Kirsten E. Kumpf Baele
Title/Position
Director, Anne Frank Initiative
Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction, German
Kirsten E. Kumpf Baele is the Director of the Anne Frank Initiative (AFI) and a Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction in German at the University of Iowa. Her work centers around human experiences and social justice, as reflected in her research, teaching, and public engagement. Her academic career has consistently been shaped by stories and lived experiences that highlight social inequalities, constraints, and the potential for personal transformation.
Research & Publications: Kumpf Baele’s research includes topics such as exophonic writers, the spatial turn in literature, the aesthetics and politics of hair in prewar film, forced adoption practices and control of the female body in Belgian film, crises of masculinity in the military, embodied pedagogy as it connects with service-learning projects, and the limitation of filmic and architectural freedoms in the former GDR. She is co-editor of Engaging Anne Frank and Other Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, forthcoming 2024), and her chapter “Auf Wiedersehen, Soldat: Does a Soldier Ever Truly Return Home” was recently accepted for publication in 2025 by Routledge-Warwick.
Public Engagement: She was deeply honored by the selection of her application to plant the 13th Anne Frank sapling on the University of Iowa campus in 2022. In addition to her community-engaged work surrounding Anne Frank and her story, Kumpf Baele has developed programming and/or taught for the Iowa City Public Library’s Teen Center, Theater Cedar Rapids, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, Clear Creek Amana middle- and high schools, Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids, and most recently the UNESCO City of Literature. In 2022, she was awarded the “Outstanding Public Engagement Award” from the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Tamar Bernfeld
Title/Position
Assistant Director in the Center for Teaching
Tamar Bernfeld is an assistant director in the Center for Teaching (CfT) where she works with undergraduate students, graduate students, staff and faculty to support effective teaching at the University of Iowa. Among her projects in the CfT, Tamar leads the Students as Partners program, which pairs undergraduate students with faculty to bring student voice and student perspectives into course design and implementation. At the University of Iowa, Tamar has taught courses in English as a Second Language (ESL), Rhetoric, as well as Approaches to Teaching Writing and Language and Learning in the College of Education. Currently Tamar teaches a First Gen Hawks Seminar and a General Education course, World Englishes, in Linguistics. Her scholarly interests include writing pedagogy and language ideology in educational spaces. Anne Frank's writing resonates with Tamar, who believes that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to reach people, connect with our shared human experience, and develop awareness and empathy.
Kimberly Datchuk
Title/Position
Curator of Learning & Engagement, Stanley Museum of Art
Kimberly Musial Datchuk (she/her) builds programs and educational opportunities with creativity, collaboration, and curiosity in mind as the curator of learning & engagement at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. Prior to that, she held a dual position as visiting assistant professor in art education at the University of Iowa and assistant curator of special projects at the Stanley. She has curated several exhibitions that center the work of women and the struggle for social justice, topics which have deep connections to the Anne Frank Initiative. Her research and curatorial interests include institutional critique and the intersection of art, gender, sexuality, and technology, particularly in fin-de-siècle France. She has a doctorate in art history, with a specialty in nineteenth-century European art. She has presented her research throughout the United States, as well as France, England, and Poland.
Denise K. Filios
Title/Position
Associate Professor, Spanish
I am a scholar of comparative literary and cultural studies whose research focuses on medieval Iberia. I am also an avid hiker whose current research project explores Christian, Jewish, and Islamic ‘medieval’ walking routes in Spain and Portugal, such as the Camino de Santiago, the Ruta del Califato, and Sephardic heritage itineraries. I am interested in the intersections between gender, race, religion, sexuality, place of origin, landscapes and belonging, as well as performance, cultures of fitness, memory studies, heritage tourism, foundational myths and national identity. I seek to promote inclusivity in my teaching, scholarship, and service.
Peter Gerlach
Title/Position
Assistant Professor of Instruction, International Studies
Peter Gerlach is assistant professor of instruction in the International Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Ripon College and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively. After serving in the US Peace Corps in Mongolia, he earned a PhD in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University where he conducted dissertation research on the lived experiences of international students at Grinnell College. Dr. Gerlach’s teaching areas include international studies, international education, refugee and immigrant studies, and community engaged learning. He serves on the board of directors at the Refugee and Immigrant Association, the planning committee of the Refugee Alliance of Johnson County, and was a member of the inaugural 2023-24 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Higher Education Ambassador program. Dr. Gerlach is the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Outreach and Public Engagement Award from the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as the 2024 Presidents’ Civic Engagement Leadership Award from the UI Office of Community Engagement. He lives in Iowa City, IA with his wife and two children.
Mallory Hellman
Title/Position
Director, Iowa Youth Writing Project
Mallory Hellman grew up Jewish and queer in the American South. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she learned Anne Frank's story early and engaged with Anne's diary at several points in her education. Mallory's maternal grandparents, Max and Felicia Fuksman, dedicated their lives to education and spoke to students around the country about their time in the camps; Max was interned at Bergen Belsen at the same time as Anne Frank. Proudly, Mallory has followed in the pedagogical footsteps of her grandparents. After graduating from Harvard in 2008, she pursued an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has since served as the director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project, providing literacy education and enrichment to marginalized K-12 youth.
Shereena Honary
Title/Position
Events & Operations Coordinator, Pentacrest Museums
Shereena Honary holds a Research M.A. in Area Studies of the Middle East from Leiden University, The Netherlands. She focused on Middle Eastern diasporic narratives, particularly the graphic novel Persepolis, to analyze autobiographical and diasporic narrative themes of identity, gender, and Otherness, and the ways in which personal narrative guides us towards understanding and universal humanism. Shereena currently oversees events at the Pentacrest Museums, which housed the Anne Frank exhibit, “Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank” in 2022. She also completed the Peer Educator Training offered alongside the exhibit to inspire in visitors ways in which to relate and learn from her powerful narrative. Growing up as a daughter of an immigrant herself, the hope to create a world with acceptance and belonging that the story of Anne Frank inspires continues to be a driving force for Shereena’s academic and community involvement.
Anne Kiche
Title/Position
Adjunct Instructor, Global Health Studies
Dr. Kiche's global health interests include education and global health, and the connection between migration, diversity, and pandemics on both the physical and mental health of populations. Life experiences from living in Kenya and the U.S. have invaluably informed her teaching and research in global health. She has held various leadership roles in the African immigrant and refugee communities in Linn and Johnson counties of Iowa and is committed to the promotion of their health. She teaches courses on U.S. immigrant and refugee health, pandemics and mental health, and mental health in diverse societies.
Judith Liskin-Gasparr
Title/Position
Associate Professor Emerita of Spanish and Applied Linguistics
As a faculty member in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Judy Liskin-Gasparro taught courses in second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and Spanish language. She directed the elementary and intermediate Spanish program (1993–2006) and co-directed the interdisciplinary doctoral program in second language acquisition (2000–2016). Her research interests include the development of second language speaking skills in classroom and study abroad contexts, oral proficiency assessment, and program evaluation and the assessment of student learning outcomes. In addition to her publications in these areas, she gave many presentations and workshops on foreign language program evaluation and on linking outcomes assessment and program evaluation to strategies for improving language instruction. She is also the co-author of college-level Spanish textbooks. In her retirement, she is learning Yiddish, and she has been able to offer her professional expertise as a volunteer pedagogical consultant at the Yiddish Book Center and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Kay Ramey
Title/Position
Assistant Professor
Learning Sciences and Educational Psychology
Kay E. Ramey, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Educational Psychology in the University of Iowa’s College of Education. She earned her PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, an interdisciplinary MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Psychology and Art Theory and Practice also from Northwestern. Her work focuses on centering youth voices and designing learning environments that support youth agency, interest and identity development, and real-world skills, such as adaptive problem-solving and resilience. She is particularly interested in how young people learn through making and in the material, spatial, and sociocultural aspects of learning. She sees in Anne Frank an exemplary story of youth learning and resilience and a template for elevating youth voices and encouraging self-expression through the creation of shared artifacts.
Jan Steyn
Title/Position
Director of Graduate Studies for French, Linguistics, and Translation
Jan Steyn is Associate Professor of Instruction in Literary Translation and French at the University of Iowa, where he serves as Director of Graduate Studies for French, Linguistics, and Translation; Program Director of the MFA in Literary Translation; and Provost’s Fellow in Artificial Intelligence (2025–27). A scholar-translator and teacher, he translates from Afrikaans, French, and Dutch into English, linking the craft of translation to questions of voice, ethics, memory, and global citizenship. He has lived and taught in Africa, Europe, and North America, and regularly mentors students working between languages and cultures. Steyn is editor of Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2024). At Iowa he teaches on world literature, translation, and language in the age of AI, helping students develop thoughtful, responsible practices across languages. He is honored to support the Anne Frank Initiative’s mission to elevate youth voices, deepen historical understanding, and foster inclusive, humanities-based learning across campus and community.
Alisa Weinstein
Title/Position
Program Coordinator, Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Alisa Weinstein is a program coordinator for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and an adjunct assistant professor in the UI Department of Anthropology. She received a BFA in Drama and MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University; she also studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and conducted dissertation research on a Fulbright-Nehru scholarship. She is currently writing an ethnography on tailors working in Jaipur, India. As co-founder of Home Ec. Workshop in Iowa City, she often teaches knitting and sewing to crafters of all ages. She also served as the youth programs coordinator for the International Writing Program and is committed to the ways the Anne Frank Initiative can amplify the voices of young writers in Iowa, particularly those who are first- or second-generation immigrants, from refugee communities, or marginalized positions.
Kevin Zihlman
Title/Position
Research Integrity and Security Specialist, Office of the Vice President for Research
Kevin Zihlman has a been a full-time staff member at the University of Iowa since 2010. Kevin graduated from the University of Iowa in 2005 with a Master of Arts degree. For fourteen years, Kevin was an Assistant Athletic Director in the University of Iowa Athletics Department. Over the last year, Kevin transitioned to a role in the Research Integrity and Security Office housed within the Office of the Vice President for Research. Kevin believes that the University of Iowa and its many world-renowned programs can enlighten those many youths who live only a few miles away from its campus. Kevin has worked with AFI the past three years on establishing an annual field trip for the Clear Creek Amana 8th grade class to the UI campus for a morning of engagement with the AFI and Anne Frank.
Student Interns
Berkley Barnett
Title/Position
AFI Intern spring 2026
As an international studies major and Arabic studies minor, Berkley Barnett is interested in the effects of migration on identity. She explored these effects through the context of food in her Office of Undergraduate Research funded project on American Jewish communities’ attachment to nationalized Israeli food in summer 2024. Berkley took her passion for migration studies to Jordan in fall 2024, where she learned about refugee health and displacement by visiting clinics and nonprofits across the country. Since then, Berkley has returned to Jordan to study Arabic, where she continues to engage with refugee and immigrant populations through volunteering as an English conversation hour leader at the Collateral Repair Project. Outside of school, Berkley is an avid journaler and amateur pianist. Berkley believes that the impact of Anne Frank's personal narrative can teach society to look for creative ways to build understanding through sharing stories and cultural heritage, like food.
Karlee Colby
Title/Position
AFI Intern 2025-2026 academic year
Karlee M. Colby is a third-year student in the philosophy PhD program at The University of Iowa. She specializes mainly in political philosophy, feminist philosophy, reproductive justice, and human rights issues. Moving forward in the world of philosophy, Karlee believes that stories like Anne Frank's are in need of very intentional focus, and it is her hope through this internship that she will deepen her own understanding and that this will later aid in the way she goes on to instruct
Shefa'a Tawil
Title/Position
AFI Intern fall 2025
Shefa’a Tawil is a Palestinian-American undergraduate at the University of Iowa pursuing a BS in psychology on the pre-medicine track, with certificates in writing and public health and minors in Arabic and music. She has served in leadership roles across campus that demonstrate her commitment to social advocacy, including serving as president of the Middle East and North African Student Association (MENASA), participating as a constituency senator in the University of Iowa Undergraduate Student Government, and volunteering with refugees. Shefa’a is drawn to the Anne Frank Initiative because it encourages reflection on identity, resilience, and hope in the face of persecution—themes that continue to resonate around the world today. She hopes to contribute to AFI through projects that foster connection across cultures and connect with communities who resonate with Anne’s legacy.