Bryn Geffert

Biography

Bryn Geffert is the dean of libraries and a professor of History at the University of Vermont. He previously served as library director at St. Olaf College, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Amherst College. Bryn received his B.A. in history and in Russian, graduating summa cum laude from St. Olaf College, with breaks for study in Scotland and the Soviet Union, plus stints as a lifeguard and Red Cross swimming instructor. He received an M.S. in library and information science from the University of Illinois, and an M.A. in Russian history and a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Minnesota. Bryn’s research focuses on Russian religious and intellectual history. Books include Catholics without Rome: Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and the Reunion Negotiations of the 1870s (Notre Dame University Press, 2022), Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (Notre Dame University Press, 2010) and Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts (Yale University Press, 2016). He writes on occasion about publishing and libraries for The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. In 2015, under Bryn’s leadership, the Amherst College Library won the Association of College and Research Library’s “Excellence in Academic Libraries Award,” a.k.a. the academic library of the year award. He led the establishment of the Amherst College Press, and, in partnership with the Oberlin Group and the University of Michigan, the consortial Lever Press—ventures both dedicated to rigorous peer review and editing within a diamond open-access model. He has raced in three Birkebeiners, run twenty-two marathons (including six Boston Marathons), and completed a few triathlons. He served for many years as a high-school basketball official.