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.

Barnhardt’s research focuses on how universities contribute to democracy and civic life, domestically and internationally, through the lens of university governance, administration, and policy and politics. This focus has prompted her to examine: campus-based activism and mobilization, stakeholder tactics, university leaders' public advocacy, campus climate perceptions, and private foundation activity in the higher education sector. She teaches graduate courses on higher education administration, policy, organizational behavior and management in postsecondary institutions, and research methods.

Pauline is a native of the Caribbean who grew up in St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. She completed the B.A. in Sociology at the University of South Florida in Tampa and also holds two master’s degrees. The first is the M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. During her most recent studies at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio Texas, she completed the M.A. in Education with dual emphases: International Education and International Entrepreneurship. Pauline is a veteran of the United States Military and has proudly served in the U.S. Army Active Duty, U.S. Air Force Reserve, and U.S. Army Reserve. In addition to personal and military travel in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean, Pauline completed a six-month graduate internship in South America at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile where her Spanish language skills played a significant role. The first internship segment was with the U.S. Department of State, Economic and Political Affairs and the second segment with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Foreign Commercial Service. In addition to standard ISSS advising duties, Pauline shares responsibility for the office email account, processes Social Security employment verification letters, and produces new I-20s when changes of majors occur.

Clinical faculty with a rural and LatinX patient population. Interested in health care for the underserved, social determinants of health, primary care in global health (experience in Central America, West Africa and Russia). Recent research projects include: pediatric obesity, immigrant / migrant health and the use of health registries to improve health outcomes.

Michael oversees the iHawk database program, developing the online Pre-Arrival Checklist for incoming students and E-Form applications, and monitoring daily immigration record alerts.  He serves as Responsible Officer for J-1 programs, specializing in scholar regulations and processes.  He works closely with ITS, the Registrar, Admissions, and other offices to ensure student and scholar data flows smoothly and accurately, and is responsible for training and overseeing staff use of iHawk.  He is responsible for international student enrollment data and statistical reports including Open Doors, and assessment of the international student fee and undergraduate orientation fee.  Michael has Bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and Spanish and a Master’s in Linguistics with an emphasis on Teaching English as a Second Language, has studied Spanish in Spain, and has spent time in Canada, England, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, and Nebraska.

Amber Brian is Associate Professor of Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Iowa. Her primary areas of research include Colonialism and Historiography, Indigenous Intellectual History, and Translation Studies. Her first book, Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Native Archive and the Circulation of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico (2016), was awarded honorable mention for the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize. In collaboration with Bradley Benton, Peter B. Villella, and Pablo García Loaeza and with the support of the NEH, she edited and translated History of the Chichimeca Nation: Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Seventeenth-Century Chronicle of Ancient Mexico (2019) and with Benton and García Loaeza The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Account of the Conquest of New Spain (2015). Her current book project looks at questions of imperial authority, Native sovereignty, and trans-oceanic communication in epistolary correspondence between king and Indigenous vassals in sixteenth-century New Spain.

Dr. Caplan is the Richard and Nancy Christiansen Professor in International Oral Health Education and Research at the UI College of Dentistry. In that capacity he is involved in several international initiatives involving UI dental students, faculty, and colleagues at other institutions.

Hyaeweol Choi is a professor of Korean studies, religious studies and gender studies and holds the C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, religion and transnational history. She is the author of numerous books, including Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea (2020), New Women in Colonial Korea (2013), and Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (2009). She is a co-author of Gender in Modern East Asia: An Integrated History (2016), and is a co-editor of Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific (2014) and Korean Women: A Sourcebook (2017).

Cynthia Chou (Singapore/U.S.A.) is Professor of Anthropology, C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family Chair of Asian Studies and Director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa, U.S.A. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, U.K, in 1994 and was awarded in 2011 the highest Danish academic degree of dr.phil. by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in recognition of her work on the orang suku laut. Her publications include The Orang Suku Laut of Riau, Indonesia: The Inalienable Gift of Territory (2010) and Indonesian Sea Nomads: Money, Magic and Fear of the Orang Suku Laut of Riau (2003).

My research area is music education and well-being with a focus on music in prisons (from an abolitionist perspective), songwriting, and collaborative communities. I am creating connections among many researchers across the U.S. through the Justice Arts Coalition and recent Arts in Prison conferences and across the globe interested in music education in prisons, currently in Germany, Scotland, England, Brazil, Belgium, Norway, Australia, and hoping to continue to build this network. I am also very interested in peacebuilding and music education, and restorative & transformative justice.

In order to support the needs of gifted and talented learners, I work primarily with educators who want to better understand best practices in gifted education. I teach or supervise courses that explore the identification of gifted learners and the curriculum and programming that meets their needs. All coursework aligns with one or more sets of national standards in the field as provided by the National Association of Gifted Children, although work with international educators has to be responsive to their settings. My research interests include attitudes of teachers toward talented children, and how those attitudes can expand to include essential practices such as the acceleration of high-ability learners.

My research is interdisciplinary as it circulates at the crossroads of Francophone Studies (cultural theory, cinematic, visual, and performing arts of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and West Africa); Suzanne Césaire; postcolonial ecocriticism; slave memorials; comparative postcolonial museum studies; critical ocean studies; intangible cultural heritage in the Global South and UNESCO.

My work is in the study of rhetorical, psychological and communicative processes in personal relationships. After a PhD in Social Psychology, I moved to Communication Studies and finally Rhetoric. After founding the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, I edited it for 15 years and was also President of the International Network on Personal Relationships and cofounder of the Interpersonal Conferences on Personal Relationships, both of them international and interdisciplinary in emphasis.

Meenakshi Gigi Durham is Professor and Collegiate Scholar in the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida. Her research addresses gender and sexuality in the media, emphasizing embodiment, intersectional identities, transnational feminisms, and sexual violence. Her articles have appeared in leading communication journals, and she serves on many editorial boards. Her books include MeToo: The Impact of Rape Culture in the Media, Technosex, The Lolita Effect, and Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks.  Among her numerous honors are the May Brodbeck Award Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty and the President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence from the University of Iowa, as well as the Teresa Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship from the International Communication Association.

My interests include environmental humanities; urban studies with an emphasis on African-American, American Indian, and Asian American history and cultures; and environmental justice. Alternatives to binary thought and violence have always driven my theoretical and practical commitments.