Three Women Scholars Appointed to Endowed Positions at Research Universities

Tara Zahra has been appointed the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago. Established in 2012, the Neubauer Collegium explores new possibilities for humanistic research. Dr. Zahra is the Homer J. Livingston Professor of East European History at the university.  Dr. Zahra focuses her research and teaching on Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. She has written extensively on the history of migration and refugees, nationalism, globalization, and the family, and has done research in German, Czech, Italian, French, and Polish archives. She is the author of several books including The Great Departure: Mass Migration and the Making of the Free World (W.W. Norton, 2016)

Professor Zahra is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Kiron Skinner will join the faculty at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, this fall as the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics. She previously served as the Taube Professor for International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy and was a faculty member in the department of history. She is the co-editor of Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (Free Press, 2001) and Reagan, A Life in Letters (Free Press, 2003).

Dr. Skinner is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science and international relations from Harvard University.

Lisa Gralnick was named the Fred Fenster Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the history and cultural contexts of both adornment and gold. She taught at Kent State University and then Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before settling in New York City in 1982 to pursue her career as an artist full-time. In 1991, she accepted a position as head of the jewelry and metals program at Parsons School of Design. She joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in 2001.

Professor Gralnick is a graduate of Kent State University and holds a master of fine arts degree in metalsmithing from the State University of New York at New Paltz.