What began as an interim position in January is now ongoing for Lisa Nielson, as she takes the helm of the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women as its director.
“All who have worked with Dr. Nielson over this interim period have been excited about her vision for the Center for Women, and we are thrilled that she has agreed to serve in the capacity as director,” said Lynn Singer, deputy provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Nielson will retain her faculty status part-time as adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Music and will continue to be an Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow.
Nielson is a historical musicologist with a specialization in women’s studies. In 2011, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Music and became the first Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow. In that role, she teaches classes related to the mission of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards of fostering cultural tolerance and diversity, as well as her own research.
During her six years at Case Western Reserve University, Nielson has been nominated for and received several undergraduate teaching awards:
- the Richard A. Bloom, MD, Award for Distinguished Teaching in the SAGES Program in 2012,
- the Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2014 and
- the J. Bruce Jackson, MD, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring in 2016.
In May, she received the Faculty Prism Award from the LGBT Center, awarded at the annual Lavender Graduation celebration.
In addition to teaching, Nielson regularly presents at national and international conferences, and was a recipient of a Balzan International Musicology Visitorship. She spent summer of 2016 conducting research at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, and convened a panel as well as presented the preliminary findings of that project at a seminar at Oxford in November 2016.
She is working on completing her book, Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamic World: A Social and Cultural History, to be published by IB Tauris. Her professional memberships include the Middle East Studies Association, the American Musicological Society and the Middle Medievalists.