Brandeis Magazine

Brandeis has named Dorothy Hodgson and Kathryn Graddy as the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Brandeis International Business School (IBS), respectively.

Formerly senior associate dean for academic affairs at Rutgers University’s School of Graduate Studies, Hodgson will join Brandeis on Aug. 20, succeeding Susan Birren, professor of neurobiology, who will return to the faculty following a yearlong sabbatical.

Graddy, the Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Professor in Economics, began her new role on July 1. She had been senior associate dean at IBS since 2016. She succeeds Peter Petri, the Carl J. Shapiro Professor of International Finance and the school’s founding dean, who had served as interim dean.

A cultural and historical anthropologist who has worked in East Africa for more than 30 years, Hodgson is the past president of the African Studies Association and previously served as chair and graduate director of Rutgers’ Department of Anthropology, director of Rutgers’ Institute for Research on Women and president of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She earned her PhD in anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Hodgson’s work has been supported by awards from such organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

As dean at Arts and Sciences, Brandeis’ largest academic division, Hodgson will oversee undergraduate admissions, the undergraduate and graduate curricula, faculty, staffing, the academic departments and other academic matters, including the implementation of recently updated general education requirements.

Graddy, who came to Brandeis in 2007 from Oxford University, has held numerous leadership positions at IBS. She served as program director for the school’s PhD program as well as chair of the university’s economics department.

As IBS dean, Graddy leads a top-ranked, globally focused business school. In addition to offering an MBA, the school also delivers specialized pre-experience master’s programs as well as the undergraduate business major, currently the third-most popular major at Brandeis.

Graddy’s research focuses on the economics of art, culture and, more generally, industrial organization. She has published extensively in the field of the economics of the arts, with papers in such journals as The American Economic Review and Management Science. She received her PhD in economics from Princeton University. In March, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Copenhagen Business School.

Dorothy Hodgson (Photo courtesy Rutgers University)	Kathryn Graddy (Photo by Mike Lovett)