Special Advisor on Community Engagement

Anna Shternshis.Anna Shternshis

Anna Shternshis is the Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies. She is a distinguished scholar with an international reputation for her expertise in Jewish culture in Russia and the Soviet Union, oral history as well as Yiddish music.

Professor Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) and When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of East European Jewish Affairs, the leading journal in the field of East European Jewish Studies, and the author of more than 20 articles on the Soviet Jews during World War II, Russian Jewish culture and post-Soviet Jewish diaspora. Professor Shternshis lectures widely around the world and her work has been featured in print media in 45 countries in 22 languages. Her most recent project, Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WWII, highlights forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. The project has received widespread acclaim, including a Grammy nomination in 2019. She is also the recipient of several awards, including Guggenheim Fellowship and the University of Toronto President’s Impact Award.

Professor Shternshis was appointed as the Special Advisor on Community Engagement in March 2020. As Special Advisor, she will provide advice to the Dean on matters related to the strategic priority of increasing community engagement. She will assist in evaluating opportunities for partnership, including working with external organizations and advisory groups. She will also help increase the Faculty’s profile in the community and enrich opportunities for students and faculty, especially related to experiential learning and innovative scholarship.

Contact

Email: anna.shternshis@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-8131