Lauren Lukkarila, PhD, joins Tulane from Georgia Tech, where she was the assistant director of the Georgia Tech Language Institute and a senior lecturer. She received her doctoral degree in applied linguistics from Georgia State University, and her master’s degree in Hispanic literature from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. She teaches in the areas of humanities and social sciences and Teacher Preparation and Certification in the School of Professional Advancement. She also serves as the academic development and resource specialist for the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

Laura Lane-Steele earned her JD from Harvard Law School in 2016 and her BA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. After law school, she clerked for the Hon. Jane R. Roth on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also practiced law at Steptoe & Johnson, LLP, in Washington, D.C., focusing on complex commercial litigation. Her research focuses on sex and gender in American equality law and family law.

Karen Stirrett earned her degrees in biology (BS) and genetics (PhD) from Wake Forest University and the University of Georgia, respectively. She was trained in the field of molecular genetics with a concentration on the genetics of microorganisms. The knowledge gained during her PhD led to successful postdoctoral research projects at Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of Georgia in drug discovery and development of green technologies, respectively. After nine years and 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals, she left the research world to pursue a career in teaching.

Karl Schmid joins the Tulane philosophy department from Emory University, where he was recently an American Council of Learned Societies Robert H.N. Ho Foundation dissertation fellow. He has taught courses on Buddhism at Emory College, on Sanskrit at Candler School of Theology, and on philosophy of science at Sera Mey Monastery in India, as part of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. His research focuses on Buddhist theories of meditation and how they relate to contemporary philosophy of mind, ethics and epistemology.

Katie Nunnery completed her PhD at the University of Connecticut in May 2020. Her research specializes in late Victorian literature, children's literature and childhood studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Her dissertation, "Fin-de-Siècle Decadent Writing and the Queerness of Childhood," traces the representations and queer resonances of the figure of the child in Decadent writing of the late 19th century in Britain.

Kalina Mincheva is joining Tulane's mathematics department as an assistant professor. Previously, she was a Gibbs Assistant Professor at Yale University. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Her research is in algebraic and tropical geometry.