Nora Lessersohn

Nora Lessersohn is a historian of the United States and the Middle East, with particular interests in politics, popular culture, and biography. She has taught at Columbia University, Manhattanville College, and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, and has held fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the National Museum of American History (NMAH). She earned her PhD in U.S. History from University College London in 2023, supported by a Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian Studies Scholarship. She also holds an AB in the Study of Religion and an AM in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, where she was a Visiting Fellow in 2023–2024. Dr. Lessersohn has published articles on the memoir of her great-grandfather, Hovhannes Cherishian, and is currently completing a manuscript on an early Middle Eastern American figure whose career in entertainment and politics spanned the nineteenth century. She is based at the USC Capital Campus in Washington, DC. 

• Ph.D. U.S. History, University College London, 2023
• M.A. Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 2015
• A.B. Study of Religion, Harvard College, 2009