Lynn Hollen Lees

Lynn Hollen Lees was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. After attending Swarthmore College, she studied at Harvard University, earning her Ph.D. in History in 1969. She taught for over 35 years at the University of Pennsylvania, from which she retired in 2013. While at Penn, she also served as Vice Provost for Faculty and as the Co-Director of the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies. Her first book, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London, won the John Ben Snow Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies. Her major research interests are in urban history, European social history, and in the history of British colonial rule. Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rotary Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies helped her to do research in Britain, Malaysia, and Indonesia.