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
Mkhaimar Abusada
Visiting Lecturer, Political Science and the Middle East and North African Studies Program
Contact:
m.abusada@northwestern.eduMkhaimar Abusada is a visiting lecturer in residence from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. An Associate Professor of Political Science at Al-Azhar University-Gaza and the former chair of the university's political science department, Mkhaimar’s primary research topics include Palestinian politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Umut Aydemir
Visiting Scholar, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs
Contact:
uaydemir@ku.edu.trUmut Aydemir is in residence from October 1, 2024 to April 1, 2025 and is hosted by G. Jeffrey Snyder, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering. Umut’s research includes high-tech materials, thermoelectric energy and materials with unusual properties. He has authored over 115 research articles and has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Science Academy's Young Scientist Award (2018), the Turkish Science Academy's Outstanding Young Scientist Award (2019), the Middle East Technical University Prof. Dr. Mustafa Parlar Foundation Research Incentive Award (2021) and the Koç University College of Science Outstanding Faculty Award (2024). His office is within the Department of Materials Science.
Ayşenur Dal is in residence from August 15, 2024 to July 1, 2025 and is hosted by the Erik Nisbet, Owen L. Coon Endowed Professor in Policy Analysis and Communication at the School of Communication. Her research examines the social-psychological dynamics of ordinary citizens' online political engagement under authoritarian governance. While at Northwestern, she will work on a comparative survey experiment project to collect data in the United States and Türkiye to study citizens’ responses to online privacy threats. Her office is within the Department of Communication Studies.
Asmin Fransiska has over 25 years of experience working with Civil Society Groups, academics and United Nations organizations advocating for various human rights issues in Indonesia. Her research and advocacy topics include human rights, drug laws and policies, and policies and laws on protecting women, children and people with disabilities. Asmin is hosted by Laura Hein, Director of the Arryman Scholars Program within the Buffett Institute’s Equality Development & Globalization Studies program and Harold H. & Virginia Anderson Professor of History at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Asmin is in residence from January 28 to February 28, 2025.
Sarah Elyzabeth Gultom will be in residence from March 1 to May 1, 2025 and will be hosted by Jeffrey Winters, Director of the Buffett Institute’s Equality Development & Globalization Studies program and Professor of Political Science at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Her research is in development economics, focusing on poverty alleviation, inequality and social policy in Indonesia. As a Buffett Visiting Scholar, she is conducting an empirical investigation into the influence of peer networks and market information asymmetry on the operational practices of intermediaries (locally known as tengkulak) in Indonesia's agricultural sector. The research aims to identify and evaluate potential policy interventions to mitigate the adverse economic effects of these intermediaries' activities on poverty among Indonesian smallholder farmers. Her office is at 1800 Sherman Avenue.
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. His office is in 720 University Place at Northwestern Buffett.
Mika Tamai
Visiting Scholar, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs
Contact:
mika.tamai@northwestern.eduKeyman Modern Turkish Studies Postdoctoral Fellows
Find more information on Keyman Postdoctoral Fellows.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 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.
