The announced the appointment of four new O’Hanley Faculty Scholars: Brian Brege, Sarah Hamersma, Yüksel Sezgin and Ying Shi.
Selected in recognition of their exceptional teaching, scholarly achievements and service to the institution, each scholar will hold the title for a three-year term that began July 1, 2025, and receive financial support to advance their teaching and research efforts.
The O’Hanley Endowed Fund for Faculty Excellence was established through a generous gift from Ron O’Hanley ’80, chairman and CEO of State Street Global Advisors and a Maxwell School alumnus with a B.A. in political science. Past chair of the Maxwell Advisory Board and a University trustee, O’Hanley created the fund to honor and support outstanding academic and research excellence at Maxwell.
“We are grateful to Mr. O’Hanley for establishing this fund to support faculty excellence,” says Carol Faulkner, senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of history. “These four deserving faculty members represent a range of disciplines and share in their dedication to scholarship, teaching and mentorship. We’re pleased to be able to support their work.”
Brian Brege
, associate professor of history, is a senior research associate for the . He specializes in early modern Europe’s relationships with the wider world with a focus on the role of small powers and enterprising individuals in the First Global Age. His first book, “Tuscany in the Age of Empire” (Harvard University Press, 2021), won the American Association for Italian Studies book prize in the category of History, Society and Politics.
A Harvard I Tatti Fellow from 2019-20, he will spend the coming academic year at the Newberry Library and then in Venice as a Delmas Foundation research fellow working on his monograph “Staying Rich: Florentine Patricians, Intergenerational Wealth, and Global Trade.” He is co-editor of a forthcoming volume in the I Tatti Research Series, “Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti’s World, c. 1600,” and is a co-organizer of the exhibition “Global Florence,” set to open at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence in 2026. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2014.
Sarah Hamersma
, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, researches anti-poverty programs and public health, paying particular attention to young adults and new mothers and their children. Hamersma has recently studied food assistance and college students with funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and is currently completing a study on how pre-conception access to food assistance affects maternal and infant birth outcomes with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
She is a senior research associate in the , a faculty affiliate of the and a research affiliate of the and the . Hamersma received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004.
Yüksel Sezgin
, associate professor of political science and director of ϲ’s pre-law program in Europe, specializes in comparative religious family laws and human and women’s rights across the Middle East, South Asia and West Africa. He is a senior research associate in the and a research affiliate with the . His honors include the American Political Science Association’s Aaron Wildavsky Award for Best Dissertation in Religion and Politics (2008) and the Middle East Studies Association’s Malcolm H. Kerr Best Dissertation Award in Social Sciences (2008).
His book, “Human Rights under State‑Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt, and India” (Cambridge University Press, 2013), won the American Sociological Association’s Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Prize in 2014. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies to support his forthcoming book, “The Power of Narrative in Judicial Decision‑Making,” which examines the normative frames that non‑Muslim courts in Israel, India, Greece and Ghana employ to interpret Muslim family laws. Sezgin earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2007.
Ying Shi
, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, examines racial inequality and education policy. Her research has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Human Resources and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and her work has been supported by the William T. Grant Foundation as well as other organizations. She was principal investigator on a Grant Foundation-funded project from 2021-23 titled Long-Term Consequences of the Voting Rights Act for Black-White Disparities in Children’s Later-Life Outcomes.
Last year, Shi was named a William T. Grant Scholar and received a $350,000 award to explore Asian American students’ exposure to victimization and hate crimes in school. Shi is a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research and a research affiliate in the . Shi received a Ph.D. from Duke University in 2017.
Story by Mikayla Melo
