Laura Perry

Laura Perry is the assistant director for research and public engagement. Her work engages with campus-community partnerships, environmental justice and digital publishing. She supports the humanities center’s key events and initiatives, such as Divided City, RDE and BECHS, and collaborates with the broader WashU humanities community to develop programming. She also co-organizes the Sumner StudioLab, a community-engaged hub located at historic Sumner High School that launched in 2022 and is supported by the Mellon Foundation as well as WashU’s Office of the Provost. Prior to joining the Center for the Humanities, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar with University of Iowa’s Humanities for the Public Good initiative and helped design curriculum for humanities graduate students interested in a range of careers serving the public good. She earned her PhD in English from University of Wisconsin-Madison.