Dr. Badia Ahad will become dean of Oxford College at Emory University, effective Aug. 1.
Ahad is currently vice provost for faculty affairs and professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.
“I think my most important role as dean will be to ensure that students, faculty and staff have the tools and the resources that they need to be and to do their best,” Ahad said. “I want students at Oxford to have an academic experience that not only cultivates intellectual rigor and curiosity, but also helps them find their own sense of purpose and how that purpose is going to serve others.”
An African American literature and culture scholar, Ahad focuses her work on the intersection of cultural studies and positive psychology – a field founded on the idea that social good and well-being are at the core of human experience. She is also the author of Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture in 2021.
Ahad holds a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English language and literature/letters from the University of Notre Dame.