RISD Welcomes New Full-Time Faculty Members as Academic Year 2025–26 Gets Underway

New and returning RISD students are getting ready for the fall semester and the opportunity to learn from the world’s foremost arts educators, including a new full-time librarian at the Fleet Library and 11 new full-time faculty members joining the Experimental and Foundation Studies, Architecture + Design, and Fine Arts divisions.

“We are delighted to welcome new faculty colleagues who are deeply engaged with their disciplines and who understand the multilayered context of the world in which we live,” says Provost Touba Ghadessi. “Their thoughtful and creative practices, as well as their solid pedagogical approaches, will enhance the students’ learning journey beautifully and with purpose.”

Three members of the cohort will work with first-year students in the Experimental and Foundation Studies division: Assistant Professor Candice C. Chu, Assistant Professor Jordan Seaberry 14 PT and Associate Professor Alfredo Gisholt. Chu’s work pursues ideas related to lived experience and is inspired by everything from mosaic floors and flowers to the fluidity of time and imperfection of memory. Seaberry—a RISD alum who has been teaching in the division part-time since 2022—is a painter, organizer and legislative advocate dedicated to criminal justice reform. His efforts have contributed to probation reform, the passing of the Unshackling Pregnant Prisoners Bill and Rhode Island’s Community-Police Relationship Act.

Gisholt, a painter from Mexico City, has won numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim, a Dedalus Fellowship and a George and Helen Segal Award. He has shown his work in many group and solo exhibitions, most recently Por Arboledas, Campos y Lugares (Through Groves, Fields and Places) at Cristobal Contemporary in Mexico City.

Kate Fox, RISD’s new librarian, has been working with high school students at St. George’s School in Middletown, RI and says she is looking forward to supporting RISD students with her expertise in everything from the role of material culture in research and writing to the part that oral history plays in documenting craft movements.

Assistant Professor Kelsey Elder and Assistant Professor Ritchie Yao both join the Architecture + Design division, Elder in the Graphic Design department and Yao in Architecture. Elder describes himself as “a typographer and type designer focused on the transformation of language. In the classroom,” he adds, “I aim to cultivate a studio experience centered on curiosity by encouraging students to explore design as a cultural, technological and political craft.” 

Yao’s research investigates housing innovation and adaptability in the face of climate change, affordability challenges and shifting demographics as well as community-driven, adaptive reuse projects that serve the public good. He extends his research into the studio at RISD, challenging students to rethink how architecture can address social, economic and environmental challenges through spatial and typological innovation. 

The remaining new hires round out the Fine Arts division. The Painting department welcomes Associate Professor Dana DeGiulio and Assistant Professor Kelley-Ann Lindo. DeGiulio works in painting, drawing, video, installation and writing and says that her teaching pits materiality against representation, “asking the means what the ends are.” She has 17 years of experience teaching visual arts and recently served as resident faculty at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. 

Lindo’s practice explores ideas around trauma and memory and her relationship with the Caribbean. “Through storytelling, I examine interruptions, recollections, imaginary representations of truth and false memory in postcolonial spaces,” she explains.

In the Film/Animation/Video department, Assistant Professor Christy Karacas 97 FAV (best known for Adult Swim series Superjail! and Ballmastrz:9009) returns to RISD to share with students his experience as a filmmaker, showrunner, executive producer, writer, director, storyboard artist, animator and character designer. “What I love about moving between disciplines is that each practice influences the other in unexpected ways,” he says. “Techniques from one medium make me rethink my approach to another so that I’m always experimenting and staying open to surprises, which is something I encourage my students to embrace.”

Finally, the Photography department welcomes Schiller Family Associate Professor in Race in Art & Design Nelson Chan 06 PH, who will begin in spring 2026, and Assistant Professor Laine Rettmer, who rejoins the department and will serve once again as graduate program director. Chan was born to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and says that growing up on two continents with unique cultures deeply influences his work. Rettmer is a video artist and opera director whose studio practice “investigates the intersections of storytelling, queerness, visuality and the formation of cultural myths through film, video, photography, cinematic archives and large-scale performance installations.” 

Simone Solondz / top photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH
September 8, 2025