HARVARD CONNECTION: GSAS Engage with Dean Emma Dench
SAVE THE DATE: October 15th 2025

Join Harvard Club of Chicago and GSAS Engage as they bring Dean Emma Dench for this lecture/reception with faculty member Stephen Ansolabehere, PhD ’89, the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University. The event will be formatted as a fireside chat drawing on Professor Ansolabehere’s expertise in elections, energy, and the environment (climate matters).

Dean Emma Dench

Dean of the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History and of the Classics

Dean Emma Dench
Dean of the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History and of the Classics

Emma Dench was born in York, grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, and studied at Wadham College, Oxford (BA Hons Literae Humaniores) and at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (DPhil in Ancient History). Before taking up a joint appointment in the Departments of the Classics and of History at Harvard in January 2007, she taught classics and ancient history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has been a Craven Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Rome Scholar and a Hugh Last Fellow at the British School of Rome, a Cotton Fellow, a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Visiting Professor of the Classics and of History at Harvard, and a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellow.

Dench is the author of From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines and Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian. She is currently completing “Imperialism and Culture in the Roman World” for the Cambridge University Press series Key Themes in Ancient History. Other current projects include a study of the retrospective writing of the Roman Republican past in classical antiquity.

While at Harvard, Dench received a Harvard College Professorship in recognition of “outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, mentoring, and advising,” a Marquand Award for Excellent Advising and Counseling, and an Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award for her mentorship of graduate students. 

Stephen Ansolabehere, PhD ’89

Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government

Stephen Ansolabehere
Stephen Ansolabehere is the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is an expert in public opinion and elections, and has published extensively on elections, mass media, and representation, political economy, and public opinion, especially concerning energy and the environment. He is the author of five books: Cheap and Clean, The Media Game, Going Negative, American Government, and The End of Inequality. He is a Carnegie Scholar (2000), a Hoover National Fellow (1994), and Truman Scholar (1982), and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. He directed the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project from its founding in 2000 through 2004; is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Reuters Institute of Journalism at Oxford University; and consults for CBS News Election Decision Desk. He is the principal investigator of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a collaborative effort of over 60 universities and colleges in the United States.

EVENT DETAILS

SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday October 25, 2025
Time: 6-9:00pm Central
6:00 - Arrive and check in
6:30-7:30 - Lecture and Reception
7:30-9:00 - reception

MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON!