Meet the VWPP Team

Michael Meere
Resident Director 2022-2023
director@vwpp.org

Michael Meere (he/him), Associate Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Wesleyan University, is the Resident Director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris for the 2022-2023 academic year. He is the author of Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy: Performance, Ethics, Poetics (2021) and editor or co-editor of Replaying the Francophone Early Modern in the Twenty-First Century (2022), Coups de maître. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture, in honour of John D. Lyons (2021), Staging Justice in Early Modern France (2020), and French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory (2015). His articles have appeared in journals including The Romanic Review, Early Modern French Studies, The French Review, Exemplaria, and The Journal of the African Literature Association. He received his PhD and MA from the University of Virginia, a Master 2 from the Université Paris 4 Sorbonne, a maîtrise from Université Lumière Lyon 2, and a BA from Northwestern University. As an undergraduate, he spent a year abroad with Sweet Briar College Junior Year in France and took courses at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Goethe-Institut 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
Student Life Coordinator
skolesnikov@vwpp.org

Sophie Kolesnikov is the Student Life 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.


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