A Quartet of Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Responsibilities in Higher Education

Anne M. Cafer, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi, has been given the added duties of associate dean of research, scholarship, and graduate education for the College of Liberal Arts at the university. Her research uses a systems approach to examine community resilience and social change around food procurement, agricultural systems, environmental sustainability, and health and nutrition at the community level.

Dr. Cafer is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State University, where she majored in biology and sociology. She earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Nebraska and a doctorate in rural sociology from the University of Missouri.

Crystal Feimster, an associate professor in the departments of African American studies and history and the programs of American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, has been appointed to a five-year term as the head of Pierson College at Yale University, effective July 1. College heads serve as the chief administrative officer and presiding faculty member within the residential colleges at Yale. Dr. Feimster is the author of the prizewinning book Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Harvard University Press, 2021).

Dr. Feimster holds a bachelor’s degree in history and women’s studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.

Valentina A. Grasso was appointed assistant professor of medieval history at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, effective for the 2023-24 academic year. She is currently an assistant professor of Semitics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Dr. Grasso is the author of Pre-Islamic Arabia: Societies, Politics, Cults, and Identities During Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Dr. Grasso holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Catania in Italy. She earned a master’s degree in Islamic studies from the University of Naples in Italy and a Ph.D. in divinity from the University of Cambridge in England.

Shana O. Kelley the Neena Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, was appointed president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago. The biomedical research hub in Chicago will develop new technologies for studying human tissues with unprecedented resolution. The hub’s ultimate goal is to unite the region’s best researchers to improve understanding of inflammation, potentially leading to new treatments for the inflammatory conditions that underlie disease. Researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois will be involved in the project.

Dr. Kelley joined the Northwestern faculty in 2021 after teaching at the University of Toronto. She is a graduate of Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.