The Humanities Council has named Bridget Alsdorf (Art & Archaeology), Sandra Bermann (Comparative Literature), Laura Edwards (History), and Sarah Rivett (English and American Studies) as 2023-24 Old Dominion Research Professors.

The professorship provides additional research time for senior faculty members and seeks to enhance the humanities at Princeton more broadly. During the yearlong program, Old Dominion Research Professors engage the campus community in discussion about their research through lectures or workshops and contribute to cross-disciplinary programs and events within the Council.

Old Dominion Research Professors also serve as Faculty Fellows in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.

Laura F. Edwards is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty.  She focuses on the legal history of the nineteenth-century United States, with an emphasis on people’s interactions with law and the legal system. Her most recent book, “Only the Clothes on Her Back:  Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” received the Merle Curti award for the best book in social history from the Organization of American Historians. As an Old Dominion Research Professor, Edwards will focus on her book project, “No Account:  Credit, Property, and Women’s Lives in the United States,” which traces the material consequences of the shift from unwritten to written forms of law in the lives of women in the nineteenth century United States.