Joanna Regulska is the vice provost and associate chancellor of Global Affairs at the University of California, Davis, where she also is a professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.
For more than three decades Regulska has led large-scale programs that have transformed institutions, established collaborative partnerships, and substantially improved internationally focused services for students, faculty, and staff—and has raised more than $9 million in public and private project support.
Most recently, Regulska has developed visionary initiatives at UC Davis: striving to provide all students with valuable international or intercultural experiences before graduation through a UC Davis Big Idea of Global Education for All; and strengthening the university’s international research, education and engagement efforts through Global Centers.
As Rutgers University’s first vice president for international and global affairs, Regulska led a major effort to build the first centralized office: the Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs. In 2014, Rutgers earned NAFSA’s Senator Paul Simon Award for comprehensive internationalization. In 2013, Regulska received the Fulbright U.S.-Korea International Education Administrator Award.
Regulska founded the Local Democracy Partnership Program and serves on the Founder Board of The Foundation in Support of Local Democracy, the largest NGO in Poland. In recognition of her work, the President of Poland awarded Regulska the Cavalier Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996), the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Restitution of the Republic of Poland (2004), and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2014).
A respected scholar, Regulska’s research concentrates on women’s political activism, grassroots mobilization, decentralization, democracy and democratization, with a focus on Europe and the Caucasus. She is the author or co-author of eight books, author of over 100 articles, chapters and reviews, and member of numerous advisory boards.
A commitment to diversity, social justice, and the empowerment of women led Regulska to establish graduate degree programs in gender studies at the Central European University (Hungary) and Tbilisi State University (Republic of Georgia).
Regulska earned her master’s degree from the University of Warsaw, Poland and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Tbilisi State University, Georgia.