This fall, historian Kristina Richardson joined the University of Virginia as the John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy and Professor of History and Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages and Cultures. Prior to joining the faculty at UVA, she was associate professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Richardson completed her bachelor’s in history and certificate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.

Richardson’s research focuses on premodern non-elite Arab history, particularly people with disabilities, users of sign language, Romani groups (ghurabā’), craftspeople, and enslaved laborers and entertainers. She is the author of two monographs: Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World: Blighted Bodies and Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture and Migration.

Her work, Roma in the Medieval Islamic World, has received recent acclaim for its critical analysis of the literary and print cultures of the Roma and other travelling communities in Afro-Eurasia. In February 2023, the Medieval Academy of America, the premier organization of medieval studies, awarded Richardson the 2023 Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research. The organization noted, "The Monica Green Prize asks about the modern relevance of the medieval research, to which Professor Richardson asks, and answers, 'How had an entire group of people been entirely erased from our view of the medieval past?'"

In March 2022, Richardson received the prestigious 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest history award in the world. The Dan David Foundation at Tel Aviv University recognized her outstanding scholarship, noting “Her findings force a radically new understanding of European modernity and the place of linguistic and ethnic minorities in its formation. Her research into Romani contributions to late medieval/early modern European society provide much needed context for modern appreciation of the long history of Roma in Europe.”

In 2021 Richardson and Dr. Boris Liebrenz co-published The Notebook of Kamal al-Din the Weaver, an edition and study of an early Ottoman weaver’s Arabic notebook. She is writing her third monograph, Black Basra: Race, Labor and Piety in Early Islamic History.

“There’s no place else I’d rather be,” said Richardson. “UVA has given me a tremendous opportunity, and I’m excited to collaborate with world-class students and faculty on a host of new projects.”

Her interest extends to the deep history of enslavement in majority-Muslim countries that have not embraced democracy today, and how these two phenomena may be related.

Richardson’s work has been supported by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the European Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, and the City University of New York. She also serves as an editor for the journal Der Islam.

John Nau, who graduated from UVA in 1968 with a history degree, is a longtime benefactor and former member of the Board of Visitors. Through the John L. Nau III Foundation, he has made gifts to support teaching and learning in the field of democracy, including Nau fellowships, internships, and professorships in the College of Arts & Sciences. He also made a leadership gift to the Karsh Institute of Democracy.

The Nau Foundation’s previous philanthropic commitments to UVA include gifts to establish and endow the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, the Nau Collection (a Civil War-era archives collection valued at $13.6 million), and a lead gift for the construction of Nau Hall at the South Lawn, home to the Corcoran Department of History.

The chairman and CEO of Silver Eagle Beverages, Nau was instrumental in securing Anheuser-Busch’s support for the University, which includes funding an alcohol awareness program and a major gift for the College’s Department of Environmental Sciences. The gift helped to fund the University’s Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center, which supports a wide variety of research.