As dean of faculty, David Bell works closely with Dean Adam Falk on all departmental and faculty matters such as approving visitors and leaves, hiring, faculty reviews, promotion, and retention cases. He also works with departments on their faculty searches, consulting with them on fields and candidates; tracking affirmative action procedures; and negotiating salary packages in the humanities and social sciences. He is responsible for appointing and supervising the work of the ad hoc committees that evaluate individual appointments and promotions within the Krieger School. In overseeing the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship program, Bell supervises the work of the selection committee and oversees the Mellon Fellows Research Seminar, in which current fellows present their ongoing research for criticism and review by the other fellows.

The Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Bell is a historian of early modern France and the author of three books, including The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (2006). He earned his PhD at Princeton University and spent several years as an assistant professor at Yale University before coming to Hopkins in 1996.

Bell teaches courses on early modern France, European history, the French Revolution, French Enlightenment, the art of narrative history, and more. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

David Bell Dean of Faculty

David Bell
Dean of Faculty