Academic Leadership

As RISD’s chief academic officer, Touba Ghadessi sets a vision for student learning, academic affairs and the academic program, championing and advancing the core values of the institution across all efforts. Ghadessi previously served as provost and a professor of the history of art for Wheaton College and, before that, as co-chair of Wheaton’s Art and Art History department and the college’s associate provost for academic administration and faculty affairs.

As RISD’s first vice provost for strategic partnerships, Sarah Cunningham supports research development and special projects, collaborating with community organizations, arts nonprofits, higher education entities and corporate design leaders worldwide. Prior to RISD, she served as the executive director for research and founding director of the Arts Research Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.

A Providence-based designer and educator, John Caserta holds an MFA from Yale University and a BA in Journalism from the University of North Carolina. As an information designer, he has produced infographics and data-driven applications for The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Reuters, the Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center in France, NBC, the NCAA and more.

Brooks Hagan has taught at RISD since 2006, focusing on the integration of hand-based practice with industrial manufacturing and new technologies. In addition to maintaining a studio practice informed by industrial fabrication processes, he is the founder of the interdisciplinary Virtual Textiles Research Group and a co-creator of Weft, a digital platform for designing on-demand custom woven textiles.

Patricia Felisa Barbeito is professor of American literatures in the Literary Arts and Studies department. Her research and teaching interests include race and ethnicity in American literature; the African American literary tradition; captivity and prison narratives; magical realism; the Latin American novel; and noir fiction and film. She is also a translator of contemporary Greek fiction and poetry, and in 2013 she was awarded the MGSA Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize for her translation of Elias Maglini's The Interrogation.

Clement Valla is an artist who explores the intricate relationship between humans and computers in the creation and interpretation of images. His art has been featured in solo exhibitions at bitforms gallery, Art Macau, Istanbul Contemporary, PC Galleries, XPO Gallery and Transfer Gallery, and shown in many other galleries worldwide. Valla’s work has also been cited in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, El Pais, Huffington Post, Rhizome, Domus, Wired, The Brooklyn Rail, Liberation and on BBC television.

Margot Nishimura is an art historian with more than two decades of experience in teaching, curatorial practice and administration in museums and libraries. Providing leadership for The Fleet Library, the Nature Lab, the Center for Arts & Language, and Campus Exhibitions, in past years at RISD she was a lecturer in art history and, from 2010–11, Academic Affairs' director of academic planning and assessment.