LAS Welcomes Six New Executive Officers for the Academic Year
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is proud to welcome a distinguished cohort of executive officers committed to advancing excellence in teaching, research, and service.
With the 2025-2026 academic year underway, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is entering a new phase of strategic growth and innovation. Six accomplished individuals have joined the college’s executive leadership team, each bringing unique expertise and a shared commitment to fostering intellectual vitality, access to excellence, and forward-thinking collaboration. Their appointments signal a renewed focus on empowering faculty, enriching student experiences, and strengthening LAS’s role as a leader in higher education.
Tarini Bedi, Anthropology
Professor Bedi is an ethnographer who researches the relationships between urbanization and globalization, politics, governance, gender relations, religion, kinship, and economic livelihoods in cities of the global South. Between 2023-2025, she serves as Program Director for Cultural Anthropology at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She is the author of three books, and her fieldwork and research have been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Science Foundation’s Cultural Anthropology Program, and the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). She is co-Editor of the Anthropology of Work Review and member of the Editorial and Publications Board for the Association of Asian Studies.
Fabien Kenig, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Professor Kenig is a geologist using organic geochemistry to address issues in Earth sciences as well as environmental and forensic sciences. His research funding derives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with an Exobiology grant and an Astrobiology Institute grant. He founded and directs the Organic Geochemistry Laboratory (OGL) at UIC, which supports postgraduate, graduate and undergraduate research. He is an author on 77 peer-reviewed articles.
Nadine Naber, Gender and Women’s Studies
Professor Naber is a faculty member in the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, the Global Asian Studies Program, and the Department of Anthropology. She is the Co-PI of the Middle East and Muslim Societies Cluster and Co-Organizer of the Global Middle East Studies Working Group. She is author/co-editor of five books and the lead author of the two policy reports, one for the United Nations. She is the recipient of major awards such as the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Studies Association, the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Humanities without Walls Award, and the 2024 Freedom Scholar Award.
Marya Schechtman, Philosophy
Professor Schechtman is an LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, as well as a member of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience. Her main areas of interest are personal identity, practical reasoning, and bioethics. She is the author of three books and dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles in top journals. Professor Schechtman has lectured on topics in personal identity, the theory of autonomy, and bioethics around the world.
Julia Vaingurt, Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies
Professor Vaingurt specializes in 20th century Russian literature and culture and Russian, European, and American Modernism and Avant-Garde movements. She is the author of two books and co-editor on two other books, one an anthology of posthumanism in Russia and one a Svetlana Boym reader, as well as many peer-reviewed articles.
Andreas Feldmann, Political Science
Professor Feldmann is a faculty member in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Department of Political Science. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Global Immigration Cluster Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He investigates topics in the intersection of comparative politics and international relations with a focus on Latin America. His research interests include forced migration, terrorism, criminal politics, human rights and foreign policy. He is the co-author of three books and has published numerous peer-reviewed articles. He has received grants from the Ford Foundation, the International Development Research Centre, and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (2000‒6), Estado de la Nación Costa Rica, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.