Alison Frank

Historian

Contact Information
Phone: (617) 495-4303 x281
E-Mail: afrank@fas.harvard.edu


Biographical Statement

Frank is an assistant professor of history at Harvard. She is interested in transnational approaches to the history of central and eastern Europe, in particular the Habsburg Empire and its successor states (including Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Republic of Austria, and northern Italy) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her first book, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (2005), was awarded the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize and the Austrian Cultural Forum Book Prize, and was co-winner of the Polish Studies Association’s Orbis Prize in Polish Studies. She is currently working on two new projects, both exploring the intersection between intellectual and cultural trends, social movements, economic development, and environmental change. The first is an international environmental history of the Alps, which focuses on the commodification of mountain air. The second is a book on Austria-Hungary’s Adriatic coastline (between Trieste, Fiume/Rijeka, and Pola/Pula). She received the Roslyn Abramson Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2007, and is co-chair of the Russian and East European History Workshop.