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, Southeast Asia Program
Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the director of the Einaudi Center's Southeast Asia 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
- SAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Director
- 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
Paul Kaiser

Einaudi Center Lund Practitioner in Residence
Paul Kaiser joins the Einaudi Center in fall 2025 as Lund Practitioner in Residence. Learn more about the Lund Critical Debate and related activities.
Additional Information
Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit

Assistant Professor, Music
Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit's research focuses on music, race, and imperialism in nineteenth-century Siam. He is interested in issues of aesthetic commensurability in colonial encounter, comparativism and the production of knowledge about non-European musics, and opera as a racializing global-colonial form.