Six Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Faculty Roles

Eve Blau, a renowned scholar of architecture and urbanism, has been named the director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Blau, who is the first woman to serve as the center’s faculty director, will begin her new duties on July 1. Dr. Blau is an adjunct professor of the history and theory of urban and form and design and serves as director of research at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is the former editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Dr. Blau is a graduate of the University of York in England. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in the history of architecture at Yale University.

Alena Allen, interim dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law, has accepted the position of deputy director of the Association of American Law Schools. She will remain a tenured professor on the faculty with a reduced teaching and service load, but will conclude her role as interim dean. Professor Allen joined the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2021 after teaching at the University of Memphis.

Professor Allen is a graduate of Loyola University, where she majored in psychology. She earned a juris doctorate from Yale Law School.

Lea VanderVelde, professor of law and the Josephine R. Witte Chair, has been named a University of Iowa Distinguished Chair. She will relinquish the Witte Chair in order to take on her new title. Professor VanderVelde was one of the first women ever tenured in the College of Law. Her research focuses on how American civil rights and civil liberties law was formed during the Reconstruction period. She is the author of several books including Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Professor VanderVelde holds a bachelor’s degree and a juris doctorate from the University of Wisconsin.

Angela C.M. de Oliveira, professor of resource economics and interim chair of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was given the added duties of associate provost for faculty development. She joined the faculty of the department of resource economics as an assistant professor in 2009.

A graduate of the Montgomery campus of Auburn University in Alabama, Professor de Oliveira earned a master’s degree in applied economics and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Courtney-Savali Andrews has been named an assistant professor of African American and African diasporic music at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. The appointment follows a two-year period in which Dr. Andrews served as a visiting assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Oberlin, a role in which she taught courses in both the college and conservatory.

Dr. Andrews is a graduate of Oberlin College, where she majored in piano performance and Africana studies. She holds a doctorate in musical direction for theater and opera from Arizona State University and is completing work on a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Victoria University of New Zealand.

Amy Fiedler was appointed assistant professor of surgery with a focus on heart failure, transplant, and mechanical circulatory support in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. She was an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Dr. Fiedler is a graduate of the George Washington University School of Medicine and completed her general surgery residency as well as cardiothoracic surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.