Econ grad student, 29, remembered as scholar

Shauna Saunders, a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of Economics, died Dec. 3 at Duke University Hospital. A burgeoning force in her field, a devoted teacher and a wit with a shoe obsession, Saunders struggled with a chronic liver disease she carried since childhood even as her body broke down and multiple liver transplants at Duke fell through. She was 29.

“I found myself quite unrecognizable and quite scared,” Saunders wrote in her final online journal entry to friends and family. “I continue to hold all of my doctors in trust and realize just how much their hands are tied as well, as they acknowledge with all variety of bedside manner, good and bad, how they are asking incredible, perhaps too incredible, things from me.... I hope that my love and gratitude is something that you all carry with you, and can rely on or something. Trust in.”

At age 11, Saunders was diagnosed with Autoimmune Hepatitis, a rare disease that causes one’s immune system to attack its own liver; doctors later found a second disease eating at her bile ducts. Saunders was in and out of the hospital until her conditioned worsened in November, a trying month when several donor organs were deemed unusable and a final rush to promote her to a higher donor status failed.

“She kept being told to get ready for a liver transplant and it never happened,” said Katy Fenn, Saunders’ best friend and an instructor in the literature department.

A native of Saskitoon, Saskatchewan in Canada, Saunders graduated with a B.A. from York University and an M.A. from the University of Toronto before coming to Duke, where she stood out in a crowded economics department to be appointed Dudley Wallace Instructor of Economics. The promotion was a result of her revered and original course, “Historical Perspectives on Women in Economics,” which incorporated her research as well as her experience with students—it also coincided with the rising presence of the Women’s Initiative last year.

Thomas Nechyba, chair of the economics department and Saunders’ dissertation advisor, is in the process of finalizing the Shauna Saunders Memorial Fund to promote the study of women in the field. Saunders’ colleagues will also complete her dissertation for her and posthumously award her a Ph.D this May.

“It’s quite an honor that they are recognizing her that way, and her dissertation will be tidied up and finished off,” said her mother, Helen Saunders. “She had that side of her—the dedicated scholar—but she enjoyed other dimensions of life too. She certainly was always available for help and advice. She was really just a great gift to us, and we always enjoyed being in her company. She was very witty and could carry an interesting conversation... and laugh.”

A funeral mass was held at the Immaculate Conception Church in Durham Dec. 11, and a memorial celebration followed on Duke’s East Campus later that day. Another service is being planned in Canada.