Jones Cultivates Inaugural Role in Faculty Development at Brown

Dr. Esther JonesDr. Esther Jones has been named associate dean for faculty development in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Brown University. Jones is also an associate professor of Africana Studies. The author of Medicine and Ethics in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (2015), her interdisciplinary research in the field of the medical humanities engages literary, historical, philosophical, and ethical explorations of black women’s health and medicine.

Before her latest post, Jones served in various leadership capacities including as an associate provost in the Office of Faculty Affairs at Clark University. She helped developed policies and processes governing faculty work among other responsibilities at Clark, where she was the inaugural director of the Africana Studies concentration and occupied the E. Franklin Frazier Chair of African American Literature, Theory, and Culture at Clark.

Jones also served as a visiting professor in the departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and English at Emory University. There, she was Race and Difference Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow.

Jones serves on the executive board of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in the roles of Vice President, chairs the Phi Beta Kappa Foundation, and co-chairs Phi Beta Kappa’s Futures Task Force alongside President Peter Quimby and Secretary/CEO Fred Lawrence. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and music from Fisk University as well as a master’s in African American & African Studies and a Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University.