Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study Elects New President and Trustees
PRESS CONTACT: Alexandra Altman, (609) 951-4406
Kristen Ghodsee, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, was elected President of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS). As President, Ghodsee, who is a former Member (2006–07) in the School of Social Science, will lead the AMIAS Board in its works on behalf of the Institute and current and former Members. She succeeds Stephen Mansbach who served as President from 2012–14.
Ghodsee, an American ethnographer, earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Her research focuses on the gendered effects of the economic transition from communism to capitalism and the ethnographic study of postcommunist nostalgia in Eastern Europe. In her current works, Ghodsee has experimented with ethnographic fiction, autoethnography and photoethnography to produce more intimate narratives and images of the disorienting impacts of the collapse of communism on daily life. She is the author of five books and over two dozen articles, including The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe, forthcoming with Duke University Press in 2015.
“I am very honored to have this opportunity to serve the AMIAS community,” said Ghodsee. “The association does such valuable work in supporting Members and their families while in residence and promotes communication and collaboration after their visit to the Institute.”
Four new Board members were also elected at the AMIAS Annual Meeting of the Members including, Alison I. Beach, Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University; Duana Fullwiley, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University; Claudia Swan, Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern University; and Nancy J. Troy, Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art and Department Chair at Stanford University. Additionally, Bruce Grant, Professor of Anthropology at New York University and Julia Wolf, Helibronn reader in combinatorics and number theory at the University of Bristol, were reelected to serve a second term on the Board. Each member will serve a term of three years and will work with Ghodsee to enhance the Member experience at the Institute.
For more information about AMIAS, visit https://www.ias.edu/people/amias
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.