Welcome to our monthly compilation of good news, gathered from the college's faculty and staff! Would you like to include your own news or a colleague's? Send us your details on the CHSS Brag Points form (which also collects information we can share with Mason's Office of University Branding).
Research
Congrats to Nate Sleeter, research assistant professor of history and art history and associate director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), and Lincoln Mullen, professor of history and art history and RRCHNM executive director, on receiving $250,000 from the Library of Virginia for “Ideas in Action: Virginians Petition Their Government, 1776–1786: Library of Virginia Proposal to the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission.” The project will create educational resources and a public website to help the public engage with materials in the collection.
Kudos to Thalia Goldstein, associate professor and director of applied developmental psychology, who received $152,000 from New 42/TDF to study access to theater. The project investigates factors that predict sustained engagement with theater, strategies for increasing inclusion and access to theater, and the benefits families experience from attending performances.
Shout out to Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics, and Daniel Houser, chair professor of economics, on receiving a grant from MetaDAO to study futarchy, a form of governance where prediction markets are used to determine which policies will best achieve a society's or organization's stated values. The project will investigate how prediction markets can aggregate beliefs to inform decision-making processes.
Kudos to Jeff Beeson, executive director for the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (W/B HIDTA) program, and Cynthia Lum, professor of criminology, law and society and director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, on receiving $2,999,829 from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for the “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) Program Fiscal Year 2026.” HIDTA is known for its innovative approaches to drug enforcement, treatment and prevention work that combine evidence-based research with state-of-the-art technology.
Congrats to Evan Marie Lowder, associate professor of criminology, law and society, on receiving $123,000 from the Indiana Office of Court Services for “Multi-Site Randomized Controlled Trial of a Model of Intentional Pretrial Supervision Fiscal Year 2026.” The project will leverage a multidisciplinary team of practitioners, community members, and researchers to refine, scale, and evaluate a model of intentional, needs-based pretrial supervision that maximizes court appearances and public safety.
Shout out to Robyn Mehlenbeck, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Community Mental Health (CCMH), on receiving a grant from Fairfax County for “Healthy Minds Fairfax Coping Skills Support.” The grant supports a partnership between the CCMH and Healthy Minds Fairfax to provide free virtual coping skills sessions in English and Spanish for Fairfax County residents ages 16 and older through the Stepped Care Mental Health program.
Kudos to Larrie Ferreiro, adjunct professor of history and art history and systems engineering and operations research, on receiving a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a research project on scientific philanthropy in the early 20th century. Ferreiro will examine how the three of the most prominent pre-WWII philanthropies—Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Guggenheim—established and carried out their basic research agendas and set the stage for science philanthropy processes in the years ahead.
Shout out to John Turner, chair professor of religious studies, who received a grant from Israel Institute, Inc., to fund the salary of an instructor to teach a new three-credit course on Israeli-Vatican relations in the fall 2026 semester.
Congrats to Leeya Mehta, instructor of English and director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, on receiving a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts for “Writing America: Translating America from the Outside-In and the Inside-Out.” The project will host a series of readings and discussions of translated literature on George Mason University’s campus to promote engagement with translated works.
Awards
Shout out to Sylvia Woodrose Schwartz, an associate professor in the Department of English, on receiving a letter of appreciation from George Mason’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact (ORIEI) for her service as a mentor as National Science Foundation CAREER Cohort mentor. This program took place from February to July 2026 and was designed to provide mentorship, workshops and external review to enhance junior faculty competitiveness for the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER). Way to go, Sylvia!
Articles
Congrats to Eric Anderson, associate professor and director of graduate programs in the Department of English, on his new co-edited book, The Impossible Shot: Race, Genre, and Spectacle in Jordan Peele's NOPE. This collection includes a chapter by English graduate student James Steck.
Shout out to Naglaa Hussein, professor and Arabic academic program coordinator, on co-authoring the article, "Possibilities Unlocked by Collaborative Professional Development for Teachers of Less Commonly Taught Languages: Notes from the Field" in the Journal of National Council on Least Commonly Taught Languages.
Kudos to Holly Mason Badra, associate director of the Women and Gender Studies Program, on her recently published non-fiction essay, "Ez Kurdim: Meditations on Ritual, Gathering, and Being," in The Markaz Review's Kurdish Issue: Hawar.
Shout out to Anu Aneja, professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Women and Gender Studies Program, on co-authoring the forthcoming book, Embodying Motherhood: Indian and Transnational Perspectives. It is a revised version of Embodying Motherhood: Perspectives from Contemporary India. the new book includes a co-authored epilogue in the form of a dialogue between the two authors— Aneja and Shubhangi Vaidya—on reimagining motherhood through expanded understandings of the maternal in Indian and transnational contexts.
Kudos to Sayed Elsisi, associate professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, on his inclusion in the book, The Routledge History of Love in World Literature and Culture. Elsisi wrote a chapter entitled, “Divine in Carnal Mirrors: Unveiling the Sacred Through Love and Eroticism in The Arabian Nights.”
Congrats to Communication PhD candidate, Neha Gour, on co-authoring a research paper with Communication Distinguished University Emeritus Professor Ed Maibach and Luis Ortiz from the College of Science, entitled "Health implications of the rapid rise of data centers in Virginia: an exploratory assessment," which examines the potential health impacts of data center expansion in Virginia. The paper was published in Frontiers in Climate earlier this year and has gained considerable attention since publication, with more than 21,000 views and 2,400 downloads from readers across dozens of countries.