CHCI 2026 New Advisory Board Members

CHCI is delighted to welcome five outstanding scholars and leaders to its Advisory Board: Thomas Keenan, Blair Kelley, Karen Lawrence, Brett Neilson, and Tansen Sen. These new members bring extraordinary depth across human rights, history, literature, cultural studies, and global research—strengthening our community's international reach and interdisciplinary vision.

This year's Nominations Committee was led by Ranjana Khanna (chair), working alongside board members Prathama Banerjee and Cajetan Iheka.

Following the 2025 Annual Meeting, the committee invited nominations from across the membership through November 2025. After board approval of the recommended slate, the full membership voted in January 2026 to confirm these appointments. The nominations process will open again following our June 2026 Annual Meeting.

Thomas Keenan is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College. He has been at Bard since 1999, having taught previously at Princeton University and SUNY Binghamton. In 2002, he helped create the first free-standing B.A. program in human rights in the United States, and in 2021 helped launch Bard's Center for Human Rights and the Arts, an interdisciplinary research and creation program offering an M.A. in the arts and human rights. His areas of specialization include literature, media, human rights, and political theory. He is the author of Fables of Responsibility (1997) and, with Eyal Weizman, Mengele's Skull (2012); articles appear in PMLA, South Atlantic Quarterly, New York Times, Aperture, and Cabinet. He is coeditor of New Media, Old Media (with Wendy Chun, 2005; 2nd edition with Wendy Chun and Anna Fisher, 2015); The Human Snapshot (with Tirdad Zolghadr, 2013); and The Flood of Rights (with Suhail Malik and Tirdad Zolghadr, 2016). A collection of his essays on human rights, media, and evidence, Claiming the Obvious, will be published next year by Zone Books. He co-directs the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative with Oleksandr Shtokvych at the Central European University. He serves as editorial or advisory board member for the Journal of Human Rights, Grey Room, Humanity, and Forensic Architecture, and was a founding board member of the Scholars at Risk Network.

Blair LM Kelley, PhD is a renowned author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is the seventh president of the National Humanities Center, the only independent center for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities. Kelley previously held senior leadership roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South and at North Carolina State University where she served as Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Affairs and Partnerships and the Alumni Graduate Professor of History.

Kelley's best selling book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (Liveright, 2023), interweaves the stories of her own ancestors into a sweeping chronicle of Black labor from slavery to the present. Black Folk has received the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, 2024 Brooklyn Public Library Book Award, and the 2024 Philip Taft Labor History Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History. Her newest book, Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days (out June 2, 2026) is the first fully illustrated history of Juneteenth and other Emancipation Day celebrations, told through photographs, art, and an engrossing narrative from an award-winning historian.

A sought-after public intellectual, Kelley's commentary has appeared on NPR's Marketplace, Here & Now, and Fresh Air; and MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post and other national outlets. Kelley earned her BA from the University of Virginia in History and African and African American Studies, and her MA and PhD in History from Duke University.

Karen R. Lawrence is the ninth president of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, a position she has held since 2018. Previously, she spent a decade as president of Sarah Lawrence College and served as dean of the School of Humanities at UC Irvine from 1998 to 2007. Throughout her career as scholar, teacher, and administrative leader, she has been a forceful advocate for the liberal arts. She has served as president of the International James Joyce Foundation and the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center and on the Board of Governors of the Athenaeum at Caltech. At UC Irvine, Lawrence championed the creation of the International Center for Writing and Translation in 2002, recruiting Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o as its inaugural director.

A renowned English and Irish literature scholar, Lawrence has written widely on twentieth century literature, particularly on the work of James Joyce; women and travel; experimental writing; and higher education. She has published seven books including The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses, Decolonizing Tradition: New Views of Twentieth Century "British" Literary Canons, Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition, and Transcultural Joyce and "Who's Afraid of James Joyce?".

At The Huntington, Lawrence has fostered greater access to its world-renowned collections and expanded educational programming onsite and online, including enhanced research fellowship opportunities for scholars. She has continued to write and teach literature throughout her administrative career, most recently contributing the opening essay to The Cambridge Centenary: Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes (2022). She hosts "Why It Matters," a popular public program series featuring conversations with distinguished humanists and cultural leaders about the enduring relevance of the humanities.

Lawrence earned a B.A. in English from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Tufts University, and a PhD degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Professor Brett Neilson's research investigates the intersection of spatial and temporal transformations with contemporary shifts in global economic and political systems. Drawing on cultural and social theory as well as on empirical studies, his work has derived original and provocative means for rethinking a range of critical problems and predicaments: including border proliferation, demographic change, logistical governance, digital infrastructure development, energy transitions, and financial market dynamics. His work in the last decade has centered on issues of migration, borders, and globalization, logistics and digitalization, contemporary capitalism, geopolitics, and automation. His writings have been translated into sixteen languages. The Institute for Culture and Society is led by Interim Director Professor Juan Francisco Salazar, supported by Deputy Director Professor Brett Neilson, Research Director Professor Ned Rossiter, and Interim Higher Degree Research Director Professor Louise Crabtree.

Tansen Sen is Professor of History; the Director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai; and Associated Full Professor, Department of History, NYU. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (2003; 2016) and India, China, and the World: A Connected History (2017; 2018). He has co-authored (with Victor H. Mair) Traditional China in Asian and World History (2012), edited Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (2014), and co-edited (with Burkhard Schnepel) Travelling Pasts: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Indian Ocean World (2019) and (with Brian Tsui) Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s--1960s (2021). He is currently working on a book about Zheng He's maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century, a monograph on Jawaharlal Nehru and China, and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) the Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, volume 1. He has done extensive research in India, China, Japan, and Singapore with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), and Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). He was the founding head of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Center in Singapore and served on the Governing Board of the Nalanda University, India.