Our Team

Elizabeth A. Drummond, PhD, Director

Elizabeth Drummond is associate professor of history in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, affiliated faculty in Jewish Studies, and the director of the Secondary Teacher Preparation Program in Social Studies/History at LMU. She was educated at Georgetown University, with a Bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service, a Master’s in German and European Studies, and a Ph.D. in History. Professor Drummond is a social and cultural historian of modern Central Europe, with a focus on national identity, nationalist mobilization, and the experience of national conflict in the German Polish borderlands. More recently, she has been working on a project about the Weimar-era German artist Max Thalmann. Professor Drummond received a 2025 Humanities Initiatives grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund a two-year summer institute for high school students about “the public uses of the past.” She is a member of the team that founded and maintains the interdisciplinary digital project the German Studies Collaboratory and a co-founder of the German Studies Association’s Teaching Network. Professor Drummond teaches broadly in modern European and global history, including first-year seminars on the First World War and the Holocaust, introductory surveys in world history, environmental history, and European history, and upper-division courses about modern Germany, European imperialism, gender history, popular culture, and public history. She received the 2022 President’s Fritz B Burns Distinguished Teaching Award from LMU, a 2022 Teacher Eddy Award from the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce, and the 2018 Popiden Distinguished Faculty Service Award from LMU’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Professor Drummond’s previous leadership roles include chair of History (2017-2021), chair of the BCLA College Council, and Faculty Senate President (2015-2017). Announcement Website

Celeste Ward, Administrative Coordinator

Celeste Ward is the Administrative Coordinator for The Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and the Arts. She has spent over a decade working at Loyola Marymount University. Celeste earned her BA from University of Michigan and her MFA from American University in Washington DC.

Natasha Efron, Communications Assistant

Natasha Efron is a History major with an Art History minor and plans to enter the Museum Studies field. She manages the Marymount Institute’s social media and brings campus awareness to the events and artifacts that the Institute showcases.