Briana Smith has a background in undergraduate and graduate education and higher education administration. No stranger to midlife pivots, Briana recently returned to Minnesota with her husband and two cats to begin a new role in lifelong learning after living in Massachusetts for six years, where she taught for the Committee on Degrees in History & Literature at Harvard University.
Briana received a PhD in history from the University of Iowa and a BA in history from Hamline University. She has published numerous academic articles on art and politics in postwar Berlin and the cultural history of the internet in Germany since 1980. Her book, Free Berlin: Art, Urban Politics, and Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2022), received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Cultural Studies Book Prize from the German Academic Exchange Service and German Studies Association.