Professor Hammonds was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University (2005-2008).  From 2008, -2103  she served as Dean of Harvard College. She holds honorary degrees from Spelman College and Bates College. Professor Hammonds’ areas of research include the histories of science, medicine and public health in the United States; race and gender in science studies; feminist theory and African American history.   She is the author of Childhood’s Deadly Scourge:  The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930 (1999).  She was co-editor with Jennifer M. Shephard and Stephen M. Kosslyn of The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education  for the Twenty-First Century (2011) and with Rebecca Herzig,, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (2008.) She has published articles on the history of disease, race and science, African American feminism, African-American women and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS and analyses of gender and race in science and medicine. Professor Hammonds’ current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race in the United States. 

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