Three Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Professorships

Azadeh Tajdar was appointed the inaugural Cramer Family Professor of Practice in Community Impact in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York. Before coming to Syracuse, Dr. Tajdar held a diverse mix of positions across the globe. She has consulted for the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office, monitoring and evaluating humanitarian projects in Afghanistan, and at the Urban Justice Center in New York City, where she studied the feasibility of setting up a cooperatively owned mobile food vendor commissary.

Dr. Tajdar holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Kent in England and a law degree from the University of Amsterdam She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Jessica Brantley has been appointed the Frederick W. Hilles Professor of English at Yale University. She joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor of English in 2000, was tenured in 2009, and was promoted to full professor in 2015. She now chairs the English department. Dr. Brantley is a scholar of medieval reading cultures as they are reflected in manuscripts, and whose writing has illuminated the connection between material culture and devotional practices.

A graduate of Harvard College, Dr. Brantley holds a master’s degree in medieval literature from the University of Cambridge in England and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kristen Harrison is the new Richard Cole Eminent Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan. There, Dr. Harrison served as director of the Family and Media Lab, which studied the role of screen media in family life and youth development. She joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2012 after teaching at the University of Illinois.

Professor Harrison earned a Ph.D. in communication science with a minor in social and developmental psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.