We are excited to welcome the following new faculty to the College of Arts, Media and Design! This is truly an inspiring cohort, bringing depth of research, creative practice, and professional experience to our students and community.

Nina Webb

Visiting Professor of the Practice
in the Department of Music

After 25 years helping shape some of music’s biggest artist brands from Paramore to Sia to Janelle Monáe, Nina Webb is bringing that experience into the classroom. The former SVP and Head of Marketing at Atlantic Records, and a Billboard Top Women in Music honoree, Webb is just as energized by mentoring the next generation as she was by building Grammy-winning campaigns. She joins Northeastern eager to help students find their own path into the industry, and to bridge the gap between the classroom and real-world experience through mentorship and industry partnerships.

Jamal Williams

Assistant Professor of Music with joint appointment in Psychology starting in 2027

Jamal Williams studies music perception using tools from neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning, with a special focus on how music shapes memory. Williams earned his bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Memphis and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Princeton, where he was named a Presidential Fellow, and currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. Outside the lab, he’s a music producer, DJ, and self-described sci-fi enthusiast — and he’s thrilled to join CAMD.

Orkan Telhan

Associate Professor in Art + Design
and core faculty in The Quantum Materials and Sensing Institute

Orkan Telhan has spent his career asking what computation looks like when it’s treated as a cultural and material force, not just a technical one. An interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher, he joins Northeastern’after a decade split between academia, most recently as a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and biotech leadership, including co-founding the company Biorealize. He currently serves as President of the Biodesign Challenge, and his work has found its way into venues from the Venice Architecture Biennale to the New Museum.

Jennifer Lee Magas

Professor of the Practice in Public Relations jointly appointed between the School of Journalism and the Department of Communication Studies

Coming home to Northeastern feels personal for Jennifer Lee Magas, who earned her M.A. here before building a 30-year career in public relations, crisis communication, and media law. She brings decades of experience as co-owner of Magas Media Consultants, along with a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School. Her expertise has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, and The New York Times, and she’s mentored thousands of students through campaign work and career preparation. She’s excited to do the same now as a member of CAMD.

Jeremy Munn

New position as Associate Teaching Professor of Architectural Practice and Real Estate in the School of Architecture

Jeremy Munn brings a rare dual perspective to the School of Architecture: he’s spent his career both practicing architecture and helping organizations run well. As Vice President of Administration, Finance and Strategy at TERVA Corp, he keeps a 30-person design and construction consultancy performing at its best. A licensed architect with an MBA from Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Munn also spent a decade at Northeastern’s Planning, Real Estate and Facilities division, where he helped guide major campus construction and renovation projects — experience he now brings to students.

Jiabao Li

Associate Professor of Art and Design at Northeastern University in Oakland

Jiabao Li wants to know how technology shapes the way we see reality and see each other, across species. Her work spans wearables, robotics, AR/VR, and bio-art, tackling climate change, interspecies co-creation, and humane technology, and has landed everywhere from MoMA and the Venice Architecture Biennale to a TED stage. Before Northeastern, she spent four years at Apple helping invent new technologies for products including the Vision Pro, taught at UT Austin and Stanford, and co-founded two health startups. A Harvard GSD graduate with numerous honors, including a Webby Award and the STARTS Prize, Li is excited to bring her genre-blurring research to students on the Oakland campus.

Alysoun Wright

New position as Associate Teaching Professor of Landscape Architecture and Fundamental Design in the School of Architecture

Alysoun Wright believes good landscape design starts with equity and resilience, especially on the most technically challenging sites. She brings hands-on experience from Landing Studio and Stoss Landscape Urbanism, where she helped shape major Boston-area projects like Reconnecting Chinatown and Moakley Park. A graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design with a Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning, as well as a Master of Architecture from Northeastern, Wright joined the School of Architecture as visiting faculty in 2025-26 before stepping into her new role.

Brennan Klein

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies with a joint appointment in Physics

Brennan Klein explores complex systems and how they impact a variety of societal domains. As an incoming Assistant Professor in Communication Studies and Physics and core faculty at the Network Science Institute, he directs both the Complexity & Society Lab and NetSI Sport, exploring everything from network dynamics to disparities in the U.S. criminal-legal system to coordination in elite athletics. A Data for Justice Fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center and recipient of the 2023 René Thom Young Researcher Award, Klein earned his Ph.D. in Network Science from Northeastern and his BA from Swarthmore.

Lucas Wright

Assistant Professor in Communication Studies with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy starting in Fall 2027

Lucas Wright wants to know who’s really deciding what’s safe online and who profits from that decision. He studies the professionals, companies, and markets behind content moderation, AI safety, and disinformation monitoring. Wright holds a Ph.D. from Cornell, an MSc from Oxford, and a BA from American University, and will spend the coming year as a Resident Fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project. His research appears in Social Media & Society and the ACM FAccT proceedings, with a forthcoming piece in Nature Human Behaviour.

Allison Betsold

Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Music

Allison Betsold believes music is best experienced together and that everyone should have a way in. As Artist in Residence in the Department of Music, she directed the NU Pep Band and NU Concert Band, leading more than 250 students across disciplines and majors; under her direction, NUPB became a fixture at home volleyball, hockey, and basketball games. A Massachusetts native specializing in wind band conducting and literature, Betsold holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master of Music from the University of Kansas, and pursued her Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Illinois before returning to NU.

Andres Lira Vigneaux

Visiting Assistant / Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Architecture

Andres Lira Vigneaux studies the intersection of material culture, fabrication, and the ecological and social dimensions of the built environment, with a focus on timber and other low-carbon building systems. A former studio-practice lead exploring digital fabrication and pre-industrial building traditions, Lira Vigneaux earned his Master in Architecture II from Harvard’s GSD, where his thesis “Gentle Densities and Off-Site Construction” won the JCHS Prize and was later selected for the MIT DesignX accelerator. He previously taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and now teaches design studios at Northeastern University.

Bill Skinner

Visiting Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Architecture

Bill Skinner’s research traces the history of architecture and urban development in the twentieth-century Caribbean, with a focus on how colonial-era welfare initiatives took physical shape through large-scale development projects in the postwar period. Right now, that means digging into mass housing and town planning schemes in Barbados. Skinner holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University and an M.A. in the History of Architecture and Urban Development from Cornell University.

Megan Sawey

Assistant Teaching Professor of Communication Studies starting in 2027

Megan Sawey wants to understand what it’s really like to be an influencer — the identity, the labor, and the platforms shaping both. Her research spans media, technology, and undergraduate culture, with a particular focus on the creator economy and the lived experiences of creators navigating social media work. Sawey holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Communication from Cornell University, where she previously taught as a Lecturer, and a B.A. in Advertising from Temple. Her work appears in journals including Social Media + Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Media and Communication.

Blair MacIntyre

Professor of Augmented and Virtual Reality in the Department of Art + Design, with a joint appointment in Khoury College of Computer Sciences

Blair MacIntyre has been building the future of AR since before most people knew what to call it, creating tools and experiences with the technology since the early 1990s. His research explores how distributed, social mixed reality can transform conferences, teaching, and work, with a strong focus on ethical, equitable access to immersive technology — including a long-running effort to bring AR to the open web through the project he founded, Argon, back in 2008. Before Northeastern, MacIntyre spent four years as a Principal Research Scientist at Mozilla leading its push to bring XR to the web, and ran an AR game studio at Georgia Tech that shipped three handheld games. He’s published more than 100 academic papers and remains deeply active across the field’s major conferences and industry conversations.