Leadership Changes: Karey Harwood, Professor of Religious Studies and Interim Department Head, has been appointed as the ongoing Head beginning June 30, 2026. Robert Mabrito, Associate Professor of Philosophy, has been appointed as Associate Head.

Promotions and a Reappointment: Sanem Soyarslan, Associate Professor of Philosophy, was promoted to Professor. She earned her PhD in philosophy from Duke University in 2011 and was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University before joining NC State in 2013. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy and the history of ethics. She currently has a monograph under contract with Cambridge University Press entitled Human Freedom in Spinoza’s Ethics.

William Bauer, Associate Teaching Professor of Philosophy, was promoted to Teaching Professor. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2010 and joined the teaching faculty of NC State in the same year. He regularly teaches Biomedical Ethics, among other philosophy courses, and recently published a monograph entitled Causal Powers and the Intentionality Continuum.

Amy Glaser, Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy, was promoted to Associate Teaching Professor. They earned their Ph.D. in philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2018. Glaser began at NC State in Fall 2018 and regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy and Contemporary Moral Issues for our department, as well as Humans and the Environment for the Department of Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences.

Nevin Johnson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, was reappointed to second term Assistant Professor. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023 and was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Philosophy at NC State in Fall 2023. His research focuses on philosophy of law. Johnson recently created the Philosophy of Law Minor and also contributes to the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Minor housed in SPIA.

Retirements: The department saw two significant retirements this year. Mary Kathleen Cunningham retired March 1, 2026, after nearly 43 years of service. William Adler retires July 1, 2026, after 42 years.

Mary Kath Cunningham started at NC State as an Instructor in Religious Studies in Fall 1983 and became an Assistant Professor in 1989, after completing her Ph.D. at Yale University. She was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 1995 and then served as the Director of Undergraduate Advising for the Department from 1997 to 2007. She was the Religious Studies Honors Director from 1997 until this academic year.

Trained at Yale Divinity School and Yale University in Christian theology, Cunningham made significant contributions to our Religious Studies program. She developed and taught a survey course on Christianity and an upper-level course on Women and Religion. She also created a course called Darwinism and Christianity, which she co-taught for many years with Fred Gould, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Entomology. She was recognized for her teaching accomplishments with the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Award in 2000 and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award in 1992 and 1998.

Cunningham’s longstanding interest in evolutionary theory’s intersection with the Christian tradition led her to publish God and Evolution: A Reader (Routledge) in 2007. Work on this volume was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Bill Adler (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1982) was appointed at NC State as an Assistant Professor in Fall 1984. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in Fall 1991 and to Professor in Fall 1997. He was awarded the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence in 2009 and appointed Distinguished University Professor of Religious Studies in 2013. An internationally recognized scholar, Adler specializes in Christian origins and early Christianity, the New Testament, Greco-Roman Religions, and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period. He has authored or co-authored eight books, including The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, and published over 60 articles, book chapters, and invited essays. He has given invited lectures around the world, including in Germany, Belgium, France, Israel, England, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, and across the United States.

In addition to a long and productive research career, Adler is an outstanding teacher. He won the CHASS Outstanding Teaching Award in 2007 and the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Award in 2009. He developed and taught a set of courses that are crucial to the Religious Studies curriculum, including Introduction to the Old Testament, Introduction to the New Testament, Introduction to Intertestamental Literature, Early Christianity to the Time of Eusebius, Advanced Readings in the Christian Gospels, and Life and Letters of the Apostle Paul.

A retirement party in Mary Kath and Bill’s honor was held after the department graduation on May 8. The display case in Withers Hall was decorated by Mia Henry to celebrate them both.

Major Anniversaries: Four members of the department’s faculty celebrated significant anniversaries in 2026:

• Jason Staples, Assistant Teaching Professor, 10 years
• Veljko Dubljevic, Professor, 10 years
• Ron Endicott, Associate Professor, 25 years
• Tim Hinton, Professor, 30 years

Scholarly Reassignments: Stephen Ferguson, Professor of Philosophy and of Africana Studies, spent the 2025-26 academic year on scholarly reassignment, supported by a prestigious ACLS Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowship allowed Ferguson to advance two significant research projects: (1) Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Dialectic of Liberation: Political Philosophy and Revolution in the ‘American Century’ and (2) Between Marx and Malcolm: African American Philosophers and Class Struggle in the ‘American Century.’

Levi McLaughlin, Professor of Religious Studies, spent Spring 2026 on scholarly reassignment. He was a Simon and Hallsworth Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, UK. He also traveled to Japan to continue research for a book project.

Faculty Honors and Accomplishments:

• Marina Bykova was awarded a 2026 CHASS Research Innovation Grant to support travel and research for the completion of her book, Hegel’s Concept of Geist: A Reconsideration (under contract with Cambridge University Press).
• Irina Mikhalevich was awarded a grant from Burroughs Wellcome for the project “Co-Consciousness Catalysis Meetings at NC State,” for which she is Co-PI.
• Veljko Dubljevic hosted the “Ethics and Agentic AI” Symposium on May 26, focusing on the impact of autonomous agents on research, education, and society. In addition, the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB)-Neuroscience, for which Veljko serves as Editor-in-Chief, was recently listed as the best journal in Philosophy (out of 891) in Scopus rankings for 2025.
• Gary Comstock was awarded funding from the UNC System Common Ground Collaborative to support a project he co-leads with Geoff Sayre-McCord (UNC-Chapel Hill) called Ensuring Critical Thinking and Civil Discourse in the Curriculum. Their project will equip faculty in all seventeen UNC campuses to help students reason carefully about hard questions and disagree productively, using the Thinker and Sway platforms for argument analysis and reflective dialogue.

2025-26 Graduates: Thirty students graduated in either Philosophy or Religious Studies during the 2025-26 academic year. Ten of these students graduated summa cum laude, six graduated magna cum laude, and two graduated cum laude. Ten completed second majors outside our disciplines, including majors in Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, Environmental Science, English, History, Psychology, and Political Science. Fifteen completed one or more minors, including minors in Cognitive Science, Criminology, Economics, English, Ethics, Film Studies, German, History, Music Studies, Psychology, and Religious Studies.