Alison Frank

Frank is professor of history at Harvard. She is interested in transnational approaches to the history of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the Habsburg Empire and its successor states 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, the Austrian Cultural Forum Book Prize, and was co-winner of the Polish Studies Association's Orbis Prize in Polish Studies. Her current book project, Invisible Empire: A New Global History of Austria, focuses on the Adriatic port city of Trieste and the Habsburg Monarchy's participation in global commerce in the long nineteenth century. Other interests include the Eastern Alps, the Mediterranean slave trade, and environmental history. Frank co-chairs the German Study Group and is associate director of the Center for History and Economics.