A woman speaking at a podium to a seated audience

Flexner Lectureship

Established in honor of Mary Flexner, a Bryn Mawr graduate of the class of 1895, the Lectureship has brought some of the world’s best-known humanists to campus for a brief residency.

The College regularly supports a Mary Flexner Lecturer, a leading humanist or humanistic social scientist whose work demonstrates the public value of the humanities. While in residence at Bryn Mawr, lecturers offer a series of presentations that introduce their scholarship and any new developments, host class discussions with undergraduates and graduate students, conduct faculty seminars, and otherwise enrich intellectual life on campus. The College partners with Harvard University Press to disseminate the lecturers’ work through the Harvard University Press’s Mary Flexner Lectureship Series of Bryn Mawr College.

The 2026-27 Flexner Lecturer

KeeangaTaylor
Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

A writer and speaker on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States, Professor Taylor is author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, which was a semi-finalist for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. 

Read more about Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Previous Lecturers

The pioneering Egyptologist James H. Breasted gave the first series of Mary Flexner Lectures in 1928-29, followed in later years by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Toynbee, Isaiah Berlin, I.A. Richards, Erwin Panofsky, Frank Kermode, Natalie Zemon Davis, Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, and Bonnie Honig, among others. Read the full list of 41 previous Mary Flexner Lecturers at Bryn Mawr College.

Previous Holders of the Mary Flexner Lectureship

About the Mary Flexner Lectureship

Established in honor of Mary Flexner, a Bryn Mawr graduate of the class of 1895, the Lectureship has brought some of the world's best-known humanists to campus. The pioneering Egyptologist James H. Breasted gave the first series of Mary Flexner Lectures in 1928-29, followed in later years by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Toynbee, Isaiah Berlin, I.A. Richards, Erwin Panofsky, Frank Kermode, Natalie Zemon Davis, Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, and Bonnie Honig, among others.

Holders of the Mary Flexner Lecturership typically give a series of talks that introduce their scholarship and present new chapters or developments in that work. While in residence, they engage in seminars and discussions with faculty and with undergraduate and graduate students.  Lecturers publish the work they develop during their Flexner residency with Harvard University Press.

Mary Flexner Lectures and Harvard University Press