A Trio of Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Chairs

Monica Prasad was appointed the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economic and Political Sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She will hold appointments in the department of sociology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the Center for Economy and Society at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute. Dr. Prasad comes to Johns Hopkins after 19 years as a sociology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Professor Prasad is a graduate of Yale University where she double majored in English and religious studies. She holds a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Kara Spiller was named the URBN Endowed Professor of Biomedical Innovation and URBN Biomedical Research Fund at Drexel University in Philadelphia. A professor in Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems, her research interests include the role of immune cells in tissue repair and regeneration, the design of immunomodulatory biomaterials, and international engineering education.

Dr. Spiller holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a Ph.D., all in biomedical engineering and all from Drexel University.

Karen Flynn was appointed the inaugural Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in Nursing at the University of Illinois, Chicago College of Nursing. She has been serving as an associate professor in the department of gender and women’s studies and the African-American studies program at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. Dr. Flynn will also serve as the director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Centre, which is housed at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Nursing.

Dr Flynn is the author of Moving Beyond Borders: Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the African Canadian Diaspora (University of Toronto Press, 2011). She holds a Ph.D. in women’s studies from York University in Toronto.