J. Megan Greene named associate vice provost for international and global engagement

LAWRENCE — J. Megan Greene, professor of history, has been named associate vice provost for international and global engagement at the University of Kansas. Her appointment became effective Jan. 1.

This new position was announced last summer when KU realigned the Institute for International and Global Engagement and KU’s five Area Studies Centers under KU International Affairs. The faculty administrative position is housed in International Affairs and will lead international and global engagement efforts by overseeing the university’s five area studies centers.

Charlie Bankart, senior internationalization officer, said the new associate vice provost position is a bridge-building position, pulling in colleagues from across the institution to enable KU to participate fully, strategically and with purpose on the world stage. 

“I am thrilled to partner with Dr. Greene in this new institutional leadership role at KU,” Bankart said. “As a faculty member and faculty leader, as an international scholar herself, as a faculty advocate, and as an intellectual with deep and diverse administrative experience spanning her career, Dr. Greene is uniquely and ideally situated to bring this new position to fruition and expand KU’s international and global engagement efforts.”

Greene has been with the Department of History since 2002. Administratively, she has previously served as provost fellow for internationalization since 2022, associate chair of the Department of History from 2020 to 2022, director of faculty programs in International Affairs from January 2017 to July 2020, and director of the Center for East Asian Studies from January 2009 to December 2015, as well as University Senate president from 2011 to 2012. She also served as co-chair of KU's ACE Internationalization Lab from 2020 to 2022. In her various roles, she has developed considerable institutional knowledge and experience pertaining to internationalization.

“I am excited to be able to return to working closely with the KU's excellent area studies centers and to helping facilitate the development of international capacities in research and teaching across the institution,” Greene said.

Greene’s research focuses on state-led efforts to develop scientific and technical knowledge and skills in mid-20th century China and Taiwan. Published by Harvard East Asia Monographs in 2022, her most recent book, “Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China During and After World War II,” centers on Sino-American programs to develop China's scientific and technical knowledge and human resources capacity during the 1940s. She is currently working on a project on industrial standardization in 20th century China. 

Before coming to KU, Greene taught at Gettysburg College and then held the inaugural postdoctoral fellowship in Taiwan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She received her bachelor’s degree in history at Cornell University, her master’s degree in history at the University of Chicago and her doctorate in history at Washington University in St. Louis.