New Full-Time Faculty Members Share Unique Creative Viewpoints with RISD Students

As the fall 2026–27 semester gets underway and the community prepares to celebrate 150 years of art and design education, RISD welcomes four new full-time faculty members and one librarian into the fold. Adding their unique passions for creative thinking and making to the collective pool are librarian and archivist Eli Peters, Assistant Professor of Illustration Allison Cole 03 PR, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design Anther Kiley MFA 13 GD, and—in the Experimental and Foundation Studies (EFS) division—Associate Professor Baris Gokturk (Barış Göktürk) and Assistant Professor Edgar Serrano.

“It is with great joy that I welcome our new colleagues this year,” says Provost Touba Ghadessi. “Together, they bring a wealth of experience and expertise, as well as thoughtful critical practice combined with openness and curiosity. I look forward to learning from them and know that our community will continue to grow stronger, kinder, and more just through their presence.” 

At the Fleet Library, Eli Peters will apply their extensive processing and technical experience to RISD’s collections. They previously worked at Boston College, where they reorganized the Liturgy and Life Collection of religious artifacts using linked data to create multiple avenues for discovery. 

Alum Allison Cole, who is teaching in the Illustration department and has been at RISD since 2010, is committed to inclusive, accessible pedagogy that helps students build confidence in their own voice and take creative risks. Her practice spans children’s illustration, sequential art, surface design, editorial illustration, and brand collaborations, and she has worked for such clients as Target, West Elm, and The Washington Post. 

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“I use illustration to explore themes of neurodiversity, feminism, and inclusivity, creating images that entertain, inform, and inspire connection,” says Cole. “As a teacher, I work to build the practical and professional skills that will sustain students’ creative careers over time.” 

In the Graphic Design department, alum Anther Kiley, who has been teaching at RISD on and off for almost a decade, will continue to work with both graduate and undergraduate students. “In my personal work, I explore the relationship between the built environment and its representation in photographs, plans, maps, and models,” says Kiley. “I also create and distribute a line of sustainable architectural children’s toys called Cardkits that allow kids to build miniature paper cities.”

Kiley recently exhibited a body of photographic and digital work at the University of Antwerp, the culmination of a years-long visual exploration of the urban landscape of Belgium. OFF-SPACE explored the boundaries of what we consider architecture, a concept shaped by coincidence, cultural practices, and necessity.

Baris Gokturk, who teaches in EFS, makes work exploring “themes of regeneration through fragmented figures and abstract spaces that represent spiritual unrest and a relentless search for new possibilities.” Raised in Turkey and Puerto Rico, he moved to New York to study sculpture and painting and has since taught at MassArt, The New School, Columbia University, and Hunter College.

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Gokturk has been an ApexArt fellow in Seoul, a NXTHVN fellow in New Haven, and an artist-in-residence at ISCP, LMCC, Fountainhead, and Yaddo, as well as a participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and SOMA Mexico. He has shown his work internationally in the US, Germany, Spain, France, Korea, Turkey, and Puerto Rico and is a founding member of Junte, a land, art, and culture project in Puerto Rico incubated by the New Museum in New York.

Also teaching in the EFS division, Edgar Serrano previously taught at such institutions as Wesleyan, Yale, Hartford Art School, and Connecticut College. He says that what he loves about painting—his medium of choice—is its ability to stop or slow down time. 

“There’s a magic behind it,” he says. “When I was in London, I went to the National Gallery and stared at Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast for two hours, no exaggeration!” His early encounters with art came through reproductions in books and magazines and on album covers, postcards, stickers, and embroidered patches that continue to inform his practice. His technique incorporates expressionistic brushwork, trompe-l’oeil illusions, and collage, creating textured surfaces that hold memory and confront the instability of representation.

Serrano has earned numerous grants and residencies, most recently a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and a studio fellowship from NXTHVN in New Haven, CT. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Vogue México y Latinoamérica, and New York Magazine.

Simone Solondz / top photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH
September 8, 2026