Seven Women Faculty Members Who Are Taking on New Assignments

Nwando Achebe, the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History at Michigan State University, has been assigned the additional duties of associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion for the College of Social Science. She is the author of Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 (Heinemann, 2005) and  The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011). She is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History.

A native of Nigeria, Dr. Achebe joined the faculty at Michigan State University in 2005 after teaching at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kelly J. Shannon, associate professor of history and the Chastain-Johnston Middle Eastern Studies Distinguished Professor in Peace Studies at Florida Atlantic University, was named director of the university’s Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Initiative. She is the author of U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

Dr. Shannon is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she majored in history. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in history from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Marwa Shalaby is a new assistant professor in the departments of gender and women’s studies and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was the Fellow for the Middle East and director of the Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Shalaby is a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where she majored in English literature. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Houston.

Lolita Buckner Inniss, senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at the Dedman School of Law of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, has been named University Distinguished Professor. She joined the faculty in 2017 after serving as a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University.

Professor Inniss is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey. She holds a juris doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles and a master of laws degree and Ph.D. in law both from York University in Canada.

N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, a professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was named director of the university’s Institute for African Development.

A native of Côte d’Ivoire, Professor Assié-Lumumba holds two bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees from the University of Lyon in France. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative education from the University of Chicago.

Lynn Meade, an instructor in communication at the University of Arkansas since 2003, was named co-director of the university’s Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center.

Dr. Meade graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in communication and a doctoral degree in higher education, college teaching, and leadership.

Teresa A. Nance, an associate professor of communication at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, was given the added duties of vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion at the university.

Dr. Nance holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Emerson College in Boston. She earned a Ph.D. at Temple University in Philadelphia.