The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts has appointed Professor Nicholas (Nick) Henriksen as Chair of the Department of History of Art for a three-year term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2029. He succeeds Paroma Chatterjee, Professor of History of Art, who led the department from 2023 to 2026.
Henriksen is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and also holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics. He comes to History of Art from outside the discipline, bringing broad experience in interdisciplinary research, undergraduate mentoring, and departmental service across LSA.
His research sits at the meeting point of phonetics and phonology, using laboratory methods to study how speech sounds are produced and how they are represented in the mind. He has worked extensively on varieties of Spanish spoken in southern Spain and Argentina, and leads a long-running collaborative project, “From Africa to Patagonia: Voices of Displacement,” which documents the speech of the last generation of Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals in Patagonia. That project’s attention to migration, memory, and cultural loss resonates with many of the questions History of Art faculty and students pursue.
Henriksen is widely recognized as a strong mentor. He co-directs the Speech Production Lab, where undergraduate researchers often turn classroom projects into honors theses and published articles. In 2025 he received the Outstanding Research Mentor Award from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. In 2024 he was awarded the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship, which recognizes faculty members for their extraordinary contributions to undergraduate education. He holds a PhD in Linguistics and Hispanic Linguistics from Indiana University and a BA from Rutgers University.
Henriksen says, “I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to serve this department, and to Paroma for her leadership in positioning History of Art for its current success. I look forward to listening to our faculty, students, and staff, and to building together on the strong foundation laid by the chairs who came before me.”
