People
Center Leadership
Paul Quigley, Director of the Center for Humanities
Paul Quigley is Director of the Center for Humanities at Virginia Tech. He also serves as Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and the James I. Robertson, Jr. Associate Professor of Civil War Studies. Originally from Manchester, England, he holds degrees from Lancaster University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Quigley is the author of Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848-65, which won awards from the British Association for American Studies, the American Civil War Museum, and Phi Beta Kappa. His work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Southern History and Journal of the Civil War Era, as well as the Roanoke Times, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Washington Post, and the New York Times Disunion section. He edited a volume of essays entitled The Civil War and the Transformation of American Citizenship, and coedited another essay collection, Reconciliation after Civil Wars: Global Perspectives. His study of Preston Brooks, the South Carolina Congressman who achieved notoriety by caning Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate in 1856, is under contract with Oxford University Press. Quigley also leads the NEH-funded project “Experiencing Civil War History Through Augmented Reality: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Environment at Pamplin Historical Park.”
Quigley serves on the editorial board of the journal Civil War History, and has previously served on the advisory boards of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond and the Society of Civil War Historians.
Rishi Jaitly, Distinguished Humanities Fellow
Rishi Jaitly is a distinguished entrepreneur, executive and educator with extensive global experience in technology, media, and civics.
As Professor of Practice and Distinguished Humanities Fellow at Virginia Tech, he founded the Institute for Leadership in Technology, which offers the world's first Executive Leadership Credential in the Humanities to rising leaders in the world's technology landscape. Additionally, Jaitly serves as a Senior Advisor to OpenAI.
Previously, Jaitly served as Founding CEO of Times Bridge, a leading venture capital firm facilitating international expansion for world-leading companies, including Airbnb, Coursera and Uber. Before Times Bridge, he was Twitter’s Vice President for Asia Pacific, Middle East, and North Africa. Prior to that, Jaitly held leadership roles at Google & YouTube in South Asia and in Washington, D.C., and served as a speechwriter for Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Jaitly has also devoted a range of his career to social entrepreneurship, co-founding initiatives such as Michigan Corps, Kiva Detroit and the BMe Community, and having served as a Director at both College Summit and Knight Foundation. He presently serves as Vice Chairman of the National Humanities Center and Board Director of Virginia Humanities. Jaitly, who is a former Trustee of Princeton University, was in 2022 recognized as one of Rest of World Magazine’s “Top 100 Global Tech Changemakers.”
A public speaker who has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine, and on CNN, MSNBC and the BBC, Jaitly earned his A.B. in History and Certificate in American Studies from Princeton University.
Abigail Middleton, Administrative Coordinator
Abigail Middleton is the Administrative Coordinator for the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities. In this role, Abigail coordinates general operations of the Center, manages social media and communication, and helps plan and organize Center events and activities. Abigail holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Northeastern Illinois University and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Pittsburgh. Originally from Illinois, Abigail moved to Blacksburg with her family in 2017. Abigail can be reached at amiddleton@vt.edu.
Fellows
Faculty Fellows
Rachel Stauffer
Rachel Stauffer is Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Virginia Tech. She has a Master’s and PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of Virginia) and EdM in Diversity and Equity from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research critically examines histories of, practices in, and influences on teaching and learning about Russia in the United States since World War II.
Graduate Fellows
Christopher Yeung
Christopher Yeung is an M.A. student in Virginia Tech’s English program. His research lies at the intersection of religion and cultural studies. Specifically, he is focused on unearthing relationships between the works of Li-Young Lee and Emily Dickinson with theories of the “Divine Feminine/Mother”. When Chris isn’t doing his research, he is an avid marathoner and creative writer.
Helya Sehat
Helya Sehat is a Ph.D. student in the Planning, Governance, and Globalization program at Virginia Tech. With a background in urban planning and urban design, her research is rooted in social and environmental justice. She is also affiliated with the Institute for Policy and Governance at Virginia Tech.
AJ Crowell
AJ Crowell is a first-year graduate student at Virginia Tech pursuing a master’s degree in Material Culture and Public Humanities. Their research projects often comparatively analyze social history and contemporary events to explore how American historical narratives are mythologized through practice and performance. Their current research interest shifts their critical line of inquiry to collective memory and its influence on historic preservation.