Ann Morning

As Academic Director at 19 Washington Square North, NYU Abu Dhabi’s home in New York, Ann Morning serves as a liaison between NYU faculty in New York and Abu Dhabi. Her responsibilities include directing the 19 WSN Faculty Fellows Program, which is designed to encourage NYU faculty in New York to further engage with NYUAD and vice-versa; supporting collaborative research that connects schools and departments in New York to NYUAD’s programs, divisions, and centers; and fostering a vibrant scholarly presence at 19 Washington Square North.  

A member of NYU’s Department of Sociology since 2004 and a Faculty Affiliate at NYUAD since 2012, Morning also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Her research focuses on how racial difference is conceptualized and categorized. Much of her work — such as The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press, 2011) — investigates how contemporary genetics influences discourse about race, while her current book project explores how Italians make sense of their country’s growing demographic diversity and draw boundaries against newcomers.

Morning previously worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a diplomat in the US Foreign Service. From 1995 to 1997, she was an Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She received her BA magna cum laude from Yale, her Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia, and her PhD in sociology from Princeton. She also studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.