The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has selected new leaders for its South Asian, East Asian, Latin American, and peace and conflict studies programs, as well as for its international relations minor.
Art historian Iftikhar Dadi takes over as director of the South Asia Program. He replaces Anne M. Blackburn, an historian of Buddhism in the Department of Asian Studies.
Dadi, an associate professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, examines modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective. He engages with theorizations of modernity and postcoloniality to analyze developments in Asia and the Middle East. He also researches media and popular culture of South Asia.
His artwork, produced in collaboration with Elizabeth Dadi, investigates the productive capacities of urban informalities, and media’s construction of memory and identity.
Pedro Rabelo Erber, associate professor of Luso-Brazilian studies in the Department of Romance Studies, is the new director of the East Asia Program. He replaces Robin McNeal, a specialist in ancient China in the Department of Asian Studies.
Erber's research interests include Brazilian and Japanese intellectual history, literature, and visual culture; peripheral modernisms; Lusophone (i.e., Portuguese language) literature and culture; and humanistic inquiry and economic theory.
The Latin American Studies Programwelcomes Kenneth M. Roberts, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor in the Department of Government. He takes over for Raymond B. Craib, a professor in the Department of History.
Roberts teaches comparative and Latin America politics, with an emphasis on social movements; the political economy of development; and party systems and political representation.
His current research explores social protest against the free market or “neoliberal” economic reforms adopted throughout Latin America over the past two decades.
Rebecca Slayton replaces Department of Government professor Matthew A. Evangelista as director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, where she had been associate director.
Slayton is an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies. Her research and teaching examine the relationships among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II.
She is co-coordinator of the Einaudi Center's cybersecurity and nuclear energy working groups and serves as a project lead on research funded by the Department of Homeland Security's Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute.
Slayton is on leave until January 2019. In the meantime, Judith Reppy will serve as acting director.
Reppy is professor emerita in the Department of Science and Technology Studies. She continues to conduct research on military technology and related issues.
Her current work examines arms control policies, including export control policies, for emerging technologies.
On her retirement in 2010, the Cornell Peace Studies Program was renamed in her honor.
Christopher R. Way an associate professor in the Department of Government, replaces Matthew Evangelista as director of the International Relations Minor.
Way studies comparative political economy and international relations. His current research focuses on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the effectiveness of the non-proliferation regime.
He served as director of the Cornell Institute for European Studies until 2017.
