Deba (Elisabeth) Foxley Leach is a fourth year PhD (ABD) student specializing in American art and architecture. She received a BA in English at Manhattanville College, a BS in Architecture from Catholic University, and an MA in Art History from the University of Iowa. Leach’s primary area of research is American art and architecture of the twentieth century.

Leach served as architectural historian for the Iowa State Historic Preservation Program and Arts Education Counselor at the National Endowment for the Arts. Museum work for exhibitions on Jacob Lawrence (1990s and 2000) at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Grant Wood and Art in Roman Life at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (2004-2005) inform Leach’s approach to the dissertation topic Doris Lee (1904-1983): Self, Society, Place which will present and examine a series of paintings to illuminate the education, work life, social and cultural milieu of the Midwest-born modernist. Leach was Instructor for Writing About the Visual Arts (2018) and Teaching Assistant for Art and Visual Culture (2019) and received the Ann Lee Morgan Art History Scholarship for the academic years 2018-1019 and 2019-2020.