All Faculty

While at the University of Chicago, Vanessa first studied abroad in France and discovered the country’s rich history and cultural heritage. She returned a second time on a summer program with the Sorbonne and began a research project on France’s first historical museum and the emergence of contemporary notions of cultural heritage or patrimoine. She then went on to do a master’s and PhD in modern European History, writing a dissertation on the French branch of the 19th-century international peace movement in Europe and how it contributed to the beginnings of international civil society. She has taught for over 10 years in universities, including the American University of Paris and Sciences Po, and has also worked at UNESCO and as a museum educator. She is currently Head of Department and History-Geography Professor for a Cambridge program in a French high school. She speaks fluent French and basic German.

A native of Duluth, Minnesota, Bob has led student programs with Putney in France, Morocco, and Switzerland. Before joining Putney, he guided cycling trips in Europe, taught high school and college French, and interpreted for sports events in France and the United States. He speaks French, Spanish, and Italian, and is studying Moroccan Arabic. He currently organizes many of Putney’s programs in Europe. Bob is also a sailboat captain, landscape painter, EMT, and lifeguard.

Ziad is the Elliott E. Burdette Professor at the American University of Paris. He teaches history, politics, and international relations and writes on Lebanese, Syrian, and Arab affairs, as well as on regional political transitions and crises. After graduating in economics from the American University of Beirut, he obtained a master’s degree in Arabic literature, then a Ph.D. in political science from Sciences Po Paris. He has been involved since 1994 in research work and reform campaigns related to political processes, and legal and civil society causes in Lebanon and other Arab countries. For the last 20 years, he has been regularly publishing articles and papers in Arabic (in Now Lebanon, Al-Quds al-Arabi, Al-Hayat, Aljazeera Center, the Journal of Palestine Studies, Daraj and Megaphone) and in French (in L'Orient Littéraire, Mediapart, Le Monde, L'Express, Libération and AOC). He is a board member in Lebanese and French cultural institutes, a consultant for many international organizations, and a lecturer in international festivals and annual conferences. His books include Syrie, la révolution orpheline, published in Arabic, French, and—in an updated version—in German, and Dans la tête de Bachar Al-Assad (with Subhi Hadidi and Farouk Mardam-Bey) in French.

A lifetime theater professional—as an actor, writer, director, producer, and teacher—Lizzie is the founder and Artistic Director of Shake-Scene Shakespeare, currently the UK’s only cue-based teaching and performing company producing Shakespeare from cues only. Lizzie returned to academic study in her 50s and is researching a practice-led PhD (part time) at the Shakespeare Institute. Her experience as an actor, director, producer and book-holder for Shake-Scene, as well as her professional acting career, inform her research interests. Lizzie regularly runs workshops (in person and online) in the techniques required to make working from cued parts the vibrant acting experience it can be. Shake-Scene performed live cue-based productions from their creation in 2017 until the 2020 lockdown opened up the new medium of online theater. Twenty-nine full play performances later, as well as many performances of collected scenes, Shake-Scene are still performing regularly online, with an ever-growing international company, and recently returned to live performances with Much Ado About Nothing at the Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells.

While at Bowdoin College, Erica focused in English, creative writing, and environmental studies, and was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper. Her honors project—a literary nonfiction work rooted in field work and interviews about the controversial return of wolves to the western United States—laid the groundwork for her debut book, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, which will be published in spring 2023 by Flatiron/Macmillan in the U.S. and Canongate in the U.K.. After Bowdoin, Erica worked in Italy as a co-producer of Amuri, a documentary about endangered Sicilian food traditions which premiered at the Oxford Food Symposium. She went on to get her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction at the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts fellow and assistant editor at the Great River Review. The winner of awards and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources, and the Ucross Foundation, her published essays and journalism can be found in The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, WIRED, Outside, The Yale Review, and other publications. She has taught on a student writing trip in Oxford, as the 2019-2020 Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, and as a Writer-in-the-Schools in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, where she now lives and works as a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.

While at Oxford earning her undergraduate degree, Rodina focused her academic interests on the genetics and developmental biology of the immune system, which led her to undertake research at the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna. There, she pursued how stem cells signal between each other in embryonic life stages. Prior to embarking on medical school, Rodina followed her passion for dance and trained professionally at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, founded by Sir Paul McCartney. Following her internship, Rodina ranked in the top 5% of candidates to win a place on one of the leading residency programs in the UK in her chosen specialty of anesthesiology. Rodina delivers anesthesia for a vast array of surgeries, cares for the sickest patients on the Intensive Care Unit, is the airway specialist on the hospital on-call emergency resuscitation team, and has additional expertise in pain management. Rodina is an instructor for the Resuscitation Council UK, teaching students and colleagues life-saving skills for cardiac arrest situations. She is also Guest Faculty at London South Bank University. Presently, she is in a Fellowship in the Intensive Care of premature and newborn babies in her hometown of London.

Tom is the head of the arts division at Middlesex School, a boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts, where he teaches theater. A graduate of Northwestern University and the American Conservatory Theater, Tom enjoys working with high school students and using theater as a lens to examine the bigger world. When not creating imaginative worlds, Tom enjoys traveling in the actual world. He has led and directed trips with high school students in Oxford, London, Paris, Florence, and Vermont.

While at Cambridge, Vicky specialized in human geography and worked with refugees and asylum seekers in London and Calais. She went on to complete a Master of Science in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Oxford, furthering her interest in justice in the asylum system. After graduating, Vicky spent two years in the UK Government (Civil Service) in asylum and refugee policy and research, while also doing pro-bono research for the legal charity Just for Kids Law. In October 2021, Vicky started a PhD at Oxford, studying the criminalization of asylum seekers in the UK. She is Director of Screen Share UK, an organization that supports, informs and advocates against the digital exclusion of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Alongside her PhD, she runs events for the research group Border Criminologies, and is a participant in the Bonavero Institute’s Legal Aid Clinic, which involves paralegal work with a solicitor’s firm with clients at the prison HMP Huntercombe. In her spare time, Vicky learns intermediate Arabic and enjoys open water swimming.

Rob is a writer, teacher, and Los Angeles native, although travel keeps him away from Hollywood for months at a time. As an undergraduate art history major at UCLA, he was assistant arts editor for the Daily Bruin and worked kitchen prep in his dorm. While pursuing his master’s degree in film at USC, he worked as a phlebotomist, middle school English teacher, and realtor. He is currently shopping a TV pilot (Runway) and a feature-length script (No Kissing). If he hadn’t pursued a writing career, his second choice would have been to be a chef. He is a charter member of Slow Food and once had to move because his library of cookbooks had outgrown his apartment. Rob has taught numerous seminars at Putney’s international Pre-College programs, and at Pre-College at Amherst College, where he also served as director. He has worked with Putney for 22 years.

An architect from Serbia, Mihaela is an intellectual polymath with master’s degrees in cognitive science from the University of Vienna, neuroscience from King’s College London, and film aesthetics from Oxford. Until recently she was Director of Strategy and Development at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, partnering with the Oxford Foundation for Theoretical Neuroscience and AI. Mihaela has taught on summer programs at Oxford since 2014.