Radcliffe Institute Announces Faculty Leadership and Plans to Expand Programming

Newly Appointed Faculty Associates Will Work Across Disciplines to Expand Radcliffe Programs in Humanities and Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences

Jenny Corke
617-496-3078
jcorke@radcliffe.edu

Cambridge, Mass.—In the Harvard community and to scholars worldwide, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University is known for interdisciplinary ventures and for providing an ideal environment for incubating creative ideas and discoveries. To augment its programs, the Radcliffe Institute has appointed several faculty associates who will help spur new, multidisciplinary collaborations crossing the humanities and arts, sciences and social sciences.

“The most exciting, cutting-edge discoveries often take place when scholars, scientists and artists from a variety of disciplines collaborate to address problems and issues of common interest. By appointing these new faculty associates, we expect not only to augment work that is already being done at Radcliffe, but also to complement ongoing activities at other Harvard schools. Our faculty leadership will further strengthen Radcliffe’s links to Harvard faculties and help to shape new cross-disciplinary initiatives by taking advantage of Radcliffe’s neutral turf and convening powers,” said Barbara J. Grosz, dean of the Radcliffe Institute and Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

New Leaders, Programs, and Opportunities at Radcliffe
Drawn from several of Harvard’s schools, Radcliffe faculty associates are experts in a broad array of fields and have interests that cross disciplinary boundaries. To develop new efforts in policy studies, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, as well as to continue programs in the sciences, these faculty associates will work with faculty members throughout the Harvard community as well as with Radcliffe leadership.

Ann Blair and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Humanities and Arts Associates
Ann Blair is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Harvard. She has served on the Harvard faculty for more than 14 years and was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow in 2002. She specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Europe, with an emphasis on the history of the book, the relations between science and religion, and early modern France. She has recently finished a book that explores how scholars managed information in an era that long predated search engines or databases. She is also the author of The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (1997).

Ewa Lajer-Burcharth is a professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard. With a focus on 18th and 19th century European art as well as contemporary art and critical theory, Lajer-Burcharth has taught a variety of courses about provocative issues in art during these periods. She is the author of Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror (1999) and A Touch of Self: Paint and Person in Eighteenth Century Art (forthcoming), and is currently working on a book titled “Interiority At Risks: Precarious Spaces in Cotemporary Art.” She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Brigitte Madrian and Robert J. Sampson, Social Science Associates
Brigitte Madrian is the Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Madrian’s current research focuses on household saving and investment behavior. Her work in this area has impacted the design of employer-sponsored savings plans in the United States and has influenced pension reform legislation nationally and abroad. She received the John Heinz Dissertation Award from the National Academy of Social Insurance and the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award.

Robert J. Sampson is chair of the Department of Sociology and the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard. He is engaged in a long-term study from birth to death of 1,000 disadvantaged men born in Boston during the Great Depression era. Two books from this project—Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 (2003) and Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life (1993)—have been recognized with numerous scholarly awards. He was a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dimitar D. Sasselov and Rosalind A. Segal, Science Associates
Dimitar Sasselov has been a professor at Harvard since 1998 and is currently a professor of astronomy and the director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. He arrived at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in 1990 as a Harvard-Smithsonian Center postdoctoral fellow. His research explores the many modes of interaction between radiation and matter: from the evolution of hydrogen and helium in the early universe to the study of the structure of stars. Most recently, his research has led him to explore the nature of planets orbiting other stars. He has discovered a few such planets using novel techniques that he hopes to use to find planets like Earth.

Rosalind A. Segal is a member of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Her laboratory research focuses on the biology of brain tumors by probing the complex molecular machinery of the developing brain. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert H. Ebert Clinical Professor award from the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund, an award from the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research and a NIH Directors Pioneer Award.

About the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University is a scholarly community where individuals pursue advanced work across a wide range of academic disciplines, professions and creative arts. Within this broad purpose, the Institute sustains a continuing commitment to the study of women, gender and society. For more information, please visit www.radcliffe.edu or call 617-495-8608.