Flier said taking a hiatus from academia can be a dangerous career move, but it wasn’t for Buckler.

“You know when you go away from academia you run the danger of losing the skills that you had developed as a student,” Flier said. “It seems to me that in her particular case she was able to use the time away to her advantage and developed a great sense of focus and organization.”

And Todd said Buckler’s hiatus is becoming less of an anomaly.

“It’s increasingly common that people after they graduate from college do something else for a while first,” he said.

Buckler also serves as director of undergraduate studies in the Slavic department and as an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies.

Buckler said that the appointment, though attended by new pressures and responsibilities, is also something of a relief. She plans to use her newfound job security to revisit old extracurricular activities and pick up some new ones.

“I’d like to pick up my flute again, I’d like to take tap-dancing lessons, I’d like to return phone calls more quickly, and spend more time at Southwick wild animal farm with my daughter,” she said.

Buckler said the appointment was a surprise, but she thanks her peers for their support.

“I think anyone who gets tenure at Harvard would find it a surprise,” she said. “But that being said I feel like I had wonderful support from my department all the way through; they gave me good advice and good guidance, and they kept me informed over the course. So I wasn’t flying as blind as some people may have been under these circumstances.”

Buckler’s research has focused on imperial Russia. Her first book, entitled The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia received the “Best Work of Literary and Cultural Criticism for 2000” award from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East-European Languages Publications Committee. She said she plans to submit her second book, which examines the “middle culture” of St. Petersburg, to Princeton University Press at the end of the summer.