Affiliates contribute to the interdisciplinary venues that shape the direction of the work at WGGP. They participate in and suggest ideas for conferences, symposia, legislative engagement and other collaborative research and teaching projects. They serve a three-year term (renewable).

Current Affiliates:

Ann Abbott, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Ruth Aguilera, Business Administration
Kathryn Anthony, School of Architecture
Mary Arends-Kuenning, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Ariel Avgar, School of Labor and Employment Relations
Werner Baer, Economics
Monica Bielski Borsi, School of Labor and Employment Relations
Merle Bowen, Political Science and African Studies
Jorge Chapa, Sociology and Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society
Belinda De La Rosa, Office of Dean of Students and Native American House
Lynne Dearborn, Architecture
Norman Denzin, Communications Research
Jean Due, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Hadi Esfahani, Economics
Marianne Ferber, Economics
Karen Flynn, African American Studies
Amy Gajda, Law and Communications
David Goodman, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Laura Hastings, Political Science and International Programs and Studies
Geoffrey Hewings, Geography
Cindy Ingold, Women and Gender Library
Aparna Joshi, School of Labor and Employment Relations
Ezekiel Kalipeni, Geography
Earl Kellogg, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Karen Kelsky, East Asian Language and Cultures and Anthropology
Joseph Love, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies
Robert McKim, Religious Studies
Paul McNamara, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Faranak Miraftab, Urban and Regional Planning and Gender and Women's Studies
Chantal Nadeau, Gender and Women's Studies
Radha Nandkumar, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Robert Pahre, Department of Political Science and European Union Center
Marcela Raffaelli, Department of Human and Community Development
William Rose, Architecture
Clifford Singer, Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering
Michele Thompson , University Administration
Angharad Valdivia, Communications Research
Madhu Viswanathan, Business
Ruth Watkins Academic Affairs and Speech and Hearing Science

WGGPAffiliate Bios:

Annie Abbott, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Annie Abbott is Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also directs the Spanish and Illinois program which includes curricular and extra-curricular opportunities that bring together University of Illinois students, Illinois enterprises and Hispanic communities to form mutually beneficial relationships. Her work with community-based learning in Spanish courses moves students beyond the university and into the local Spanish-speaking communities and the organizations that serve them. Her research projects concentrate on the effects of community-based learning on both students and the communities with which they work. Additionally, she works with community-based learning and social entrepreneurship initiatives in Spain and in Costa Rica.

Ruth V. Aguilera, Business Administration and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations
Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Administration and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Prof. Aguilera earned her Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in economics from the College of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Barcelona. She also pursued graduate study in business analysis at the Management School at Lancaster University, U.K., and completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard University in December 1999, specializing in economic sociology and comparative methods. Prof. Aguilera has spent considerable time conducting research at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) in Berlin, the Università Luigi Bocconi in Milan, the Juan March Institute in Madrid and, the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI-MITI) in Tokyo. Professor Aguilera’s research interests lie in the intersection of economic sociology and international management. She is currently conducting research on comparative corporate governance, intercorporate relations, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Her research has been published in the European Sociological Review, Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies and several conference proceedings and book chapters. She has recently co-edited a book with Michal Federowicz entitled Corporate Governance in a Changing Economic and Political Environment: Trajectories of Institutional Change, (Palgrave McMillan; Forthcoming 2004). At the University of Illinois, Professor Aguilera has taught courses in international management and comparative international management to undergraduates, MBA students, and Global Executive (MSBA) students. In addition, she teaches a course in comparative employment systems to Masters in Human Resources Management and a seminar on corporate governance at the European Union Center. Professor Aguilera is a fellow of the European Union Center and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois and was a Beckman Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Spring 2002).

Kathryn Anthony, School of Architecture

Mary Arends-Kuenning, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Mary Arends-Kuenning is Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois. She received a B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, she was a Berelson Post Doctoral Fellow at the Population Council in New York City. Dr. Arends-Kuenning's research examines economic and demographic issues in developing countries, focusing on issues with important gender dimensions. The subjects of her research include child labor and children’s schooling, programs that pay children to attend school, family planning programs, and the transnational migration of health care workers. She has published articles in a variety of journals and books including Demography, World Development, Population and Development Review, Studies in Family Planning and Economics of Education Review. She has experience living and working in Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. She has worked as a consultant for the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Population Council. Current research projects include investigating why children’s schooling improved in the 1990s in Brazil, examining how women learn from each other about contraceptive use in Bangladesh, and evaluating the role of foreign-trained doctors and nurses in the U.S. health care system. Dr. Arends-Kuenning teaches ACE 451 Economics of Agricultural Development and ACE 474 The Economics of Consumption at the undergraduate level and ACE 502 Demand, Supply, Firms and Households and ACE 570 Family and Consumption Economics at the Ph.D. level. She seeks to use her work experiences to interest students in learning more about developing countries.

Ariel Avgar, School of Labor and Employment Relations

Werner Baer, Economics
Werner Baer is the Lemann Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois. He specializes in Development Economics, with emphasis on Latin America. The sixth edition of his book, The Brazilian Economy, was published in 2008. He has taught in a number of Brazilian universities, inncluding the University of Sao Paulo, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and at IBMEC. He is the recipient of a number of honorary doctoral degrees in Brazil and Portugal, and was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross by the government of Brazil.

Monica Bielski Boris, School of Labor and Employment Relations
An assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Labor and Employment Relations, Professor Bielski Boris received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management from Rutgers University and a B.A. in Government and Labor Studies from Oberlin College. Her research focuses on diversity issues within unions; union organizing under neutrality agreements; strategies of central labor bodies for community outreach and dispute resolution in unionized settings. Professor Bielski Boris has been published in Advances in Industrial Relations; Labor Studies Journal; Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society and by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. She is actively working on developing new online undergraduate courses in Global Labor Studies and teaches an online course LER 320: Gender, Race, Class and Work. Professor Bielski Boris also works extensively with labor unions and teaches labor education courses on a variety of topics including sexual harassment and diversity awareness.

Merle Bowen, Political Science and African Studies

Jorge Chapa, Sociology and Center for Democracy in a Multicultural Society
Jorge Chapa became the first permanent Director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on July 16, 2006. Before moving to UIUC, Chapa was Professor and founding Director of Latino Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and had held this post since 1999. From 1988 through 1999, Chapa was a faculty member of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He also served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Graduate Opportunity Program at UT Austin. In the first three years of his appointment the proportion of Latinos entering graduate programs increased by 25% and the African American proportion increased 15%. In the fourth year, the Hopwood decision ended race-conscious affirmative action in Texas. In response, he along with other professors and legislators formulated Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan. His education includes a B.A. in Biology with Honors from the University of Chicago and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology and a separate M.A. in Demography from U. C. Berkeley. He has scores of publications reflecting his research focus on policy issues pertaining to Latinos and other groups with low incomes and educational levels. His latest book, Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest (Ann Millard, Jorge Chapa, et al. University of Texas Press, 2004) has been nominated for the Senior Book Award of the American Ethnological Society. He has taught the following courses among others: Introduction to Latino Studies, Latinos and Other Immigrants, Latino Immigrants in US Society, Race and Ethnic Relations with a Focus on Latinos, Transnational Perspectives on Latino Migration, and, Latino Policy Issues. In March of 2004, Dr. Chapa received the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award.

Belinda De La Rosa, Office of Dean of Students and Native American House
Dr. Belinda De La Rosa is Special Assistant to the Dean of Students for Assessment and Interim Director for Native American House at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She assists the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs with strategic plan metrics; acts as an evaluation consultant to units in the Office of the Dean of Students; and provides data analysis and reporting in various mediums to a variety of units and campus wide committees. As Interim Director for Native American House she is an advocate for Native American students and assists in the development of programs and services that not only help Native students but also educate all students about the history and cultures of American Indians. She most recently comes from Indiana University (IU) where she provided institutional research support to the Board of Trustees and the President of the University. Also, during her tenure at Indiana she served as an evaluation consultant for the Vice President for Institutional Development and Student Affairs. Dr. De La Rosa’s career has focused on underrepresented student access to higher education. As a long time mentor to minority students she has worked with numerous students and most recently was a founding planning committee member of the IU Men of Color Conference at Indiana University and is an active mentor in the Illinois Leadership Center at the University of Illinois. Additionally, she was also the founding Chair of the IUB Latino Faculty & Staff Council. She has published and presented on the topics of minority student enrollment trends and Latino demographics for the College Board as well as the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education and Education and Urban Society. Dr. De La Rosa received her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in Higher Education Leadership, a Masters in Public Health and a Bachelor’s degree in Chicano Studies both from the University of California at Berkeley. Early in her career she worked in the University of California AIDS research grant program as an administrative analyst and helped to shape the program’s policies and guidelines as well as manage over $10M in AIDS research funds.

Lynne Dearborn, Architecture

Norman Denzin, Institute of Communications Research
Norman K. Denzin (Ph.D., 1966, Sociology, University of Iowa) is Distinguished Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar, and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology and Humanities, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books, including Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture, Screening Race: Hollywood and a Cinema of Racial Violence; Performing Ethnography; and 9/11in American Culture. He is past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, co-editor of The Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2/e, co-editor of Qualitative Inquiry, editor of Cultural Studies--Critical Methodologies, editor of Studies in Symbolic Interaction, and founding President of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry.

Jean Due, Agricultural and Consumer Economics

Hadi Salehi Esfahani, Department of Economics
Hadi Esfahani is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also worked for the World Bank as a visiting staff economist and a consultant. He has received B.Sc. in engineering from Tehran University in 1977 and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. His research focuses on the theoretical and empirical issues of the political economy of development, partly focusing on Middle Eastern economies. He has published many articles in scholarly journals on the role of politics and governance institutions in the formation and outcome of fiscal, trade, and regulatory policies.

Marianne Ferber, Economics

Karen Flynn, African-American Studies Program
Karen Flynn is an Assistant professor in the African-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. in Women's Studies from York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada where she completed her dissertation, "Race, Class and Gender: Black Nurses in Ontario, 1950-1980." She received her Master's & Bachelor's degrees in History from the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests includes women, work, family, racism, health, migration, feminist and critical anti-racist theory, and post-colonial studies. Her current research focuses on Caribbean migrant and Black Canadian born women during the post World War II era. Dr. Flynn is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled: Caring at Home and Abroad: Black Nurses in the American Diaspora. Dr. Flynn has received numerous awards including the 2004 International Program and Studies, William and Flora Hewlett International Research Travel Grant; the 2003 CARE Initiative Bremer Foundation Grant awarded to the Committee on Diversity in Education (CODE); and in 2000, the Hannah institute of Medicine Doctoral Fellowship, the Ramsay Cooke Fellowship, the Ethel Armstrong Bursary, and the Lillian Sholtis Brunner Summer Fellowship (University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing). Dr. Flynn has published several refereed academic articles, and has several book chapters in a number of edited collections. In addition, she has published numerous editorials in Share, Canada's largest ethnic newspaper, which serves the Black & Caribbean communities in the Greater Metropolitan Toronto area. Dr. Flynn is also a free-lance writer for Canada Extra.

Amy Gajda, College of Law and College of Communications
Amy Gajda is Assistant Professor in both the College of Communications and the College of Law at the University of Illinois. Her research interests relate to the intersection of law and journalism, particularly privacy, ethics, and both legal and journalistic conceptions of news value. In addition to workshops and talks throughout the United States, in November 2005, Professor Gajda will present a paper examining the contested status of the reporter’s privilege in U.S. law at a conference at Wuhan University in China on international media transformation. Previously, she organized and moderated a panel on legal journalism at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Professor Gajda is also the legal commentator for National Public Radio stations in Illinois. Her commentaries, aired weekly throughout the state, have won seven Associated Press awards and are published as a weekly column in The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana’s regional newspaper. An opinion piece on campaign finance practices she wrote for The New York Times became the basis for a 60 Minutes investigative report. She also occasionally hosts programs for WILL-TV on a wide range of topics relating to law and public affairs. Before attending law school, Professor Gajda worked for many years as a television journalist, anchoring and producing newscasts and reporting for television stations affiliated with every major network. Before joining the Illinois faculty, she practiced law with a large firm in Washington, D.C. Professor Gajda is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Michigan. Her degree is in Communications from the University of Michigan and her J.D. is from Wayne State University in Detroit, with her third year of law studies spent at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

David Goodman, East Asian Languages and Cultures

Laura A. Hastings, Political Science and International Programs and Studies
Laura A. Hastings joined the University of Illinois' Department of Political Science in fall 2007 as adjunct professor. She received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and an AB in Russian and Soviet Studies from Harvard College. She has been assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Dean of its College of General Studies, and adjunct professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Associate Director of the International Relations program at Carnegie Mellon University. Her teaching interests span topics in International Political Economy.

Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Department of Geography
Geoffrey J.D. Hewings is Professor of Geography, Professor of Economics, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, and Director of Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Birmingham (England) in 1965, a Master of Arts in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of Washington in Seattle. His major research interests lie in the field of urban and regional economic analysis with a focus on the design, implementation and application of regional economic models. He has devoted considerable time to the way in which these models might become useful in policy formation and evaluation. In addition to the continuing development of regional econometric-input-output models for a number of US states and metropolitan areas, Professor Hewings is working on several modeling projects in Brazil, Colombia, Japan, Korea and Indonesia. Recent work in the Midwest, Brazil and Korea has focused on linking regional macro models with transportation network models to explore impacts of unexpected events (earthquakes), expansion of transportation infrastructure and the impacts of port efficiency. At the metropolitan scale, attention has been directed to the estimation of intra-metropolitan flows of good, people, income and consumption expenditures within the Chicago region to measure the changing degree of interdependence. Theoretical work remains directed to issues of economic structure and structural change interpreted through input-output, social accounting and general equilibrium models. Dr. Hewings is responsible for the overall direction of REAL, coordination with funding agencies and clients and supervision of graduate students who work for REAL on the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois.

Cindy Ingold, Women and Gender Library

Aparna Joshi, School of Labor and Employment Relations
Aparna Joshi is an associate professor of Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER), University of Illinois. Her primary research areas include work team diversity, gender issues at work, leadership and collaboration in global and distributed teams, generational issues in the workplace, and international and cross-cultural issues in management. She has conducted research in the United States, India, and Taiwan and her research appears in the field’s top tier journals including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management, Research on Managing Groups and Teams, and Human Resource Management Review. Aparna’s work has received the Academy of Management’s Dorothy Harlow Distinguished Paper Award in 2006 and 2008, the Ulrich-Lake Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Human Resource Management Journal, and the Academy of Management’s Best Dissertation Award, Gender and Diversity in Organizations division and has also been featured in the Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today. She teaches a course on ‘Managing Diversity Globally’ at LER.

Ezekiel Kalipeni, Geography and African Studies
Ezekiel Kalipeni is Associate Professor of Geography and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds both Ph.D. & MA degrees in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a population/medical/environmental geographer interested in demographic, health, environmental, and resource issues in sub-Saharan Africa. He has in the past taught at the University of Malawi (1986-1988), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1988-1991), and Colgate University (1991-1994). His research interests focus on health care issues in Africa, population, the environment and medical geography. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals. His books include: Population Growth and Environmental Degradation in Southern Africa (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994); Issues and Perspectives on Health Care in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (Edwin Mellen Press, edited with Philip Thiuri, 1997); AIDS, Health Care Systems and Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa: Rethinking and Re-Appraisal (special issue of African Rural and Urban Studies, Michigan State University Press, Vol 3(2) edited with Joseph Oppong, 1996); Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels: African Economic and Cultural Landscapes (Africa World Press edited with Paul T. Zeleza, 1999); HIV/AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology (Blackwell Publishers, edited with Susan Craddock; Joseph Oppong; and Jayati Ghosh, 2004). HIV/AIDS in Africa: Gender, Agency and Empowerment Issues (special issue of Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 64(5), pp. 1015-1150, guest edited with Assata Zerai and Joseph Oppong); Global Studies: Africa (McGraw-Hill Contemporary Learning Series, co-authored with T. Krabacher and A. Layachi, 2009); Strong Women, Dangerous Times: Gender and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nova Publishers, co-edited with K. Flynn and C. Pope, 2009); and Geographic Approaches to HIV/AIDS Risk in Africa and the Developing World (Special issue of GeoJournal, guest edited with C. Pope, forthcoming).

Earl Kellogg, Agricultural and Consumer Economics

Karen Kelsky, East Asian Languages and Cultures and Anthropology
Karen Kelsky (PhD, Hawai’i) is Head of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) and Associate Professor of EALC and Anthropology. Her work to date has focused on transnational cultural politics of gender and racial identity in Japan. Her first book, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Duke, 2001), concerned the gender politics of Japan's "internationalization." It explored the reasons that Japanese women have dominated the areas of study abroad, English study, work abroad, and romance and marriage with Westerners, and considers the uses of "the West" as a rhetorical tool of critique of Japanese patriarchy, and means of circumvention of norms of gender. She is working on two new projects, the first a book manuscript in progress entitled Alternative Japan: The Global Life and Times of the Japanese New Age Counterculture (advance contract University of California Press) on the emergence and contemporary activities of the postwar beatnik, hippie, new age and environmentalist/antiwar counterculture in Japan, as it intersected with the American alternative and new age/environmentalist countercultural movement through the activities of Asiaphile figures such as Gary Snyder and Alan Ginsberg. Her newest project is on queer Japan, and is an exploration of lesbian and FTM urban subcultures in Tokyo and Osaka.

Joseph Love, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies

Robert McKim, Program for the Study of Religion
Robert McKim is Director of the Program for the Study of Religion and Professor of Religious Studies and of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Yale University and has been a member of the UIUC faculty since 1982. His major research interests include philosophy of religion, the history of early modern philosophy (especially Berkeley), and applied ethics. He has recently taught courses in philosophy of religion and in environmental ethics. He is currently writing a book on the implications of religious diversity. Recent publications include Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2001); "The Goodness of the Real" Sophia, 2003; "Berkeley's Notebooks" in The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley edited by Kenneth Winkler (Cambridge University Press, 2005); and "Berkeley", forthcoming in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, edited by Donald Borchert (New York: Macmillan, 2005).

Paul McNamara, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Paul McNamara is Assciate Professor of Consumer and Family Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. McNamara is a health eonomist and consumer economist and his research addresses policy-relevant questions facing consumers and society. His research concentrates on health-related themes and it seeks to inform public debates and discussions surrounding nutrition and food policy issues. His food safety research (joint with Professor Gay Y. Miller and several co-authors) applies a general social welfare analysis framework to organize a set of sub-analyses concerning the gains to pork producers and the potential costs and health risks to cnsumers from the use of antibiotics in feeds at low levels of concentration (sub-therapeutic use) and to examine food safety issues in the pork system. Their model raises a number of potential policy approaches, which have not received much attention in the animal antibiotic use debate. Their analysis raises the possibility that, in addition to bans or restrictions on sub-therapeutic use in pork production, information-based strategies (including targeted permits and taxes) also might lead to overall social welfare gains. Their farm-to-fork simulation model has yielded estimates of the risks posed by pork-borne salmonellosis and they have applied it to the evaluation of measures aimed at reducing food safety risks in pork (Miller et al. 2005, McNamara et al., forthcoming). In the area of food policies and dietary behaviors, Wilde et al. (AJAE 1999) investigated the impact of participation in the Food Stamp Program and the WIC program on the likelihood of a person's adherence to the dietary guidelines as expressed in the Food Guide Pyramid. Findings indicated that there were small positive impacts on dietary quality, particularly for the WIC program.

Faranak Miraftab, Urban and Regional Planning and Gender and Women's Studies

Chantal Nadeau, Gender and Women's Studies

Radha Nandkumar, National Center for Supercomputercomputing Applications
Dr. Radha Nandkumar joined the staff of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois in 1985, after completing her doctoral degree in Physics at UIUC. She also completed an Executive M.B.A. at the University of Illinois. Her thesis research in the area of condensed matter physics extrapolated to astrophysical systems has extended to theoretical modeling and computational science. She has more than ten publications in peer-reviewed journals related to her research work. She is currently the Program Director in charge of NCSA’s Campus Relations and International Affiliations and she has two decades of leadership and program management experience in computational science, strategic planning, and facilitating outreach on national and international levels. Dr. Nandkumar has managed computational resources, data, customer relations and information management on supercomputing research projects, resource allocations, peer review processes and technology transfer. She has given more than 100 technical presentations related to NCSA’s High Performance Computing infrastructure, The TeraGrid, applications research and information technologies. She is well recognized for her leadership roles in events promoting women in computing and in coalitions to diversify computing. Her current interests are related to high performance computing and grid computing, cyberinfrastructure and their impact on computational science research and society at large. In spearheading the International Affiliates Program for NCSA, Dr. Nandkumar identifies the synergy between activities at NCSA and academic institutions abroad, in the areas of cyberinfrastructure, high performance, cluster and grid computing, and applications sciences, and brokers relationships. Under her guidance, NCSA has established affiliations with sister institutions in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Singapore, South Africa, and the CCLRC in UK, and the UK eScience Program. NCSA is also a member institution in the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA). In addition to this, she also hosts international research and management teams regularly at NCSA and represents NCSA abroad. She also serves on the advisory committees of several academic institutions both within the U.S.A. and around the globe for enabling science, computational science alliances, and cyberinfrastructure. Prior to her Ph.D, she worked at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research and at the Indian Space Research Organization’s Indian Scientific Satellite Project for conducting observations of X-ray astronomical objects using satellite and rocket borne payloads.

Robert Pahre, Department of Political Science, European Union Center

Marcela Raffaelli, Department of Human and Community Development
Marcela Raffaelli, Professor in the Department of Human and Community Development, studies child and adolescent development in culturally and economically diverse families. She received her B.A. from Williams College and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1990. She held post-doctoral positions at Johns Hopkins and Rutgers, where her work focused on HIV/AIDS prevention projects for Brazilian street youth and ethnically diverse residents of U.S. inner cities. Her current interests center on issues of gender and sexuality, immigrant adaptation, and child development under conditions of extreme poverty. She is a long-time member of the Center for the Psychological Study of Street Youth at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. She travels regularly to Brazil to participate in the Center’s training and outreach activities and has an active program of research in collaboration with colleagues at the Center. Professor Raffaelli recently created a study abroad course on Brazilian families.

William Rose, School of Architecture
William Rose is Research Architect for the Building Research Council in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University and his A.B. degree from the University of Notre Dame. He is a licensed architect and his current research focuses on the Healthy Homes Initiative of HUD. His recent publications include Water in Buildings (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), “Should the walls of historic buildings be insulated?” APT Bulletin (Association for Preservation Technology) 2005, and Technology assessment report: A field study comparison of the energy and moisture performance characteristics of ventilated versus sealed crawl spaces in the south, Rose, W., et al. 2002. US Department of Energy/Advanced Energy.

Clifford E. Singer, Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering
Clifford E. Singer is Professor of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois, and is currently co-director of the College of Engineering Initiative on Energy and Sustainability Engineering. Singer received a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. He subsequently did research in plasma physics, advanced space propulsion, and the computational simulation of thermonuclear plasma performance at the University of London, Princeton University, and the University of Illinois. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institutes for Strömungsforschung and Plasmaphysik at Göttingen and Garching in Germany and is a member of American Physical Society and the American Nuclear Society. Singer has worked extensively on issues related to the cessation of production of nuclear materials for nuclear explosives programs, including related matters dealing with outer space and the future of nuclear explosives stockpiles. He is currently supervising research on global energy economics with emphasis on spent nuclear fuel management, sources of energy for transportation, and greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to completing a recent sabbatical leave at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Center for Technology and Security Policy in Washington, DC, he was the Director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS).

Michele Thompson, University Administration
Michele Thompson is Secretary of the University and Secretary of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Angharad Valdivia, Institute of Communications Research
Angharad Valdivia is Research Professor of Communications, Professor of Media Studies, Professor of Latina/Latino Studies, Professor of Unit for Interpretive Criticism, and Professor of Gender and Women's Studies Her primary areas of interest are Gender and ethnicity in popular culture, especially U.S. Latina/o and Latin American; Media Studies; International communications; and feminist studies. Professor Valdivia's research combines the areas of gender and feminist studies with ethnic studies. She brings these together in the examination of contemporary mainstream popular culture in an approach that explores the tension between agency and structure. She has conducted field research in Nicaragua, Peru, and Chile. Current research projects include hybridity theory as it applies to Latina/o Studies, ambiguity as a strategy of ethnic representation, and differentiation within Latinidad. She is working on a book length manuscript entitled "The Gender of Latinidad" and several other projects. Professor Valdivia is the author of A Latina in the Land of Hollywood [Arizona, 2000]and the editor of The Media Studies Companion [Blackwell, 2003];Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global Diversities [Sage: 1995]; the communication and culture section of the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women [2000] and co-editor of Geographies of Latinidad [Duke, 2006]. She has published essays in the Communication Review, Global Media Journal, Journal of Communication, the Journal of International Communication, the Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Inclusive Education, Women and Language, Chasqui, and in many edited anthologies. Professor Valdivia is an affiliate faculty member with Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Madhu Viswanathan, Business Administration
Madhu Viswanathan, Professor of Business Administration, has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, since 1990. His research programs are in two areas; measurement and research methodology, and literacy, poverty, and subsistence marketplace behaviors. He has authored books in both areas: Measurement Error and Research Design (Sage, 2005), and Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces (Springer, 2008, in alliance with UNESCO). His research program with a methodological orientation on measurement and research design paralleled many years of teaching research at all levels. It culminated in a book directed at the social sciences that provides a most detailed conceptual dissection of measurement error. This work is a striking departure from the existing literature, which emphasizes a statistical orientation without sufficient elucidation of the conceptual meaning of measurement error. His research on subsistence marketplaces takes a micro-level approach to gain bottom-up understanding of life circumstances and buyer, seller, and marketplace behaviors. This perspective aims to enable subsistence marketplaces to move toward being ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable marketplaces. His research is synergized with innovative teaching and social initiatives. He teaches courses on research methods, and at the intersection of subsistence and sustainability - on sustainable product and market development for subsistence marketplaces, and on sustainable marketing enterprises. He directs the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative (www.business.illinois.edu/subsistence). His research is applied through the Marketplace Literacy Project (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), a non-profit organization that he founded and directs.

Ruth Watkins, Department of Speech and Hearing Science and Academic Affairs

Ruth Watkins is the Vice Provost in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with responsibilities to provide leadership in the areas of academic affairs, faculty affairs, and strategic planning and implementation. A fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, she is a professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences. Her research focuses on communication development and disabilities in young children, and is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Education. She joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1993, and earned her Ph.D. at the University of Kansas.