Faculty
N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba
Professor, African and African Diaspora
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- IAD Core Faculty
- IAD Advisory Council
Contact
Email: n.assie-lumumba@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-7839
Esra Akcan

Professor, Architectural Theory
Esra Akcan is the Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory in the Department of Architecture. Her scholarly work on a geopolitically conscious global history of urbanism and architecture inspires her teaching. She is the author of Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House (Duke University Press, 2012); Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (with S.
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Kenneth Roberts

Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Government
Kenneth Roberts teaches comparative and Latin American politics, with an emphasis on the political economy of development and the politics of inequality. His research focuses on political parties, populism, labor and social movements, and democratic resilience. He is especially interested in the cases of Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Argentina.
He led the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience global research priority in academic years 2022–25.
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Abby Cohn

Professor, Linguistics
Abby Cohn is a professor of linguistics and Southeast Asian studies. Her research interests include the Austronesian languages of Indonesia, with a particular focus on their phonetics, phonology, and morphology.
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Rebecca Slayton

Director, Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- PACS Core Faculty
- PACS Director
- PACS Steering Committee
- PACS Minor Field Instructor
- Einaudi Faculty Leadership
Contact
Email: rs849@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-8914
Andrea Bachner

Professor, Comparative Literature
Andrea Bachner is a professor of comparative literature. She was the director of the East Asia Program for the term 2019-22 and a member of the East Asia Program steering committee and the CEAS editorial board.
She holds an MA from Munich University, Germany, and a PhD from Harvard University. Her research explores comparative intersections between Sinophone, Latin American, and European cultural productions in dialogue with theories of interculturality, sexuality, and mediality.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- EAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Faculty Associate
Contact
Email: asb76@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-6795
Eric Tagliacozzo

Director, Comparative Muslim Societies Program
Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the director of the Einaudi Center's Comparative Muslim Societies Program and a core faculty member of the Southeast Asia Program and South Asia Program.
His research centers on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia, especially in the late colonial age.
Geographic Research Area: Southeast Asia, South Asia
Teaching/Research Interests: Migration and trade, material history, Silk Road, Indian Ocean
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- CMSP Director
- SAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
- Einaudi Faculty Leadership
- Executive Committee
Contact
Email: et54@cornell.edu
Iftikhar Dadi

John H. Burris Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies
Geographic Research Area: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Middle East
Teaching/Research Interests: Modern and contemporary art, methodology and intellectual history, and film, media, and popular cultures
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- SAP Core Faculty
- SAP Steering Committee
- SAP Advisory Council
- Executive Committee
Contact
Email: mid1@cornell.edu
Sadia Mahmood

Visiting Scholar
Sadia Mahmood holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Arizona State University. Her research investigates religious difference and the production and governance of postcolonial minorities in South Asia. Grounded in fieldwork among Hindu communities in the Tharparkar region of Sindh and archival work in Pakistan and Bangladesh, her work examines the governance of minorities through legal and bureaucratic regimes in Pakistan, caste and identity politics along the Sindh-Rajasthan borderlands and Dalit strategies of assertion in Sindh.
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Nancy P. Lin

Assistant Professor, History of Art and Visual Studies
Nancy P. Lin is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Visual Studies. She specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese art and architecture with a particular interest in the relationship between art and urbanism. Studying contemporary Chinese art through a transregional perspective, her current book project, Art On-Site: Situating Global Contemporaneity in 1990s China, examines locally situated, yet globally oriented site-based art practices in China during the 1990s and early 2000s.