Meet the VWPP Team

Tom Parker
Resident Director 2025-2026
director@vwpp.org

Thomas Parker is Professor of French and Francophone Studies as well as Environmental Studies at Vassar College. His teaching and research weave together Renaissance and early modern literature, poetics, and environmental thought, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary debates in the environmental humanities. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Paranatures in Culinary Culture: An Alimentary Ecology (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). His current research engages with emerging frameworks in the “Blue Humanities” on the African continent. He chaired the Department of French and Francophone Studies from 2019 to 2025 and currently directs the Vassar–Wesleyan Paris Program.

Michael Meere
Resident Director 2026-2027
director@vwpp.org

Michael Meere is Associate Professor of French and Medieval Studies, and an Affiliate of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at Wesleyan University. A specialist of late medieval and early modern French-language theatre and performance, he has published three books and co-edited two journal special issues. His monograph on violence in sixteenth-century French tragedy has been translated into French and is forthcoming with Classiques Garnier. At Wesleyan he teaches courses in French and English, ranging from Elementary French to advanced seminars on Renaissance French drama. He has served as the Head of French Studies at Wesleyan on two occasions (2021-2022, 2025-2026) and currently directs the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris. 

Hannah Gersten
Assistant Director
hgersten@vwpp.org

Hannah Gersten is Assistant Director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris. Her passion for French language and culture dates back to her junior year abroad with Tufts University which she spent in Paris, taking courses at Sciences Po and living with a French host family. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s M.A. program in History and Literature, located at Reid Hall in Paris, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she earned a Master 2 in French literature. In Paris, Hannah enjoys going to the theatre, running along the Seine, and shopping for antiques.

Sophie Kolesnikov
Program Coordinator
skolesnikov@vwpp.org

Sophie Kolesnikov is the Program Coordinator of the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris. She handles all things related to student life in Paris, the VWPP’s cultural program and extracurricular activities. She holds a master’s degree in Geopolitics of the arts and culture from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, where she studied in the departments of anglophone studies and cultural mediation. She is a plant-based cooking enthusiast and also takes an interest in literature, art history and Asian and anglophone cultures.

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The Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris is located in Reid Hall, Paris.

VWPP – Reid Hall
4 rue de Chevreuse
75006 Paris
FRANCE
info@vwpp.org
+33 1 43 22 12 47