Anna Brailovsky has been in the research development field since 2011. She was previously the Research Development Manager at the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago (2018-2022) and the Coordinator of Research Development for the Social Sciences at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota (2011 – 2018). She joined LAS in April 2022. She has a strong record of success developing proposals for a wide range of major federal and private sponsors – including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Agriculture, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institute of Justice, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Russel Sage Foundation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. She is active in the National Organization of Research Development Professionals and was the chair of its Mentoring Program from 2015 to 2017, and co-presented a NORDP conference panel on grant writing training for graduate students (2019). Additionally, Anna has over two decades of experience editing scholarly writing and translating from German and Russian. She has translated Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot (Modern Library, 2003) and several works of young adult fiction, one of which was named a Mildred Batchelder Honor Book for best children’s book in translation by the American Library Association. She holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University and an MA (ABD) in Art History from Johns Hopkins University. Email: abrailov@uic.edu

Ajapa Sharma (she/her) is a researcher and educator in the field of global history. She is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in the Department of History at UIC. She has extensive experience in multi-sited archival research. Ajapa has written grants, and designed research projects for academic institutions and development programs in South Asia and the US. In the last ten years, she has worked on several long-term projects funded by American Institute for Indian Studies, USAID, British Council, Open Society Foundations, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ajapa is committed to helping build inclusive classrooms and educational instuitions that are responsive to the needs of students, educators, researchers, and the wider community. Email: ashar21@uic.edu