Five Women Scholars Who Have Been Assigned to New Positions in Academia

Suzy Hansen, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, has joined the faculty of the Globalization and International Affairs Program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. She will teach writing on international affairs starting in the Spring 2021 semester.

Hansen, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018).

Sidney Edwards is a new assistant professor in the department of theatre arts and director of the African American Theatre Program at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. She was a teaching artist for Cleveland Play House and the Karamu House Theater Cleveland. She was also an adjunct faculty member at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio.

Edwards is a graduate of William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she majored in musical theater. She earned a master of fine arts degree in theater and performance from the University of Louisville.

Laurel Fulkerson, a professor of classics at Florida State University, will serve as interim vice president for research at the university. She has served as associate vice president for research since 2018 and earlier was associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Fulkerson has worked at the university since 2000.

Dr. Fulkerson holds a bachelor’s degree in classics, a master’s degree in Latin, and a Ph.D. in classics, all from Columbia Univerity in New York City.

Franciska Coleman is a new assistant professor of law and associate director of the East Asian legal studies program at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. She was a visiting assistant professor at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and the University of Kansas School of Law.

Dr. Coleman is a graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a Ph.D. in language in education from the Univerity of Pennsylvania.

Ayanna Thompson, director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and a professor in the department of English at Arizona State University was appointed a Regents Professor at the university. She is the author of several books including Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Professor Thompson is magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University in New York City, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree in English from Sussex University in England, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar. Dr. Thompson earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature at Harvard University.