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Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Global Council

The members of the Global Council are senior leaders from each of Northwestern’s schools whose portfolio includes global programming and curricula.  The Global Council meets quarterly during the academic year to share information and coordinate international initiatives among the schools.

Members

Joshua Alter

Joshua Alter

Pritzker School of Law

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Joshua Alter is the Associate Dean of International Programs and Lecturer of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. In this role, Joshua collaborates with the Dean and senior leadership team, international programs team and other members of the law school community to strategically advance international programs. This includes continued development of the Law School’s international programs, initiatives and partnerships. Joshua previously served in leadership roles in international programs at University of Florida Levin College of Law and St. John’s University School of Law. At Florida Levin as the Senior Director of Non-JD Programs & Senior Director of International Programs, Joshua’s international focus revolved around Latin America, working with their alumni network in the region and in the US. While at St. John’s as the Director of Graduate Global Engagement, Joshua spent 2.5 years based in China. He has focused his career on supporting international LLM and JD students, creating meaningful communities that bring together all law students, and working with JD students interested in studying and working abroad.

Elizabeth Bennett

Elizabeth Bennett

Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications

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Beth Bennett is associate dean and assistant professor of Journalism at Medill. She is an award-winning producer and reporter with more than 15 years of experience in broadcast television news and video production. Her experience spans many areas of television news, including on-air reporting, studio/booth producing, and field producing. Since leaving the broadcast industry, she has specialized in producing web and tablet-based videos in addition to independent documentary film work. In addition to her work at Medill, Bennett introduces journalism principles to STEM researchers through The Graduate School's research communication fellowship program, Ready Set Go. Interview strategies, narrative techniques, and on-camera presentation skills are some of the topics she teaches during this interdisciplinary 10-week program.
César Braga-Pinto

César Braga-Pinto

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

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César Braga-Pinto is George F. Appel Professor in the Humanities and a Professor of Brazilian, Lusophone African and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University. He is the author of A Violência das Letras: Amizade e inimizade na literatura brasileira (1888-1940) (EdUERJ, 2018) and As Promessas da História: Discursos Proféticos e Assimilação no Brasil Colonial (2003), and the editor of Ligeiros Traços: escritos de juventude de José Lins do Rego (2007) and À Procura de Saúde: crônicas de um doente/ In Search of Health: chronicles of a sick man (2015). He also co-edited with Fatima Mendonça a collection of early 20th-century Mozambican journalism writings entitled João Albasini e as luzes de Nwandzenguele: literatura e política em Moçambique 1908-1922 (2014). 

Matthew Grayson

Matthew Grayson

McCormick School of Engineering

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Matthew Grayson is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an AT&T Research Professor. He is an expert in the design, fabrication, and electrical characterization of electronic devices and materials. He has specialized in studies of the low energy excitations of such low-dimensional electron systems as quantum wells, one-dimensional wires, electron-beam patterned structures, and both integer and fractional quantum Hall edges. Systems of interest are thermoelectrics, aisotropic conductors, Luttinger liquids, quantum Hall ferromagnets, Type II superlattices, and multivalley quantum systems. Matthew completed his PhD studies at Princeton University with Prof. Daniel Tsui studying tunnel spectroscopy of fractional quantum Hall effect edges. His postdoc work at the University of Maryland investigated the infrared Hall angle of cuprate superconducting films. He then won a Humboldt Fellowship to research in Germany at the Walter Schottky Institut of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, where he remained for 7 years leading a small research group. He joined Northwestern in 2007.

D.J. Hoek

D.J. Hoek

Northwestern Libraries 

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D.J. Hoek is Associate University Librarian for Research & Engagement. He is a member of the Libraries’ executive leadership team, with particular responsibility for the administration of all public services, including research services, distinctive collections, instruction and curriculum support, academic engagement, access services, and marketing and communication. His work centers on connecting students and faculty to the Libraries’ network of local and global resources, creating situations that inspire new avenues for learning and discovery, and highlighting the extraordinary research collections available only at Northwestern.

Brayden King

Brayden King

Kellogg School of Management

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Brayden King is the Max McGraw Chair of Management and the Environment and a professor of Management and Organizations. He is also affiliated with the Department of Sociology. Professor King's research focuses on how social movement activists influence corporate social responsibility, organizational change and legislative policymaking. Professor King is an expert on the impact of boycotts and the consequences of employee and shareholder activism. Recent studies examine the change processes leading to improved corporate environmental and social sustainability. Professor King is an international research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

Molly Losh

Molly Losh

School of Communication

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Molly Losh’s research focuses on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions, with a specific focus on language, communication, and associated abilities, and how such features may span diagnostic boundaries. Work from her lab has helped to identify key cognitive mechanisms that may underlie the social-communicative impairments in autism, in order to bridge gaps between observable clinical behaviors and underlying biology, necessary for understanding the causes of autism and related conditions.

Danuta Mirka

Danuta Mirka

Bienen School of Music

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Danuta Mirka holds the Harry N. and Ruth F. Wyatt Chair in Music Theory at Bienen School of Music. Her research interests encompass various aspects of structure and expression in Western art music of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the theory and analysis of meter and rhythm and the study of musical communication. She is particularly interested in integrating aspects of historical music theory with those of contemporary research in music theory and cognition. Her research in those areas was supported by grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust. Her books and articles won awards from the American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory. Before joining Northwestern in 2019, Mirka taught at the University of Southampton, UK.

Julia Moore

Julia Moore

The Graduate School

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Julia Moore is the Director of English Language Programs at the Graduate School, with a lecturer faculty appointment in Linguistics.  She oversees multiple programs for graduate student and postdoctoral English language learners at Northwestern University, including orientation programs, classes, tutoring, supported speech training software, and proficiency testing. She also oversees the Applied Linguistics in English Language Teaching training program for graduate students in Linguistics and related disciplines. Julia completed her PhD in Linguistics, Articles and Proper Names in L2 English, at Northwestern University in 2004.

Kim Rapp

Kim Rapp

Office of International Relations

Kim Rapp is the Assistant Vice President in the Office of International Relations.  Kim has worked in international programs in higher education for over 20 years. Before coming to Northwestern in 2014, Kim was Executive Director of Stanford University’s Global Studies Division. Kim has lived and worked in several countries including England, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal. Originally from the East Coast, Kim completed her undergraduate degree in Communications and International Studies at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and her graduate degrees in African Languages and Literature (MA), Educational Administration (MS) and Higher Education Leadership and Policy Analysis (PhD) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her publications have focused on graduate education in the U.S., and her teaching experience has ranged from African literature to international research methods, but Kim remains most passionate about facilitating the international interests and research goals of others.
Lois Trautvetter

Lois Trautvetter

School of Education and Social Policy

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Lois Calian Trautvetter is director of Northwestern University’s Higher Education Administration and Policy Program and professor in the School of Education and Social Policy. Her research interests include faculty and professional development issues such as productivity, enhancing teaching and research, motivation, faculty-student interaction, and new and junior faculty, as well as focusing on undergraduate and graduate learning in STEM and holistic college student development. Her co-authored book is Putting Students First: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully. She has written many book chapters and articles on faculty, students and improving undergraduate and graduate education, especially STEM education.

Zachary Wright

Zachary Wright

Northwestern University in Qatar

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Zachary Wright, PhD, is associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, with joint appointments in history and religious studies. Wright received his PhD (history) from Northwestern University, with a dissertation focusing on the history of Islamic knowledge transmission in West Africa. He also has an MA in Arabic studies, Middle East history, from the American University in Cairo, and a BA in history from Stanford University. He teaches classes on Islam in Africa, modern Middle East history, African history, Islamic intellectual history and Islam in America. His book publications include Living Knowledge in West African Islam: the Sufi Community of Ibrahim Niasse (Brill, 2015), and On the Path of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya (AAII & Faydah Books, 2005, 2015). He has also translated a number of West African Arabic texts into English, with publications such as The Removal of Confusion concerning the Saintly Seal (Fons Vitae, 2010, and reprint forthcoming), Pearls from the Flood (Faydah Books, 2015), and Islam the Religion of Peace (Light of Eminence, 2013). His current research concerns eighteenth-century Islamic intellectual history in North Africa.