Karen R. Lawrence

Karen R. Lawrence assumed her current position as the ninth president of The Huntington (Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens) in 2018, following a decade as president at Sarah Lawrence College. This position marks her return to Southern California, where she led the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, as its dean from 1998 to 2007. Her scholarly, teaching, and administrative leadership, which began at the University of Utah, was recognized in 1994 with the Rosenblatt Prize “to honor excellence in teaching, research and administrative efforts, collectively or individually, on behalf of the University.” Lawrence’s intellectual and personal commitments to foster research, education, and the public good have culminated in her work as president of The Huntington, a collections-based research and education nonprofit institution with a historic commitment to enhancing the public good. Throughout her career, she has been a forceful advocate for the liberal arts and a disciplinary and cultural bridge builder. She has led transformative change while respecting the unique cultures and histories of each institution she has served. 

Lawrence has served on academic and cultural boards and commissions, most recently joining the Advisory Board for the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) in February 2026. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle, North Carolina, and on the Board of Governors of the Athenaeum at Caltech. She has served as president of the International James Joyce Foundation and the International Society for the Study of Narrative.

Lawrence is a renowned English and Irish literature scholar who has published seven books and numerous articles. She has written widely on 20th-century literature, particularly on the work of James Joyce; women and travel; experimental writing; and higher education. Her books include The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses; Decolonizing Tradition: New Views of Twentieth Century “British” Literary Canons; Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition; Transcultural Joyce; Who’s Afraid of James Joyce?; and Techniques for Living: Fiction and Theory in the Works of Christine Brooke-Rose. During her administrative career, she has continued to write and teach about literature, most recently providing the opening essay in The Cambridge Centenary: Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes (ed. Catherine Flynn) in 2022. 

In her administrative roles, President Lawrence has created structures—physical, intellectual, and programmatic—that are centers for collaboration and community. As dean of humanities at UC Irvine, she championed the creation of the International Center for Writing and Translation in 2002, recruiting the late Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a distinguished Kenyan author, as its inaugural director. Under her leadership, a new Humanities Building was built, housing multiple humanities disciplines and research collectives. At Sarah Lawrence College, she secured resources for and oversaw the building of the Barbara Walters Campus Center, a transformative hub for faculty, students, and the outside community to come together. 

At The Huntington, she oversees 207 acres, more than 600 staff members, and 1.1 million visitors annually. She has fostered greater access to its three world-renowned collections—the Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens—shepherded major acquisitions, and expanded educational programming on-site and online. Lawrence has enhanced the Huntington Research Fellowship program, which currently supports 25 long-term fellows and 150 short-term fellows, and provides access to the 12 million objects in the Huntington Library for an additional 2,000 Readers annually. She has propelled transformative capital projects, including the renovation and enhancement of the historic Rose Garden Tea Room, which reopened in 2023. Two major new projects include the construction of an 83,000-square-foot Library/Art building and renovation of the Library Exhibition Hall, as well as an on-campus residential complex for visiting research fellows, made possible by a transformative $40 million gift from philanthropist and longtime Huntington supporter Charlie Munger. The Library renovation will accommodate Library and Art Museum needs, doubling collections storage space, bringing Library and Art Museum staff together for greater collaboration, and providing a much-needed objects and painting conservation center. 

President Lawrence has broadened the impact and public visibility of The Huntington’s collections, research, and education programs, most notably hosting the popular Why It Matters program series, in which she converses with distinguished guests about the enduring relevance of the humanities and arts. Guests in the series include historian Drew Gilpin Faust, former librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch, writer and curator Hilton Als, architect and educator Billie Tsien, and Caltech professor emeritus and former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Charles Elachi. She has discussed the importance of the freedom of critical inquiry and free speech with Carol T. Christ, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley; the courage to tell a fuller American story with writer, director, and producer Ava DuVernay; and the open space of democracy with writer, educator, and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams. 

Lawrence earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University, magna cum laude, with honors in English; a master’s degree in English from Tufts University; and a doctorate in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, with distinction.