Six Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to New University Faculty Positions

Alejandra Rojas Silva was appointed assistant professor of fine arts at Ohio Wesleyan University. She is a Latin American art historian focused on representations of the natural world in relation to indigenous, colonial, and contemporary forms of identity.

D. Silva is a graduate of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. She earned a master’s degree in the history of art and visual culture from the University of Oxford in England and a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard Univerity.

Kathleen Cagney has been appointed director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. She has been serving as a professor of sociology and former deputy dean at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Cagney, who grew up in Michigan, received a bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science from Western Michigan University. She earned a master of public policy degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Nahid Bhadelia, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, is taking on the added duties as the director of the university’s new Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Bhadelia was born in India, grew up in Sweden and Saudi Arabia, and came to the United States as a teenager. She holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree in international affairs, and a medical doctorate, all from Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Sharrelle Barber, an assistant professor at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University Philadelphia, was appointed the inaugural director for the university’s Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity.

Dr. Barber is a graduate of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina. She holds a master of public health degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a doctorate in social epidemiology from the School of Public Health at Harvard University.

M. Diane Burton, a professor in the department of human resource studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was appointed director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at the university. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2009, Burton was a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She began her academic career at the Harvard Business School, where she taught leadership and organizational behavior.

Dr. Burton is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University.

Elizabeth Lightfoot will become the next director of the Arizona State University School of Social Work, effective July 1. She has been serving as a Distinguished Global Professor at the University of Minnesota. She has directed the university’s doctoral program in social work since 2006 and has been a member of its faculty since 1999.

Dr. Lightfoot is a graduate of Santa Clara University in California. She holds a master of social work degree from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in public policy from the department of political science and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington.