Nicholas Allen, Director

Franklin Professor of English

Allen is writing a cultural history of 1916 and its impact on modernism for Cambridge University Press. His books include Broken Landscapes: Selected letters of Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, 2011), Modernism, Ireland and Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2009), That Other Island (2007), The Proper Word (2007), George Russell and the New Ireland (2003), and The Cities of Belfast (2003). Recent essays have been published in The History of the Irish Book in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2011) and Synge and Edwardian Ireland (2011). Allen’s work is located at the intersection between literature, history and visual culture. His interests include the study of modernism, empire, and increasingly, writing about ocean and archipelago. Allen has taught previously at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he was academic director of the Moore Institute.

Lloyd Winstead, Associate Director

Winstead’s background is in higher education administration. His interests include the history of American higher education and student life. He is author of When Colleges Sang (forthcoming, University of Alabama Press).

Antje Ascheid, Associate Academic Director for Arts and Public Programs

Associate Professor, Film Studies, Department of Theatre and Film Studies

Ascheid is a film scholar specializing in film history and criticism. Her academic research focuses on women and film, German film history, and genre cinema. In addition, she is interested in film production and screenwriting and has been active in that field. Her publications include Hitler’s Heroines: Stardom and Womanhood in Nazi Cinema (Temple University Press, 2003) and numerous articles in film anthologies and international film journals. She received UGA’s Sandy Beaver Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011. As Associate Academic Director of the Willson Center, Ascheid’s mission is to build networks between the various arts communities at UGA and the Athens community at large, to further public engagement with the arts, and to nurture national and international collaboration, looking to create a productive synergy within the Arts and Humanities.

Stephen Berry, Associate Academic Director for External Grants

Amanda and Greg Gregory Chair in Civil War Era Studies, Department of History

Berry is an historian of the U.S. South in the nineteenth century. His books include All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press, 2003), House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), and Weirding the War: Stories from the Civil War’s Ragged Edges (University of Georgia Press, 2011). Berry has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; in 2009 and again in 2012, he was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. In his role as the Willson Center’s Associate Academic Director for External Grants, Berry helps to promote the intellectual life of the UGA campus and Athens community, and to ensure that UGA humanities and arts faculty receive national recognition and support.

Julie Dingus, Administrative Specialist

Dingus has been an employee of the University of Georgia since 1984 and an Athens resident since 1981.  She has served as the office manager of the Willson Center since 1999.

Dave Marr, Public Relations Specialist

Marr is a University of Georgia graduate in Film Studies and Journalism. He is a writer and musician who has lived in Athens since 1991.