KU faculty members awarded Keeler Intra-University Professorships for 2025-2026 academic year
LAWRENCE — Four faculty members have been awarded a KU Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship, which was established in the early 1980s to support faculty in their pursuit of collaboration across disciplines.
The 2025-2026 Keeler Professorship recipients:
- Alyssa Appelman, William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications
- Meredith Bagwell-Gray, School of Social Welfare
- Luis Corteguera, Department of History
- María Velasco, Department of Visual Art.
The Keeler Professorships provide tenured faculty the opportunity to strengthen their knowledge of an academic specialty, broaden or achieve greater depth in a defined field of scholarship or gain competence in a new area of scholarly endeavor. As part of this award, Keeler recipients will present their research at a spring Red Hot Research event, a cross-disciplinary event series hosted by The Commons that highlights collaborative KU research partnerships.
“The Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship creates an opportunity for faculty to expand their KU connections and collaborate across disciplines as they engage in innovative interdisciplinary conversations,” said Amy Mendenhall, vice provost for faculty affairs. “These professorships broaden our research and instructional capacities while strengthening the KU community by fostering our collective academic spirit.”
About the recipients
Alyssa Appelman
Alyssa Appelman, associate professor of journalism, said she looks forward to collaborating with the KU Jewish Studies Program to expand her understanding of the field and develop her research on the professional experiences of Jewish journalists. During the professorship, Appelman intends to take a course in the program and explore collaborative opportunities. She also intends to consult with the program’s faculty and students on her research project, supported by the KU General Research Fund.
Appelman joined the KU faculty in 2023.
“I am honored to be selected for a Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the Jewish studies faculty and students,” Appelman said. “Exploring the intersections between Jewish studies and journalism will open avenues of research for me and inform my teaching, and I am excited to foster relationships between these two programs.”
Meredith Bagwell-Gray
Bagwell-Gray, associate professor of social welfare, plans to expand her research on trauma-informed workplaces with Beth Embry, assistant professor of management & entrepreneurship, and other faculty in the School of Business. Embry and Bagwell-Gray have collaborated to investigate what theory-driven practices and norms can enable managers to understand and address trauma in the workplace. Now, they are launching an original research project: a cross-case comparison study of trauma-informed workplace practices to support employee mental health and well-being across a variety of workplaces. Beyond research expansion, the Keeler Professorship will allow Bagwell-Gray to disseminate findings and develop an academic textbook.
Bagwell-Gray joined the KU faculty in 2018.
“This is a unique and exciting opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Embry and colleagues in the School of Business, bringing together my expertise in trauma healing with their strengths in organizational leadership and management,” Bagwell-Gray said. “I look forward to the new insights and innovations that will emerge from this interdisciplinary partnership.”
Luis Corteguera
Corteguera, professor of history, will partner with the Department of Spanish & Portuguese on the creation of two new interdisciplinary courses and research for his upcoming book. He will work closely with Margot Versteeg, chair of Spanish & Portuguese department, to explore directed readings on popular culture during the turn of the 20th century in Spain to better understand the rapidly evolving Spanish cultural trends of that time. Corteguera will audit two graduate seminar courses and report on his findings and research progress during a presentation to the Spanish & Portuguese department faculty and graduate students at the end of the spring 2026 semester.
Corteguera joined the KU faculty in 1994.
“The Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship presents a fantastic opportunity for me to collaborate closely with colleagues in the Spanish & Portuguese department, something that is typically challenging due to the demands of full-time teaching,” Corteguera said. “A semester of intensive interdisciplinary exchange will foster my intellectual growth and lead to innovative research on popular culture in 19th century Spain, deepening our understanding of the country’s rapidly evolving cultural trends in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
María Velasco
Velasco, professor of visual art, plans to engage with the Department of American Studies to create curricular opportunities around a shared commitment to preserve threatened stories and histories in the Kansas region, particularly in the Latinx/Chicanx communities, due to urban renewal practices. Velasco is currently involved in the project “Reclaiming Home: Remembering the Topeka Bottoms” and plans to use the Keeler Professorship to expand on this project by attending lectures and courses within the KU curriculum that relate to Latinx/Chicanx history and culture. She will also discuss with the American Studies department ways to weave the visual arts into U.S. history courses and will build a website to help strengthen both departments' community reach.
Velasco joined the KU faculty in 1995.
“I look forward to an energizing collaboration with the American studies Department and together envision ways in which art, film and humanities can unveil the complex layering of U.S. racial histories, migration and urban erasures in Kansas,” Velasco said. “The Keeler Professorship will help me achieve one of my greatest aspirations: to create interdisciplinary classroom collaborations that have real impact in the world.”