Ed Balleisen Reappointed to Interdisciplinary Leadership Role

Administrator will serve two-year term as senior vice provost for interdisciplinary programs and initiatives

Ed Balleisen

Following a standard review for university administrators, Ed Balleisen has been reappointed for a two-year term and elevated to senior vice provost for interdisciplinary programs and initiatives, Provost Alec D. Gallimore announced this week.

Balleisen, who was first appointed in 2015 to oversee interdisciplinary units and programming to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research, teaching and external engagement. He is currently responsible for a range of interdisciplinary programs and initiatives, including Duke’s 11 university-wide institutes, initiatives and center (UICs); Duke University Press; the Duke Lemur Center; other academic and research initiatives such as the new Duke Center for Community Engagement; and various funding opportunities, such as the Multiyear Interdisciplinary Hubs. 

Balleisen also leads Bass Connections, a university-wide academic program that supports collaborative, interdisciplinary research and experiential learning through year-long project teams, intensive summer programs and semester-long courses. More than 1,000 faculty, graduate and professional students and undergraduates work together through Bass Connections each year. The program received Duke’s Presidential Award in 2024.

Earlier this year, Times Higher Education ranked Duke in the top five for interdisciplinary science among universities worldwide.

“A visionary academic leader and tireless champion of collaboration, Ed Balleisen has helped make interdisciplinarity one of Duke’s superpowers,” Gallimore said. “I look forward to continuing to work together to develop this distinctive feature of our intellectual community.”

The faculty review committee, chaired by Colin Duckett, executive vice dean for basic and preclinical science in the School of Medicine, cited among Balleisen’s accomplishments  his enhancement of interdisciplinarity at Duke, management of UICs and development of cross-cutting programs, and engagement nationally and globally.

“Ed Balleisen’s positive contributions as vice provost for interdisciplinary studies are too numerous to list,” Duckett said. “The university has benefitted immensely from his energetic and engaged leadership, strategic brilliance, and ability to advance interdisciplinary collaboration. Given that interdisciplinarity has long been a point of distinction for Duke, this remains a critical administrative role, and Ed continues to demonstrate why he is so well-suited for it.”

A professor of history and public policy, Balleisen joined the Duke faculty in 1997. His research and writing explores the historical intersections among law, business, politics and policy in the modern United States, with a growing focus on the origins, evolution and impacts of the modern regulatory state. 

Balleisen’s most recent book is “Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff” (Princeton University Press, 2017), which received the Business History Conference’s 2018 Ralph Gomory Prize. With Duke faculty Jonathan Wiener, Lori Bennear and Kim Krawiec, he co-authored “Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) — an interdisciplinary volume that examines when and how industrialized democracies reconfigure regulatory institutions in the aftermath of major crises.

A national leader in conversations about the need to reconfigure doctoral training to foster intellectual versatility and career diversity, Balleisen was the lead co-principal investigator on Duke’s Versatile Humanists project, funded by a Next Generation Implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received grants from the Mellon, Teagle and Smith Richardson Foundations, as well as the Association of American Universities, The Duke Endowment and the American Council of Learned Societies.