Five Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Assignments at Universities

Ammina Kothari was appointed director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. She has been serving as an associate professor and director of graduate programs for the School of Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. She joined the faculty at RIT in 2012.

Dr. Kothari received her bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She holds a master’s degree in communication and society from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University.

Margaret Jacobs, a professor of history and the director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was appointed Univerity Professor. Her latest book is A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (University of Nebraska Press, 2014).

Dr. Jacobs is a graduate of Stanford University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.

Lesley Morris has joined the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources at the University of Nevada, Reno as an associate professor of rangeland ecology and management. She previously served on the faculty at Oregon State University.

Dr. Morris is a graduate of the University of New Mexico. She earned a master’s degree in environmental policy and management from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Ph.D. in ecology from Utah State University.

Karen Detlefsen, a professor of philosophy in the School of Arts and Sciences, with a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, was given the added duties of vice provost for education at the university. She is the co-editor of Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Professor Detlefsen has taught at Penn since 2001. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.

Nadia Brown will begin her tenure as director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this summer. Dr. Brown will also be a professor in the department of government with an affiliate appointment in the department of African American studies. She has been serving as an associate professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her latest book is Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Dr. Brown is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey.