Aron Aji, Director of MFA in Literary Translation, has joined the faculty in 2014. A native of Turkey, he has translated works by Bilge Karasu, Murathan Mungan, Elif Shafak, LatifeTekin, and other Turkish writers, including Karasu’s The Garden of Departed Cats, (2004 National Translation Award); and A Long Day’s Evening, (NEA Literature Fellowship; short-list, 2013 PEN Translation Prize). His forthcoming translations include Ferid Edgü’s Wounded Age and Eastern Tales (NYRB, 2022), and Mungan’s Tales of Valor (co-translated with David Gramling) (Global Humanities Translation Prize, Northwestern UP, 2022). Aji was president of The American Literary Translators Association between 2016-2019. He leads the Translation Workshop, and teaches courses on retranslation, poetry and translation; theory, and contemporary Turkish literature.

Natoshia M. Askelson, MPH, PhD is an associate professor in the College of Public Health, Department of Community & Behavioral Health with an adjunct appointment in the Health Policy Research Program at the Public Policy Center. Most of her research is focused on rural and micropolitan communities in Iowa, where she conducts studies to better address the health outcomes of diverse groups. Many micropolitan communities in Iowa are new destination communities for migrants, immigrants, and refugees who are seeking employment in Iowa’s agricultural industries. Using a health disparity lens, her work addresses family health- including children and adolescents. She uses mixed methods to document how policies and interventions can influence positive and maladaptive behaviors. Anne Frank’s story provides a unique way for us to understand the experiences of migrant, immigrant, and refugee families and adolescents in rural and micropolitan Iowa.

Dr. Coghill-Behrends is clinical associate professor of Multilingual Education at the University of Iowa and co-director of the Linda R. Baker Teacher Leader Center (BTLC). Through the BTLC he directs global education initiatives and community and college based programming and partnerships. His work focuses on antiracist and critical pedagogies in education, language education, LGBTQ topics in education, and teacher professional development. He is program director for the online MA in Teaching, Leadership, and Cultural Competency, and program coordinator for the World Language Education Program. Dr. Coghill-Behrends teaches courses on world language teaching methodologies, LGBTQ topics in education, multilingual education and applied linguistics. Dr. Coghill-Behrends is a former K12 world language teacher and is passionate about connecting educators and students to the global community to promote equity, justice, and peace.

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.

Carl R. Follmer, M.A., Ph.D. is the associate director of the Accounting Writing and Communications Program in the Tippie College of Business.  His academic background is in German Studies and children's literature, and includes a dissertation investigating fascist propaganda aimed at children in Germany and Spain.  In his professional work, Carl teaches communication skills and develops communications programming throughout the Tippie College of Business.  A critical part of his teaching is helping students consider audience needs and DEI concerns as they develop professional communication skills. He believes that Anne Frank's empowering message for children to document their lived experiences and become writers and thinkers has the ability to create a better community.

Peter Gerlach is visiting assistant professor in the International Studies Program at The University of Iowa and executive director of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC). 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 and the planning committee of the Refugee Alliance of Johnson County.

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.

Ashley Holt is the Executive Director of the Louis Shulman Hillel Foundation, Alliber Center for Jewish Life (Iowa Hillel), a non-profit organization that serves as the foundation for Jewish life on the University of Iowa's campus. In this role, she aims to build a vibrant Jewish community on campus, provide educational opportunities, and help students connect to Judaism in ways that are meaningful to them. At Iowa Hillel, Jewish students (of all knowledge levels and backgrounds) are encouraged to learn about their heritage and develop their own unique identity within the world of Jewish pluralism. Prior to moving to Iowa City, Ashley worked for the Nature Conservancy in Illinois and served on the board of Go Green Wilmette, a local environmental organization. She has a BA in economics and political science and a minor in philosophy from Washington College in Chestertown, Md. Ashley studied abroad at the London School of Economics while interning in the House of Commons in Parliament, as well as at Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel.

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.

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.

Kirsten E. Kumpf Baele is director of the Anne Frank Initiative and a faculty member in the Department of German. Kumpf Baele holds a PhD in German. Some of Kumpf Baele’s recent articles have been published by Amsterdam University Press, Utah Foreign Language Review, LIT Verlag, McFarland, and Bloomsbury. Child and youth voices and agency (placemaking, opposition, and peacemaking), trees in literature and the arts, and the making of cultural icons drive her scholarship and teaching In 2022, Kumpf Baele’s application brought the 13th Anne Frank Sapling in the United States to the University of Iowa. This award resulted in a year-long series of campus and community events which included the Provost’s Global Forum “Teaching Anne Frank” for which she was a grant co-recipient and the April 29, 2022 planting ceremony on the UI Pentacrest. She is currently serving as co-editor of and contributing author to the volume Teaching Anne Frank & Other Difficult Life Stories. Kumpf Baele’s newest research projects look at adolescents’ diaristic modes of writing through the lens of ecobiography. A part of this undertaking intends to shed light on a specific youth correspondence project—an international postcard-writing initiative in connection with a newly acquired rail car at the Danville Station in Danville, Iowa that builds on the 1929 letter exchange between Anne Frank and Iowa youth, Juanita Wagner. In the classroom, Kumpf Baele is committed to combining learning goals and community service projects in ways that enrich student growth and the common good. In this sense, her focus on community engagement draws parallels with and calls attention to the “helper figure” (the upstander).

I am a professor of German and in the Global Health Studies program. I share with Dr. Kumpf Baele a deep interest in diversity and inclusion issues and teaching related courses at the UI, in my case on the representation of disabled persons and on "witch" hunts. I was the primary mentor and applicant for the Provost's Global Forum award which resulted in the "Teaching Anne Frank" events on campus in March 2022 and am working with Dr. Kumpf Baele on turning select presentations and new contributions into a book.

Maia Sheppard is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. Her research focuses on teaching difficult histories in secondary schools and social studies teacher education. Drawing on sociocultural theory, she examines the significance of identity, emotion, and place in social studies curriculum and teaching. She recently co-edited the book, Teaching Difficult Histories in Difficult Times: Pictures of Practice, and her work has been published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Theory and Research in Social Education, the Journal of Museum Education, and the Journal of Social Studies Research, among others.

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.