Three Emory University faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and a leading independent public policy research center.
Erica Dunbar, NEH Professor in the Humanities and professor of African American studies; Tayari Jones, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing; and Elaine Walker, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, are Emory’s new members.
“Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recognizes the intellectual leadership of these scholars and the broader impact of their work,” says Badia Ahad, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Erica Dunbar, Tayari Jones, and Elaine Walker have each shaped their fields in meaningful and distinctive ways. Their scholarship reflects the very best of what the Academy stands for: advancing knowledge in service to the public good.”
Dunbar, Jones and Walker will join 34 other Emory faculty as members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, which elected its first members in 1781 and announced its newest members April 22. The 252 members elected in 2026 are recognized for their excellence as leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research and science.
“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence — this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of the public good,” said Laurie Patton, the organization’s president, in an announcement.
Erica Dunbar: Historical scholarship for everyone
Dunbar, an acclaimed scholar and award-winning author, writes about the lives of Black women in 18th and 19th century America for academic and public audiences.
As co-executive producer on HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” she advises the hit television series about the nuances of racial and gender relations in late-1800s Manhattan.
Dunbar has written or co-written eight books focusing on the history of enslavement and freedom, social history, urban history and women’s history.
These include “A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City” in 2008 and “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a co-winner of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. In 2019, she published “She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.”
Dunbar says she is “honored and deeply humbled” to be elected to the Academy.
After learning of the recognition, she says she visited the organization’s website to peruse the list of historians elected over the years.
“I stopped on one profile and smiled,” she says. “Staring back at me was an image of Dr. John Hope Franklin, a 20th-century historian who reshaped U.S. history and held profound care and interest for the public. It’s an honor to be counted among scholars like Dr. Franklin, and many others, who placed African Americans and women at the center of their scholarship.”
Dunbar served as the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians from 2019-22. She also served as the inaugural director of the Program in African American History at The Library Company of Philadelphia from 2011-18.
Her op-eds, essays and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, TIME, Essence, the New York Review of Books, CNN and Los Angeles Times. She has appeared in documentaries including “The Abolitionists” on PBS and the Ken Burns series “Benjamin Franklin.”
Tayari Jones: Writing that humanizes social history
Jones is the author of five novels, including this year’s “Kin,” a New York Times bestselling book about a friendship tested by time and circumstance during the 1940s and ’50s Jim Crow South.
Her storytelling has addressed urgent social issues including race, gender and mass incarceration — while steeping readers in the regional histories of the American South. Her previous novel “An American Marriage,” also a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. Her first novel, “Leaving Atlanta,” earned multiple honors, including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction in 2003. In addition, she is the author of “The Untelling” and “Silver Sparrow.” In 2016, “Sparrow” was added to the National Endowment of the Arts Big Read Library of Classics, which brings communities together to discuss a single book.
“It is deeply moving to be ‘one in this number,’” says Jones. “The Academy of Arts and Sciences reminds us of what it means to be American in all of her complexity and nuance. As a Black writer, a Southern writer and a woman writer, I am honored to represent my many communities as a new member of this meaningful gathering of minds.”
Jones has penned introductions to works by Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Alice Walker, Randall Kenan, Dovey Johnson Rountree, Sapphire, Maya Angelou and Diane Oliver.
She has also served on the boards of many philanthropic arts organizations, including Poets and Writers, Girls Write Now and the Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellowship. Her accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was recently named to TIME’s “100 Most Influential People of 2026.”
Her short stories, literary criticism, reviews, essays and travel writing have appeared in TIME, The New York Times, The Believer, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Callaloo, Tin House, McSweeney’s and Travel & Leisure.
Elaine Walker: Pioneering research in mental illness
Walker’s contributions to the field of psychology and neuroscience have had a profound impact on our understanding of major mental illnesses, particularly psychosis.
For more than three decades, she has led a research laboratory, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and private foundations. Her pioneering research on the risk factors for major mental illnesses has advanced understanding of the behavioral and neurobiological factors associated with the risk of psychosis.
Her research focuses on the precursors and neurodevelopmental aspects of the scientific study of mental disorders, particularly schizophrenia. Through her work, she aims to improve the prediction of psychotic disorders and identify the neurobiological processes that precede the onset of these debilitating conditions.
Walker says she’s grateful for the honor, adding, “I’ve always thought of it as a gift to have the opportunity to pursue my passion for scientific research. I was banking on the inherent gratification of being able to conduct research on issues that were of such great interest to me, but getting recognized for doing what I am inclined to do anyway is especially nice.”
Walker has written or co-written six books and more than 500 scientific articles, many of which are highly cited and have influenced subsequent research in the field.
She also leads the Emory site for the NIMH’s North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study, a consortium of nine institutions studying the early indicators of psychosis.
She served as president of the Society for Research in Psychopathology from 1986-2000 and chair of Emory’s Department of Psychology from 2003-06.
Her many accolades include the William T. Grant Faculty Scholar Award; the Joseph Zubin Award from the Society for Research in Psychotherapy; and the Alexander Gralnick, M.D., Award for Research in Schizophrenia. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and other founding fathers of the United States, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people.”
Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2026.