Bachelor of Arts in International Studies
Dr. Stephen Keck
Associate Professor and Head of Department
Stephen Keck earned his doctorate in British history from Oxford University, UK. His research focuses upon Victorianism, John Ruskin’s thought, and British writing about Burma and Southeast Asia. His teaching interests include European history, Imperialism, historiography and global history. He has taught at the College of Charleston, USA, and the National University of Singapore. During the summer of 2006 Dr. Keck worked in Yangon, Myanmar as part of a team that delivered courses aimed at stimulating critical thinking; in 2010 he joined a Research Cluster at Sogang University in South Korea.
Dr. Pia-Kristina Anderson
Assistant Professor and Associate Dean of College of Arts and Sciences
Pia-Kristina Anderson earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. She has taught at both the American University in Cairo and at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching areas include culture contact, anthropological history, archaeology, cultural geography and the formation of identity. Dr. Anderson has extensive fieldwork experience both in the Middle East and in the Pacific Islands, among other regions.
Dr. Pernille Arenfeldt
Assistant Professor
Pernille Arenfeldt obtained her PhD in History at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Her teaching and research interests are centered on women and gender in early modern Europe and in the modern Middle East. Her work is interdisciplinary and draws extensively on anthropological and sociological methodologies; this approach is also reflected in her teaching. She has held research fellowships in Denmark, Germany and Italy, and was selected for the Marie-Jahoda Visiting Chair in International Gender Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.
Dr. Mark Aveyard
Assistant Professor
Mark Aveyard received his PhD in psychology from Florida State University, USA. His teaching and research interests include cognitive and social psychology.
Dr. Paul Carnegie
Visiting Assistant Professor
Paul Carnegie earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Queensland, Australia. He has worked in Glasgow, London, Jakarta, Brisbane and Cairo. His primary research focus is democratization combined with teaching interests in comparative politics, globalization and the history of political thought.
Dr. Arianne Conty
Assistant Professor
Arianne Conty received her PhD in Philosophy of Religion from the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Her principal fields of specialization are in postmodern philosophy, comparative philosophy (with India) and philosophy of religion. Her research interests and publications focus on theories of subjectivity, East and West, and the ways philosophic and religious ideas participate in identity formation and inform theories of textual and visual representation. She is currently working on theories of technology and the ways they impact human identity, focusing on models that extend (biotech) and transcend (VR) human embodiment. From France, Dr. Conty taught for seven years in Rome, Italy, before coming to AUS.
Dr. Thomas DeGeorges
Assistant Professor
Thomas DeGeorges earned a PhD in History from Harvard University, USA. He has taught the history of the Middle East and the Arab world at the American University of Sharjah for three years. His areas of research are military veterans of North Africa, the politics of memory in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf, and the formation of post-colonial states in the Middle East following the Second World War. Dr. DeGeorges has spent considerable time in North Africa performing research and is currently in Tunisia directing the activities of the American Research Center there. He will return to AUS in Fall 2011.
Dr. Richard Gassan
Associate Professor
Richard Gassan’s research focuses on the impact of tourism, consumer culture, and consumerism on American culture, business and society before the Civil War His first book was The Birth of American Tourism: New York, the Hudson Valley, and American Culture, 1790–1830. He has published articles in the Winterthur Portfolio, Book History and the Journal of Social History, and on tourism for The Encyclopedia of New York State. He taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Smith College, Western New England College and several other institutions.
Dr. Meenaz Kassam
Assistant Professor
Meenaz Kassam received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include non-profit entrepreneurship, volunteerism and women’s empowerment. Her teaching interests include environmental issues, the sociology of human behaviour and sociological theory. Dr. Kassam is also involved in working with NGOs in various countries.
Dr. Anatoliy Kharkhurin
Associate Professor
Anatoliy Kharkhurin earned a PhD from City University of New York, USA. His research focuses mainly on multilingualism and creativity. This work was supported by a National Science Foundation research grant. Kharkhurin’s articles have appeared in edited volumes and scientific journals. He has written entries for The Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology and essay for the Encyclopedia of Giftedness, Creativity and Talent. Currently, he is working on the monograph Multilingualism and Creativity. In addition to his scientific interests, he is a published poet working with various art media.
Dr. Angela Maitner
Assistant Professor
Angela Maitner earned a PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship position at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. Her research investigates how social group memberships, such as nationality, occupation, university affiliation or gender, impact people’s emotions, behaviors and cognitions. Her work has been published in several international journals, and she has presented her work in 11 different countries. She maintains research collaborations around the globe.
Dr. James N. Sater
Associate Professor
James N. Sater earned a PhD at the University of Durham, UK. Before joining AUS, he taught at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. He has worked on state-civil society relations in North Africa, women’s rights movements and parliamentarians, political parties, public opinion and the process of democratization. He now works on Lebanese politics, focusing on questions of sectarianism on one hand, and governance and global migration on the other. He previously conducted research on Bahrain, Kuwait and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the author of two books: Civil Society and Political Change in Morocco, and Morocco: Challenges to Tradition and Modernity. His research has been published in several international journals.
Dr. Ravindran Sriramachandran
Assistant Professor
Ravindran Sriramachandran did his PhD in Anthropology at Columbia University, USA. His work analyzes the ideas and imperatives of citizenship and “belonging” in post-colonial nations particularly India and Sri Lanka. He has lived and worked among several marginal communities in South India and also has more than a decade of fieldwork experience in various regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Dr. Sriramachandran has won several awards and fellowships including the Columbia Faculty Fellowship. His interests include political theory, semiotics, post-colonial theory, film studies and folklore. He has taught at Columbia University, Madras University and Barnard College.
Dr. Sabrina Tahboub-Schulte
Assistant Professor
Sabrina Tahboub-Schulte received her PhD in Psychology from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Her education and research is focused on clinical psychology and her PhD project examined treatment pathways of people suffering from mental illness and substance misuse. She has worked as a researcher for specialist treatment services in the UK and the UAE. Classes taught by her include general, abnormal and health psychology. Her current research concentrates on eating disorders and tobacco smoking.
Dr. Yuting Wang
Assistant Professor
Yuting Wang received her PhD in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, USA. Her research mainly focuses on religion and minorities in the US and China. She is especially interested in Muslims, both immigrant and indigenous, in these two societies. In her dissertation, she studied the internal dynamics of a racially and ethnically diverse mosque and examines the intricate process of identity negotiation and construction among immigrant Muslims in the post-9/11 American society. She has taught at the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University, Illinois, USA. She is currently revising her dissertation into a book and conducting a survey examining the values and worldviews of college students in the UAE.
Dr. Karen Young
Assistant Professor
Karen Young holds a PhD in Political Science from the City University of New York, USA. Dr. Young's major research interests are based in international relations, comparative politics and political economy. She has worked as a researcher at the Ford Foundation, and taught at Queens College in New York. She has also worked in university administration at New York University in the College of Arts and Science and at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Dr. Young has won two Fulbright awards, to Ecuador and Bulgaria, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and the International Research and Exchange Board.
