Professor Martha M. Umphrey To Start as Provost and Dean of the Faculty

The college announced Tuesday that Martha Umphrey, currently the Bertrand H. Snell 1894 Professor in American Government in the Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, will serve as the new Provost and Dean of the Faculty. Beginning on July 1, Umphrey will assume the position succeeding Catherine A. Epstein. Umphrey will oversee all academic departments and programs, the hiring and retention of faculty, the library, museums, academic support centers, athletics, and the Loeb Center, according to the college’s press release.

Umphrey received her B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan, with research and teaching focusing on law and culture. She is co-editor of the Amherst Series in Law and Jurisprudence and was the founding director of Amherst’s Center for Humanistic Inquiry. She also is past president of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.

Epstein, who undertook the provost position in 2019, also served as dean of the faculty beginning in 2014. After a one-year sabbatical, Epstein, a historian of modern Germany and Europe, will return to the faculty and resume full-time teaching in the College’s history department.