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.

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.

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).

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.