Nadia Brown Appointed as New Director of Women and Gender Studies Program
Georgetown College is thrilled to announce that Nadia Brown, associate professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Purdue University, has been appointed as the new director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Her term will start in August of 2021.
Brown will be a Professor in the Department of Government with an affiliate appointment in the Department of African American Studies. Chris Celenza, dean of Georgetown College, says that he is thrilled to welcome Brown, a leader in her field who emphasizes collaboration across disciplines, to Georgetown.
“Nadia Brown is a prize-winning political scientist, an entrepreneurial scholar who founded a journal and a leading thinker on intersectionality, Black Womens’ politics, gender and politics, and so much more,” Celenza says. “She has striven to make the work of women political scientists more visible, to build networks and to foster Women’s and Gender Studies broadly conceived. We are so proud that she will be our colleague at Georgetown and will lead our important Women’s and Gender Studies program.”
About Brown
Brown’s research includes intersectionality, black women’s politics, black politics, gender and politics and gender and political science. She has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation, ADVANCE-Partnership Grant for her contributions to “#MeTooPoliSci: Leveraging a Professional Association to Address Sexual Harassment in Political Science,” as well as for “The Women Also Know Stuff Initiative.”
She has written several publications that examine the intersections of gender, race, sexuality and class in the United States. Brown’s 2014 book Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making (Oxford University Press) was the winner of the 2015 W.E.B. Du Bois Best Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, the winner of the 2015 Anna Julia Cooper Best Publication Award from the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics and was named one of the Editor’s Picks: Ten Favorite Book Reviews from 2014.
During her time at Purdue, she received the 2015 Research in Excellence Award from the Center for Research on Diversity and Inclusion. Trained as a political scientist, Brown says that she is “tremendously excited to build on the legacy of the Women’s & Gender Studies at Georgetown and looks forward to bringing together people and ideas to strengthen the program.”
“I am enthusiastic about the opportunities to draw from the D.C. area to develop new classes, programming, and partnerships that center on questions of power, privilege, marginalization, and access,” Brown says. “As a Black feminist scholar, I cannot think of a more ideal opportunity to examine social injustices and issues from an intersectional lens in order to more deeply conceptualize how gender, race ethnicity, sexual orientation, nativity, and class shape social problems.”
-by Shelby Roller (G’19)