I am a family physician and geriatrician who has worked with colleagues in Russia since 1994, establishing a family medicine residency in1997 through USAID funding. Initially with the Medical Academy of Postgraduate Studies and now with the Northwestern Medical University in St Petersburg we have collaborated on teaching and research activities with a focus on geriatric medicine. Published research included comparative studies among US, Russian, Korean and Indian cohorts about late life depression, functioning and palliative care.

Over a thirty-year career, Anita Jung’s work has been curated into well over two hundred group and juried exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. She has given lectures at over fifty universities, art centers and community centers in the past five-years. She is an alumni of the Arizona State University’s BFA program in painting and drawing and received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the graphic arts. Anita is a professor at the University of Iowa. Her work has been featured in over fifty solo exhibitions. She is a frequent traveler to India. She is a recipient of the The Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship.

Some of her research interests include South Korean youth and politics and civic use of internet.

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.

Cultural history of modern Korean society. His research and teaching interests include narratives, memory, media, social relations, and Cold War/post-Cold War culture

Her research interests are U.S.-Korea diplomatic/cultural/intellectual interactions, 1866-1965, Korean American students, 1884-1960, and “Americanism” in East Asia, 1920-1945.

Marie Kruger is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches classes in postcolonial and gender studies. Her monograph, Women’s Literature in Kenya and Uganda: The Trouble with Modernity, draws attention to fictional works that constitute a vital, yet often overlooked part of the cultural and creative exchanges in Eastern Africa. Her work has been published in several edited volumes and literary journals, including English Studies in Africa, African Studies, Research in African Literatures, Postcolonial Text, Swahili Forum, and The Nairobi Journal of Literature. Together with Mildred Mortimer and Maureen Eke, she co-edited a special issue of Research in African Literatures on “Memory/History, Violence and Reconciliation.” Her current project studies the representation and commodification of traumatic memory in South African visual culture, including film and memorial sites.

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.

Dr. Catherine Lammert is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Iowa. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 2019. Her dissertation titled Inquiry, Advocacy, and Practice-Based Research: Transformative Possibilities in Literacy Preservice Teacher Education explored ways to design and scale programs that support new teachers' racial literacy. Her current scholarship focuses on activist literacy teaching across the disciplines and teacher adaptiveness.

Lin focuses on the support and retention of international students through outreach and engagement. She also provides assistance with intercultural training and a first-year seminar course. Lin provides support on international education efforts more broadly, such as co-chairing the International Education Week committee and more. Lin earned her bachelor's degree in communication studies, and Master's degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from the University of Iowa. She is from Guangzhou, China, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, and is now learning Korean.

Dongwang Liu serves as Associate Director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS) as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Anthropology. He is assisting ISSS as a liaison for newly admitted students, helping support our pre-arrival webinars and taking on some orientation coordination duties. Dongwang earned his doctorate degree in human development and family studies at Iowa State University. He taught English as second language in China for seven years before his graduate study in the U. S. He is an all-weather bike rider and table tennis player.

My research interests include leadership for justice and equity, schooling for students from systemically marginalized groups, equity-oriented education policy, and qualitative methodologies. My international teaching and research experience includes a Fulbright in Mexico, studying the perceptions and experiences of teachers and students in public schools.

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.

Luis Martín-Estudillo is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, specializing in modern and contemporary Spanish literature and culture and visual studies. He is the Managing Editor of Hispanic Issues and Hispanic Issues Online. Among other recognitions, Martín-Estudillo has received the 2009-2010 Collegiate Teaching Award, the 2011-2013 Dean's Scholar Award, and three awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His latest books are The Rise of Euroskepticism: Europe and Its Critics in Spanish Culture (Vanderbilt University Press, 2018), winner of an NEH Open Book Award in 2020, and Despertarse de Europa. Arte, literatura, euroescepticismo (Cátedra, 2019). His current projects include a monograph on Francisco de Goya's treatment of reading.

Marvin has published widely on Italian opera of the nineteenth century, especially the music of Verdi and Rossini, focusing on cultural and social history, as well as textual criticism. Her work touches more specifically on topics including censorship, celebrity, performance practices, dissemination and reception of foreign opera in Britain, opera and print culture, operatic burlesques, iconography of singers in Victorian illustrated newspapers, and music during World War II. Co-editor of seven books (the most recent being Music in World War II: Coping with Wartime in Europe and the United States), she is also sole editor of The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia. In addition, Dr. Marvin is series editor for Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera and Associate General Editor for The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, the award-winning critical edition of the composer’s music.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Political Science department at the University of Iowa. I received my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015, specializing in International Relations and Political Methodology. My primary substantive research agenda focuses on the effectiveness of international mediation in intrastate wars. Other current projects explore the evolution of cooperation between combatants in civil wars.

I am a poet, nonfiction writer, translator, and editor, and much of my work concerns my travels abroad. I have written books on the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the wars of succession in the former Yugoslavia, and the spiritual home of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. As director of the International Writing Program, I have undertaken cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. And every fall I have the good luck to host thirty-some distinguished poets and writers from around the world.