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Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Visiting Scholars

The Buffett Institute’s Visiting Scholars are academics from around the world who collaborate with the Buffett and University communities.

Learn about past Buffett Visiting Scholars.

Buffett Visiting Scholars

Mika Tamai

Mika Tamai

Visiting Scholar, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Contact: mika.tamai@northwestern.edu
Mika Tamai will be in residence with us for two years, from February 29, 2024 to February 28, 2026 and will be hosted by Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, Laura Hein. She recently won a prestigious Overseas Research Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science to conduct research in the United States on the history of Okinawa during the period in which it was under U.S. military control, from 1945 to 1972. She is particularly interested in the ways in which the U.S. administration deployed the jury system, which was not in use there in earlier eras. Mika is in office 3026 at Northwestern Buffett. 
Haman Mana

Haman Mana

Visiting Lecturer, Medill School of Journalism and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Contact: magloirepepin.hamanmana@northwestern.edu

Haman Mana is a Cameroonian journalist and author. He will spend his time at Northwestern continuing to run Le Jour, one of Cameroon’s largest daily newspapers, and working on a book about Cameroon’s slide toward authoritarian rule, from which he was forced to flee following the paper’s investigation of corruption and influence peddling by a powerful media mogul. Haman has joined us as a Visiting Lecturer with a joint appointment in the Medill School of Journalism through December 2024. He is in office 3026 at Northwestern Buffett.

Dima Younes

Dima Younes

Visiting Scholar, Kellogg School of Management and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Contact: dima.younes@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Dima Younes is an Associate Professor of Organization Theory at Emlyon Business School in France. Her research investigates the transformations of capitalism, work and organizations with particular attention to power and resistance, gender and social movements. She is hosted by Kellogg School of Management Professor Brayden King, who co-leads our AI and Social Movements Global Working Group, and will be in residence at Northwestern through July 2024. Dima is in office 3025 at Northwestern Buffett.

To understand the possibilities to organize for a fairer and more sustainable world, Dima is currently working on two projects. The first one examines the day-to-day life of the Lebanese (previously) middle-class after the economic crisis of 2019. It examines how individuals deal with scarcity problems while contesting the existing political and economic regime. The second project attempts to compare the surprises and experiences of Lebanese post-2019 immigrants in different countries. It attempts to better understand the characteristics of different Western economies with regards to family/work relationships, gender and foreignness. 

Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program

Find more information on Keyman Postdoctoral Fellows.
Roberto Mazza

Roberto Mazza

Visiting Scholar

Contact: roberto.mazza@northwestern.edu

Roberto Mazza is a Visiting Scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. A historian specializing in the modern Middle East, Mazza has contributed to the field of urban history and the study of Jerusalem during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. Mazza hosts the popular Jerusalem Unplugged podcast, which explores various aspects of Jerusalem's rich history and contemporary issues. He also serves as a regular host for the New Books Network and is executive editor for Jerusalem Quarterly, an academic journal.

Mazza authored two books focusing on Jerusalem during the First World War period. His scholarly output also encompasses exploring themes of urban history and the history of violence in the region. Mazza is a board member of  the Filistin Araştırmaları Dergisi Yayın Kurulu (Bulletin of Palestine Studies).

Önder Eren Akgül

Önder Eren Akgül

Postdoctoral Fellow

Contact: onder.akgul@northwestern.edu

Önder Eren Akgül is the 2024–2026 Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University. Akgül is a historian of capitalism, political economy and the environment in the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is currently working on his first book manuscript, A Global Hinterland: Crisis and the Order of Accumulation in Late Ottoman Greater Izmir, an intertwined history of global capitalism, Ottoman political economy and local labor and ecology. Akgül is concurrently developing two new research projects—the first exploring the history of extractivism in the Ottoman mountains and the second focusing on the global history of the left in Turkey during the long 1960s. 

Akgül is a regular producer for the Ottoman History Podcast. Before coming to Northwestern, Akgül taught classes on the history of Modern Turkey and global capitalism at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, and International Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Kenan Behzat Sharpe

Kenan Behzat Sharpe

Postdoctoral Fellow

Contact: kenan.sharpe@northwestern.edu
Kenan Behzat Sharpe is the 2023–2025 Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University. He completed his PhD in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2019. His dissertation focused comparatively on the poetry and popular music of 1960s social movements in Turkey and the United States. He is currently writing his first book manuscript: Rockers and Radicals in Anatolia: Turkish Psychedelic Rock and the World 1960s. The project discusses an experimental genre of popular music that combined melodies, instruments, and lyrics from the Turkish countryside with world trends of surf, psychedelic and progressive rock. It treats Anadolu Rock as a window into the politically turbulent and culturally rich period of the long Turkish 1960s, analyzing music’s central role in Turkish opposition movements and the influence of rural and minority musical traditions on urban youth culture. Before coming to Northwestern, Sharpe conducted field research as a postdoctoral fellow with the American Research Institute in Turkey and also taught literature classes at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Besides the 1960s in Turkey, his published research focuses on Turkish and Greek literature, comparative social movements, theories of aesthetics and politics, non-western modernisms and feminist film theory. While in Istanbul, he also worked as a journalist, publishing in outlets like the Washington Post and Al-Monitor and working as a columnist and show host for various independent Turkish media outlets.