Victor Bailey, KU professor of history, takes over from Roberta Johnson,
who has been center director since 1997. Johnson will return to teaching
and research in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Contact: Janet Crow, Hall Center, (785) 864-4798, or Victor Bailey at akbailey@dircon.co.uk
LAWRENCE - A historian of modern Britain whose research interests include suicide and the death penalty has been named the new director of the University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities, Robert Barnhill, KU vice chancellor for research and public service, announced today.
Victor Bailey, KU professor of history, takes over from Roberta Johnson,
who has been center director since 1997. Johnson will return to teaching
and research in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
"We take considerable pride in naming Victor Bailey, a distinguished scholar, as the next director of the Hall Center," Barnhill said.
"We have every confidence that, under his administrative and intellectual leadership, the Hall Center - one of six KU centers designated as outstanding compared to its national peers - will prosper."
"The Hall Center is one of KU's most valuable research assets," Bailey said, "and it is an honor to be appointed as its next director. I am looking forward to the opportunity to shape and guide the center's development."
Focusing on British social, cultural and legal history from the Victorian era through the 20th century, Bailey received his doctorate from the University of Warwick in 1975. He earned his master's in philosophy from the University of Cambridge.
Bailey's work has examined the principles underlying the English judicial and penal system and its administration.
His social history of suicide in Victorian Britain, titled "'This Rash Act': Suicide Across the Life-Cycle in the Victorian City," was published in 1998.
Currently, Bailey is finishing a book on the history of the death penalty in England. That work has been funded through grants from the National Science Foundation, American Philosophical Society and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Bailey came to KU in 1988.