Pellow was a founding director of the Space and Place Initiative at the Global Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School. She also taught in the school's Master of Social Science course.[2] Her research was at the intersection of proxemics, ethnicity, micro-politics and conflict, feminist thought, women and gender.[2] From 2009 to 2011, she served as the president of the Society for Urban National and Transnational Anthropology, a wing of the American Anthropological Association.[2] She chaired the University Senate Library Committee and Chancellor Search Committee of Syracuse University. She was a Senior Research Associate at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict & Collaboration. She also lived in northern Nigeria where she studied Hausa.[2] Later, she conducted fieldwork in China and Japan. [6][7]
Personal life and death
Deborah Pellow was first married to the American philosopher, Irving Thalberg Jr. (1930–1987), the son of 1920s and 1930s Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg and Academy Award-winning actress Norma Shearer.[8][9] After her husband's death, Pellow married in 1991, the American mystery writer, David Cole (1936–2015).[10] She served on the boards of The Friends of Chamber Music, and the non-profit, Francis House, a home for the terminally-ill.[6]
Pellow died in Syracuse on May 29, 2025, at the age of 80.[11][6][12] A memorial service for Deborah Pellow was held at the Hendricks Chapel on the campus of Syracuse University on September 12, 2025.[13][14][15]
Selected awards and honors
Lifetime Achievement Award, Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) (2021)[16]
William Wasserstrom Prize for the Teaching of Graduate Students (2019)[17]
