The Center for International Studies

2009 Summer Teacher Institute

Understanding the Global Economy:
Bringing the World Market into your Classroom

Click on each presenter's name for more information about their work.

• Brian Ashby Administrator for the University of Chicago South Asia Language and Area Center

  Brian Ashby earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Chicago, and is the administrator for the University's South Asia Language and Area Center. Brian's research has focused on the extraction of natural resources such as metals, gems, and woods and their role in civil wars in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Brian has spent the past 3 years producing the feature-length documentary film Scrappers (http://www.scrappersmovie.com), which shows the experiences of two of Chicago's self-employed scrap metal scavengers and their families and provides an analysis of the Chicago scrap recycling industry. His talk will trace the routes of two basic metals from extraction through recycling across the globe, and review the included lesson materials.

• Justin Borevitz Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolution and Committee on Evolutionary Biology and Lecturer in the Program and the Global Environment, University of Chicago

  Dr. Justin Borevitz is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution and on the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. Dr. Borevitz is also on the Faculty Board of the University of Chicago Program on the Global Environment. His current research includes: genetics of local adaptation in plants, genetic variation in environmental response, genomic approaches to natural variation, and restoring biodiversity and biomass in ecosystems.

  Dr. Borevitz has a Ph.D. in Biology and Quantitative Genetics from the University of California, San Diego and a Postdoc in Genomics from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla.

• David Brady Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Duke University

  David Brady is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University. He has a BA, MA and PhD in Sociology. He is a scholar of poverty and inequality, politics, work and labor and globalization. He has taught at Duke since 2001 and routinely teaches courses on the global economy, poverty and inequality, organizations and management, and research methods. He has a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press titled, Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty. As well, he is the author of about 30 articles and chapters. Brady has studied and worked in the U.K, Costa Rica, Spain and Germany.

• John Branch Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

  John Branch currently teaches a variety of marketing and international business courses at the undergraduate, M.B.A., and executive levels at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (U.S.A.). Until recently, he also served as Director of Educational Outreach at the University's William Davidson Institute, which focuses on emerging and transitional economies; he was responsible for the development and dissemination of pedagogical materials. He also holds an affiliated research fellowship with the University's Center for Russian and East European Studies.

  Prior to joining Ross, Professor Branch was on the faculty of the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in Saint Louis (U.S.A.) for five years. He began his academic career in 1993 as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at École Supérieure de Commerce de Rennes in France. Since then, he has also served as an adjunct or visiting professor at more than 40 business schools throughout world, including the Rotterdam School of Management (Netherlands), the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), ESAN (Peru), and the Sasin Graduate Institute of Administration (Thailand). He was also a visiting scholar at Queen Elizabeth House of the University of Oxford (England) and at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University (U.S.A.).

  Professor Branch has been involved in a variety of European Union and other government-funded development projects, most notably in the republics of the former U.S.S.R., including Kyrghyzstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, and in those of Eastern and Central Europe. He has also participated in management training programs in, and consulted to, numerous international organizations, including British American Tobacco, Anheuser-Busch, British Telecom, Cargill, Mercedes Benz, Oracle, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Michelin, Ericsson, and Nestle.

  Professor Branch is originally from Canada. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Science in electronics from the University of Western Ontario (Canada), a Master of Business Administration from the University of New Brunswick (Canada), a Master of Arts in education from Washington University in Saint Louis (U.S.A.), and a Doctor of Philosophy in marketing from the University of Cambridge (England). He is now working on a higher doctoral degree (Dr. Merc.) at the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) which focuses on higher-education administration.

• Dan Brinkmeier Field Museum Associate in Anthropology and Zoology, and Environment, Culture and Conservation (ECCo) Fellow

  An artist and educator for most of his professional life, Dan Brinkmeier bridges the fields of journalism and mass communication, visual art, and rural sociology. Dan works in the area of visual communication for rural development, as applied to environmental conservation and documenting the world’s biodiversity, using visual media to transfer technical or scientific information to targeted audiences (usually small villages or individual farmers) in the lowland tropics of South America. Dan has projects in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, in addition to providing training for scientific staff in museums and research institutions in Cuba, Uganda, and The Democratic Republic of The Congo.

  Dan studied at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1985, when he received his M.Sc. in Journalism and Mass Communication. During his years at Ames, he served as a graduate assistant with the Extension Information Service, and worked as a research assistant during the early years of the Iowa Farm Computer Study. From 1982 to 1987, he was an instructor for the Communication and Media Strategies summer course for international development workers and extension agents offered by the journalism department. After Ames, Dan returned to Peru and Bolivia, where he had done his field research for his M.Sc., and continued working on communications projects focusing upon rural communities and their use of traditional technology. He began working at The Field Museum full time in 1987, designing and building exhibits, managing educational outreach programs for Chicago schools, and finally taking on his present position ECP in 1998. From 1994 to 1996, Dan took a leave of absence from The Field Museum to teach art at Mount St. Clare College in Clinton, Iowa.

• Robert DeYoung Capitol Federal Professor in Financial Markets and Institutions, University of Kansas, School of Business

  Robert (Bob) DeYoung is the Capitol Federal Professor in Financial Institutions and Markets in the KU School of Business at the University of Kansas. In addition to his university duties, Bob is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; a research program coordinator at the FDIC’s Center for Financial Research; and co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research. Bob’s has written extensively on the performance of financial institutions, markets, and public policy in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Business; on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and the American Banker; and in the economic reviews of the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Chicago, and Kansas City. Prior to joining the KU faculty, Bob was an associate director of research at the FDIC (2005-2007); an economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (1998-2005); an adjunct member of the finance faculty at DePaul University (2000-2003); a senior financial economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (1992-1998); and an assistant professor and Joyce Foundation Teaching Fellow at Beloit College (1988-1992). He earned a B.A. from Rutgers University-Camden in 1983 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989.

• Chris Janus History Teacher, University of Chicago Laboratory School

  Chris Janus is a history teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory School where he teaches advanced placement courses in Modern European History and Micro and Macro Economics. He holds a BA in Political Science from Columbia University and an MA in International Relations and Political Theory from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He spent five years at Oxford University where he received a D.Phil in International Relations. Chris Janus was an options trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange where he traded his own account. It was there that he says he was part of unvarnished capitalism at work and was forced to use his knowledge of economics to make a living. Having to pay the bills helped separate theory from the cold hard truth.

• Mona Mehta Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science Department, University of Chicago

  Mona Mehta is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation examines how a multitude of political institutions and civic spaces of liberal democracy have become implicated in the production of a popular consensus in favor of exclusion and communal violence in Gujarat, India. With grant support from the National Science Foundation, USA, she has conducted 18 months of intensive fieldwork in Gujarat. She has taught courses in social science theory and identity politics in South Asia at the University of Chicago.

• Alicia S. Menendez Research Associate (Assistant Professor), Harris School of Public Policy; Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Chicago

  Alicia S. Menendez is a Research Associate (Assistant Professor) in the Harris School of Public Policy and a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. She is a development economist particularly interested in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa and she is affiliated with the Center for Latin American Studies. Her research interests include poverty and inequality, labor markets, human capital, and household behavior.

  Alicia received her Ph.D. in economics from Boston University. Before coming to the University of Chicago, she was a lecturer in public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School and a research economist at the Research Program in Development Studies at Princeton University.

• Aamir A. Rehman Director and Head of Strategy, FAJR Capital Limited, NY

  Mr. Rehman is Head of Strategy at Fajr Capital Limited, a principal investment firm registered in the DIFC, Dubai. He was formerly the global head of strategy for HSBC Amanah, a worldwide business unit of the HSBC Group serving over 300,000 customers in major markets of the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the US.

  At HSBC Amanah, he was responsible for strategy development across retail, commercial, and investment banking businesses across nine markets worldwide. Previously a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, Mr. Rehman has advised clients in multiple industries regarding a wide range of strategic issues.

  Mr. Rehman is author of Dubai & Co.: Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States (McGraw-Hill, 2007) and "Islamic Finance: A New Global Player," a piece in the February 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College. In 2008, he was appointed an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington DC based, nonpartisan think-tank established in 1946.

• Sabina Shaikh University of Chicago Lecturer in Public Policy Studies and the Program and the Global Environment and Instructor in the Department of Economics. Senior Research Economist, RCF Economic and Financial Consulting, Chicago

  Dr. Sabina Shaikh is an economist on the faculty at the University of Chicago in Public Policy Studies and the Program on Global Environment where she teaches environmental economics and environmental policy. She is also a Senior Research Economist at the Chicago consulting firm RCF, Inc. Her research includes the economics of climate change policy, markets for air and water pollution control, land-use policy and the valuation of benefits and costs from environmental policy.

  Dr. Shaikh has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis. She was formerly on the faculty in the Food and Resource Program at the University of British Columbia. She has published papers on topics related to endangered species, fisheries, land use and climate change, and the role of agriculture in the Kyoto Protocol. Her current research includes energy efficiency and the economics of green building, health valuation for urban air pollution, economic valuation of ecosystems, and market-based programs for Great Lakes conservation and restoration.

• James Thindwa Executive Director of Chicago Jobs with Justice

  James Thindwa has served as Executive Director of Chicago Jobs With Justice (JWJ) since November 2002. JWJ is a coalition of labor, community, faith and student organizations that advocates for workers rights and livable communities. Prior to joining JWJ, Thindwa served for 9 years as lead organizer for Metro Seniors in Action, a coalition of seniors organizations that advocates for national health care, mass transit, rights for managed care patients, and maintaining Social Security and Medicare as public programs.

  Between 1985 and 1992, Thindwa served as a staff director for the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana and Ohio Citizen Action. He serves on the boards of Illinois Labor History Society, Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, and In These Times magazine, for which he occasionally writes. He also serves on the advisory committees of the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies (CCWS), Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) and The Public Square at Illinois Humanities Council.

  Thindwa was a leader in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and remains active in anti-war, human rights, environmental and global justice struggles. His work as an organizer was the subject of PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal on March 27. He has a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Berea College and Miami University (Ohio), respectively.

• William M. Tsutsui Professor of History and Associate Dean for International Studies, University of Kansas

  William Tsutsui is Professor of History and Associate Dean for International Studies, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Kansas University (A.B. Harvard, 1985; MLitt Oxford, 1988; M.A. Princeton, 1990; Ph.D. Princeton 1995). Professor Tsutsui's research focuses on the business, environmental, and cultural history of twentieth-century Japan. He is the author of Banking Policy in Japan (1988), Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (1998), and Godzilla on My Mind (2004). His current projects include studies of the environmental impact of World War II on Japan, the globalization of Japanese popular culture, and sports in Japanese history. Professor Tsutsui has been a faculty fellow at Kansas University's Center for Teaching Excellence, received a 2001 William T. Kemper Award for Teaching Excellence, and has won Kansas University’s Steeples Faculty Award for service to the people of Kansas and the Woodyard International Educator Award.

For more information, please contact Jamie Bender at (773) 834-3852 or jbender@uchicago.edu