Emily Osborn named inaugural faculty director of the Social Sciences Teaching Fellows Program

On Thursday, March 7, Dean Amanda Woodard announced that Emily Osborn, Associate Professor in the Department of History and the College, has agreed to serve as the inaugural Director of the Social Sciences Teaching Fellows Program. 

The Teaching Fellows Program is a competitive two-year program designed to enhance the pedagogical skills and extend research training for recent graduates of PhD programs in the Division. The program fosters a learning community in which Fellows gain additional teaching experience and professionalization in preparation for the job market while continuing to advance their research agendas. The program draws on the expertise of faculty mentors from departments along with the resources of the Chicago Center for Teaching and UChicago GRAD. Because the number of fellows has increased in the three years since the program's founding, a faculty member leading coordination and deepening these efforts is essential. 

Osborn's background and experiences make her an outstanding match to the needs of this role. She is a talented and creative teacher   indeed, she was recognized with a Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2016   and her work on graduate student professionalization through the Department of History's Mellon-funded Making History Work program is well-known and highly respected.  I'm delighted she will bring those skills and insights into her work with the Social Sciences Teaching Fellows.

Professor Osborn is a historian of Africa interested in using a variety of methodological tools and sources to study the African past. She teaches courses on precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial African history, as well as graduate and undergraduate seminars on African historiography; oral sources of history; gender and state-craft; slavery, the slave-trade, and the making of the Atlantic world. She is currently working on her second book, which will explore technology transfer and diffusion in West Africa that focuses on artisans who work with aluminum. Her research has been supported by Fulbright IIE and Fulbright-Hays fellowships, and she held a Mellon Fellowship at the Institute for Global Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. Before coming to UChicago in 2007, she taught at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her doctorate from Stanford University.