Ruth Behar, a cultural anthropologist who has spent decades building bridges across political and cultural chasms, has been selected as the University of Michigan’s 2024 Henry Russel Lecturer.
The lectureship was announced at the July 18 Board of Regents meeting. Behar will deliver her lecture in the winter term of 2025.
The Henry Russel Lectureship is the university’s highest honor for senior active faculty members. It is awarded annually to a faculty member with exceptional achievements in research, scholarship or creative endeavors, as well as an outstanding record of distinguished teaching, mentoring and service to U-M and the wider community.
Also at the meeting, it was announced that four faculty members will receive Henry Russel Awards, the university’s highest honor for faculty members at their early to mid-career stages.
Those recipients are:
- Robin Brewer, assistant professor of information, School of Information.
- Roya Ensafi, Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, College of Engineering.
- Marc Hannaford, assistant professor of music, School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
- Wenjing Wang, William R. Roush Assistant Professor, assistant professor of chemistry, LSA; and research assistant professor, Life Sciences Institute.
Behar, the James W. Fernandez Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and professor of anthropology in LSA, researches the lives of women as actors in society — particularly in Cuba, Spain and Mexico — and pioneered the concept of a “vulnerable observer” in discussions of ethical fieldwork.
Her groundbreaking work in “The Vulnerable Observer” has traveled to other disciplines ranging from education studies to nursing, social work, rhetoric and management studies. Behar’s contributions include writing five books of anthropology, editing or co-editing another four, more than 60 published articles, and an award-winning ethnographic film.
Throughout her career, she has made her work accessible to the broadest possible public by writing essays for popular publications, giving newspaper and magazine interviews, writing and co-editing a blog, doing podcast interviews, and by giving talks to civic groups and schools across the country and around the world.
Behar was the first Latina to receive a MacArthur Fellowship in 1988. She was elected in 2021 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Pura Belpré Author Award in 2018 from the American Library Association for her fiction.
In addition to honoring her as a Distinguished University Professor in 2021, U-M also bestowed upon Behar a Sarah Goddard Power Award in January for her leadership in women’s studies.
Her courses on Cuba, the concept of home, and blurred genres regularly receive glowing reviews from students. She teaches a course on ethnographic writing, which has served as a foundational seminar and writing workshop for graduate students and future ethnographers in anthropology and related fields.
Behar received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University in 1977 and her Master of Arts degree in 1980 and Ph.D. in 1983 from Princeton University. After holding postdoctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins University and with the Michigan Society of Fellows, she joined the Department of Anthropology in 1989. From 2010-14, she was the founder and director of the U-M Semester Study Abroad Program in Havana, Cuba.
Brewer’s research explores voice tools and voiced-based interfaces that enable improved digital access for aging and disability to shift the design of computing devices to better meet the needs of older adults and people with disabilities, especially blind or low vision people.
At U-M, Brewer works to recruit and retain students from diverse backgrounds by sharing her research and career with minority first-year students interested in research in the Michigan Research and Discovery Scholars program, and to senior doctoral students and postdoctoral research fellows through the NextProf program intended to diversify academia.
Brewer was a presidential postdoctoral fellow at U-M before joining the faculty as assistant professor in the School of Information in 2019.
Ensafi works to protect internet users from network interference, such as pervasive monitoring, government censorship, and server-side geographic discrimination. Her research crosses disciplines to call attention to censorship online, exposing bad actors, and designing tools to thwart internet censorship and help maintain online privacy.
Ensafi has been faculty adviser to WolvSec and the Women in Security Research student group and participates in multiple outreach events.
She joined U-M as a research assistant professor in CoE’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2017, and was promoted to assistant professor in 2019 and associate professor in 2023.
Hannaford’s research focuses on African American voices within the predominantly Eurocentric discourses of U.S. music theory by building a genealogy of African American music theory using largely untapped archival and historical sources, meta-theoretical analysis and practice-led methods.
He is a virtuoso pianist in jazz and improvised music as well as new classical music, and the impact of his work extends beyond the field of music theory and into mainstream jazz circles.
He joined SMTD as an assistant professor of music theory in 2020.
Wang’s research in chemical biology focuses on designing molecular tools to study complex brain signaling and neurological disorders. She has developed tools to study how neurons use chemicals to modulate other neurons, and facilitate the understanding of neurological disorders.
Funded by her NSF CAREER award, she is collaborating with the U-M Museum of Natural History to perform science outreach and communication with middle schools and the public and through the Science Communication Fellows Program to promote research opportunities for high school and college students.
She joined U-M as research assistant professor in the Life Sciences Institute and as William R. Roush Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry in 2018 and was promoted to associate professor in 2024.
