country's Reform era. His fieldwork from 2014 to 2026 documented those policies in a single Muslim ethnic minority township near China's border with Vietnam, but the current political climate has forced a number of the people he worked with into a transnational diaspora. The Connor Fellowship will fund travel to Malaysia and Kazakhstan, two hubs where these communities now live, so Yusupov can reconnect with them for the first time since 2019. That comparative fieldwork will anchor the book's final chapters, widening it from a study of internal state repression into a global account of how ethnoreligious belonging is reimagined when state-sponsored multiculturalism fails.
Contacts
Grant Schol, associate director of communications
Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
479-575-5548,
gschol@uark.edu