Social Science Research Council Names Alondra Nelson as Next President
Social Science Research Council Names Alondra Nelson as Next President
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has named Alondra Nelson, professor of sociology and dean of social science at Columbia University, as its next president. Nelson, who will begin a five-year term on September 1, 2017, succeeds Ira Katznelson, who has led the 93-year-old organization since 2012.
Professor Nelson is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and holds a PhD in American studies from New York University. Recruited to Columbia in 2009 from Yale, where she taught in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology, Nelson’s scholarship is located at the junction of science, technology, medicine, and social inequality. Her publications include Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination, published in 2011, which was recognized with several awards including the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award of the Eastern Sociological Society, and, just published, The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome.
After directing the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, she became Columbia University’s inaugural dean of social science in 2014, the academic leader responsible for five social science departments (anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology) and 28 cross-disciplinary research units. Her responsibilities include academic affairs, faculty appointments, financial planning, and strategic fundraising. Nelson oversees the Academic Review Committee of the Arts and Sciences, the body charged with assessing the schools, departments, centers, and institutes within that division of the university. She also directs Columbia’s participation in the Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research, a White House–initiated affiliation of more than 50 colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations that are committed to studying how various types of educational, health, and social services may help women and girls from marginalized communities succeed in school and their careers.