Congratulations to the Provost’s MCFI Ambassadors for the academic year 2024–2025! These exceptional faculty will serve as peer mentors to guide and inspire future cohorts, and provide valuable input for the ongoing development of MCFI programming.
Paulo Lemos Horta
Paulo Lemos Horta is Associate Professor of Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is a scholar of world literature, focusing on works that transcend their cultures of origin. His research explores cross-cultural influences on The Thousand and One Nights and the reception of 16th-century Portuguese author Luis de Camões in the Middle East and South Asia. His book, Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (Harvard University Press, 2017), examines the hidden contributors to this classic work. He joined NYU Abu Dhabi from Simon Fraser University, where he played a key role in establishing the world literature program. At NYU Abu Dhabi, he teaches courses on The Thousand and One Nights, literary translation, and the global history of magic realism. He also co-directs a multi-campus research group on world literature, organizing a five-year series of seminars across continents.
Susannah Levi
Susannah Levi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at NYU. Her research explores spoken language processing, focusing on how listener traits (e.g., languages spoken, reading ability) and speech characteristics (e.g., native vs. nonnative, talker familiarity) affect comprehension. She investigates whether familiarity with a speaker’s voice aids understanding across languages and if children, like adults, benefit from familiar talkers. Levi is also exploring ways to improve language processing in individuals with language and reading disorders through speaker familiarity. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Washington, completed a postdoc at Indiana University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan.
Panayotis Mavromatis
Panayotis Mavromatis is Associate Professor and Director of Music Theory at NYU’s Department of Music and Performing Arts, and a founding member of NYU’s Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL). His research integrates cognitive science, linguistics, and computer science into music theory, with a focus on the mathematical and computational modeling of musical structure and cognition. His work has explored topics like the cognitive implications of melody in modern Greek church chant and the educational applications of music theory using Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Mavromatis is also co-editor of the journal Analytical Approaches to World Music and co-organizer of the associated biennial conference series.