Faculty Seminars

The GU-Q Faculty Seminar Series invites faculty and guests from other institutions to present their research in progress and receive expert feedback.

DC Faculty Seminar Talks 2024-2025

Kyle Shernuk – Indigenous Taiwan: Ethnography and Identity Politics in the works of Syaman Rapongan and Heather Tsui.

Dr. Kyle Shernuk is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literatures, film, and cultures, with a focus on marginalized communities. His research explores ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, and language in global Chinese contexts. His talk examined the works of Syaman Rapongan and Heather Tsui, highlighting how literature and film shape indigenous identity and ethnographic narratives in Taiwan.

Toshihiro Higuchi – The Nuclear Anthropocene: The Paradox of Scale and the Entangled Origins of the Great Acceleration and the Great Apocalypse since 1950

Dr. Toshihiro Higuchi, Associate Professor of History, specializes in nuclear history, environmental crises, and modern Japan. His talk examined how nuclear weapons shaped environmental change, with the arms race driving both global acceleration and catastrophic risk. He highlighted the paradox of nuclear fallout and its impact on environmental awareness and policy, leading to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Caue Dobbin – Separations Revisited: Do Layoffs or Quits Drive Lower Separation Rates in High-Quality Firms?

Dr. Caue Dobbin, Assistant Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, specializes in inequality and the economics of education. In his talk, he used Brazilian administrative data and a job search model to show that lower layoff rates at high-quality firms stem from wage rigidity and productivity uncertainty, challenging the idea that such separations are always efficient.

Nadia E. Brown – Black Women’s Electoral Politics

Dr. Nadia E. Brown, Professor of Government and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, specializes in Black women’s politics and identity studies. Her talk examined the rise of Black women as political actors in the U.S., contextualizing Kamala Harris’ historic presidential nomination within broader trends in Black women’s electoral participation, representation, and political influence.

Paul Heck – Emotions and Devotions in Classical Islam: The Case of Joy

Dr. Paul L. Heck, a member of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, specializes in Islam’s ethical heritage (akhlāq). He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. In his talk, Dr. Heck examined the role of joy in classical Islam, challenging the modern disassociation of emotions from religious devotion. He explored how scholars in Islam’s classical period viewed joy as a religious virtue, presenting a range of perspectives on its place in Islamic ethics, particularly in contrast to the expected sadness of this world.

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CULP Seminar Series 2024-2025

Reza Shah-Kazemi – From Mystical Intimation to Metaphysical Consummation: Convergences in Islamic and Buddhist Spirituality

Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi, a scholar of comparative religion, specializes in Islamic and Buddhist thought. His talk explored their shared emphasis on overcoming individualistic desire and their convergence in understanding the Absolute—Islam’s Divine Essence (al-dhāt) and Buddhism’s Buddha-nature (buddhadhatu), offering insights into their deep philosophical and mystical connections.

Mostafa Minawi – Istanbul as a Multicultural Imperial Capital: Arab Istanbulites at the Turn of the 20th Century

Dr. Mostafa Minawi, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University and founder of the Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies initiative, specializes in Ottoman imperial history. His talk explored Arab-Ottoman elites in Istanbul (1878–WWI), tracing the decline of its multi-ethnic ruling class and the rise of ethnonationalism, marking the end of the city’s diverse imperial spaces.

Munira Khayyat – Researching Silence: Landscapes and Archives

Dr. Munira Khayyat, Clinical Associate Professor of Anthropology at NYU, explores life in war, genealogies of empire, and theory from the Global South. Her talk examined the challenges of researching silence in overdetermined spaces, showcasing innovative interdisciplinary methods from anthropology, literature, and photography to uncover hidden narratives within landscapes and archives.

Logan Cochrane – When NGOs Refuse Money: Towards a Typology and Developing a Database

Dr. Logan Cochrane, Associate Professor at HBKU’s College of Public Policy, specializes in development studies and policy research. His talk examined the overlooked phenomenon of NGOs refusing donor funding, challenging the assumption that all contributions are accepted. He introduced a typology of funding refusals and a public database to advance research on NGOs’ financial discretion.

Jörg Matthias Determann – Uniting the Planet: A History of Internationalism in Astronomy

Dr. Jörg Matthias Determann, Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, explores science and global politics. His talk examined how astronomers have promoted internationalism, breaking political barriers and fostering scientific diplomacy. From post-WWII efforts of the International Astronomical Union to Astronomers Without Borders, he highlighted how astronomers have advanced a vision of Earth as a united, borderless planet.

Richard Pithouse – Freedom is a Place: The Struggle for Urban Land in South Africa

Dr. Richard Pithouse, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, explores political philosophy and social movements. His talk examined Frantz Fanon’s ideas on collective struggle, human agency, and praxis in the African postcolony, linking them to urban land struggles in South Africa. He highlighted grassroots activism, land rights, and the ethical commitment to mutuality and movement-building.

Ian Almond – Capital(ism) and Mysticism: Looking at Money and Commerce in Medieval Mystical Traditions – The Case of Kabbalah

Dr. Ian Almond, Professor of World Literatures at Georgetown University Qatar, specializes in global literary traditions and cultural theory. His talk examined medieval mysticism and commerce, exploring how texts like the Zohar, Masnavi, and Meister Eckhart’s sermons use economic metaphors to frame faith and salvation. He analyzed the 13th-century mercantile backdrop to assess its influence on mystical thought.

Mujibur Rehman – The Political Future of Indian Muslims

Dr. Mujibur Rehman, faculty at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi, is the author of Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims (Simon and Schuster, 2025), a bestseller and reviewer’s choice by Biblio. In his talk, Dr. Rehman discussed the central arguments of the book, which explores the evolving political identity and future of Indian Muslims. The book has been widely reviewed, longlisted for the Kerala Literary Festival’s Best Book of the Year award, and featured at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Neha Vora – Multispecies ecologies of homemaking in the UAE

Neha Vora is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. She is the author of Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora and Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar. In her talk, she explored how residents of UAE cities, many unable to settle permanently, create a sense of home through interactions with animals, plants, and urban space. Drawing on “cat walks” and everyday movements, she examined how care and connection reshape understandings of belonging, precarity, and urban life in the Gulf.

Legal Agency and Normative Pluralism in Contemporary Qatar: An Analysis of Litigant Strategies in Family Law

Dr. Alexandre Caeiro is Associate Professor at the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, where his research explores the transformations of Islamic law in modern contexts. Fatima Elhag is a research assistant at the same college, with a focus on women’s legal agency in Qatari Family Law. In their talk, they examined Qatar’s 2006 Family Law through a socio-legal lens, analyzing court rulings and interviews with legal actors to explore how litigants navigate gendered power dynamics during marital disputes.

Lamis Kattan – Female-Specific Labor Regulation and Employment: Historical Evidence from the United States

Dr. Lamis Kattan, Assistant Professor of Economics at Georgetown University in Qatar, researches labor economics and public policy. Her talk examined how late 19th-century U.S. labor laws regulating workplace conditions, health, and night work impacted female employment. Using historical data, she demonstrated how these regulations encouraged workforce participation, particularly among younger and higher-class women, by improving job conditions and shifting societal perceptions of female labor.

Alexis Antoniades – The Convergence of Occupations: Evidence from Online Job Vacancies

Dr. Alexis Antoniades, Professor and Director of International Economics at Georgetown University in Qatar, specializes in global markets, big data, and labor markets. His talk examined how technological advances are reshaping occupations, bringing them closer in required skills. Using millions of U.S. job postings from 2014-2022, he introduced a measure of occupational distance, showing how this convergence reduces wage inequality and transforms the labor market.

Patricio Dalton – Mental Accounting and Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from a Humanitarian Setting

Dr. Patricio Dalton, Associate Professor of Economics at Tilburg University, specializes in behavioral economics and poverty alleviation. His talk explored how mental accounting interventions improve financial planning among low-income households. Using a randomized trial with 861 Ugandan refugee households, he showed that labeling cash transfers into categories boosted savings, investments, and income, enhancing cash transfer effectiveness in humanitarian settings.

Santiago García-Couto – Anticipated Discrimination and Wage Negotiation: A Field Experiment

Dr. Santiago García-Couto’s research focuses on macroeconomics and labor economics, particularly job tasks, student choices, and gender gaps. His talk examined how perceived gender discrimination affects wage requests. Women requested just over half the wage of men when names were visible, but the gap shrank by over 50% when gender was concealed and disappeared entirely with reinforced anonymity.

Emmanouil Chatzikonstantinou – Export Growth and the Buyers’ Margin

Dr. Emmanouil Chatzikonstantinou, Assistant Professor of International Economics at Georgetown University in Qatar, researches labor economics, innovation, and international finance. His talk examined the overlooked role of buyers in export growth. Using customs data from Colombia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, he analyzed exporter-buyer relationships, market entry and exit, and how relationship-building influences export performance.

Jessie Handbury – Demographic Preferences and Income Segregation

Dr. Jessie Handbury is the Gilbert and Shelley Harrison Associate Professor at The Wharton School and a Research Associate at NBER. In her talk, she presented research on how preferences for co-patron demographics shape income segregation in shared spaces, showing that these preferences are consistent across racial groups and influence broader patterns of social and spatial sorting.

Pawel Gmyrek – What Do We Know About Work and Generative AI?

Dr. Pawel Gmyrek, Senior Researcher at the ILO Research Department in Geneva, specializes in labor markets and AI’s impact on employment. His talk provided an overview of the ILO’s AI Observatory, analyzing how AI is reshaping jobs and labor market dynamics. He discussed new methodologies for assessing AI’s effects on employment, future research directions, and opportunities for collaboration, particularly in developing countries, to better understand AI’s role in the workforce.

Andrew Clapham – Moderated Discussion on the Laws of War

Dr. Andrew Clapham, Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, specializes in humanitarian law and human rights. He was the first Director of the Geneva Academy and has served as an advisor to key UN officials and human rights organizations. His talk marked the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, reflecting on lessons learned, their role in minimizing human suffering, and the evolving balance between military necessity and humanitarian protection in modern warfare.

Hale Eroğlu – Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China Debates on Hui Identity and Islamic Reform

Dr. Hale Eroğlu, Assistant Professor of History at Boğaziçi University, specializes in the intellectual history of Muslims in China. She holds a PhD from Harvard University and is the author of Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China (Columbia University Press). In her talk, Dr. Eroğlu examined how Chinese-speaking Muslim reformists engaged global Islamic movements to reshape Hui identity and address local political and cultural challenges.

Edidiong Ibanga – Working Women in Liberian Media

Edidiong Ibanga is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth. In her talk, she explored women’s roles in African broadcast media through the digitized archives of Liberia’s Eternal Love Television. Drawing on television footage and personal stories, she examined how women’s voices and labor shape media history and how digital archives can reframe feminist and national narratives in Africa.

Past Year Program Schedules