Staff

Hadi Salehi Esfahani, Director

Hadi Salehi Esfahani

Dr. Hadi Salehi Esfahani is a Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and serves as Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He has also worked for the World Bank as a visiting staff economist and a consultant. He has received his B.Sc. in engineering from Tehran University and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. His theoretical and empirical research is in the field of political economy of development, focusing in particular on the Middle East and North Africa region. He has published numerous articles on the role of politics and governance in fiscal, trade, and regulatory policy formation. His articles have appeared in The Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, International Economic Review, Oxford Economic Review, and World Development, among others. Professor Esfahani is the Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance and currently serves as the President of the Middle East Economic Association.

Ritu Saksena, Associate Director

Ritu Saksena

Dr. Ritu Saksena is the Associate Director for the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has an M.A and M.Phil in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ph.D in Comparative Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has taught several courses on World Literature and Global Cinema, worked as an Academic Dean for Johns Hopkin’s Center for Talented Youth summer programs, as well as in translation outreach and publishing. Her research interests include Postcolonialism, Cinema Studies and South Asian studies.

Angela Williams, Outreach Coordinator

Angela Williams

Angela Williams works to organize programs and events that will serve local school systems and community organizations to gain a better understanding of the Middle East and South Asia. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics at the University of Illinois, during which time she lived and studied Arabic in Egypt, and is currently writing her Master’s thesis in Linguistics. Her research has examined language usage in an American Muslim community, as well as Arabic hip hop music and “nation language” in the Middle East. She is passionate about organizing campus and community programs, as well as developing resources for K-12 educators, in that will increase the knowledge and awareness of issues pertaining to the Middle East and South Asia.

Elizabeth Sartell, Visiting Project Specialist & Webmaster

Elizabeth Rogers

Elizabeth Sartell (née Elizabeth Rogers) is a recent graduate from the University of Illinois with a major in mathematics and a major in religious studies, concentrating on religion (Islam) and culture. Elizabeth has done extensive undergraduate research in Islamic Mathematics, culminating in a paper and website discussing the cultural aspects of medieval Islamic contributions to modern algebra. She enjoys organizing community outreach activities and campus activities, and plans to pursue a doctorate in Comparative Religious Studies.

Lars Dyrud, Visiting Program Coordinator

Lars Dyrud

Lars Dyrud is the Visiting Program Coordinator for CSAMES' South Asia Initiative. Lars has a B.A. in English and International Studies and an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of North Dakota. His thesis helped categorize Hindi-Urdu as a non-stress accent language. Working for ten years as a linguist studying South Asian languages, he spent three of those years as a researcher at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, overseeing a large-scale sociolinguistic survey project on the Punjabi language and its related varieties. Publication of that work is forthcoming.

Stevanna Farley-Wamberg, Office Support Associate

Stevanna Farley-Wamberg

Stevanna Farley-Wamberg is a new resident of Champaign-Urbana, having spent the past nine years in both Los Angeles and Paris, France, as a writer/editor and an elementary-level English language instructor, respectively. Beyond her interests in foreign languages and travel, Stevanna is a former student of literature, and an avid writer: she has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature with an emphasis in poetry from the University of Iowa, where she was an undergraduate student in the Writers Workshop.

Associated Faculty

Rajmohan Gandhi, Research Professor, CSAMES

Rajmohan Gandhi

Rajmohan Gandhi, Research Professor in the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, serves also as the Academic Director of Global Crossroads, one of the campus’s learning and living communities. His latest study, A Tale of Two Revolts: India 1857 and the American Civil War, is due to be published by Penguin India at the end of 2009. In December 2007, his biography, Gandhi: The Man, his People, and the Empire, was chosen for the prestigious National Biennial Barpujari Prize of the Indian History Congress, given once in two years for an outstanding work of history. In 2009 he was elected President for two years of Initiatives of Change International, an NGO working for trust and reconciliation. A former member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament), Gandhi led the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1990.

Rajeshwari Pandharipande, Professor, Dept. of Religion

Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande is Professor of Linguistics, Religious Studies, Sanskrit and Comparative Literature,and member of the faculty of the Campus Honors Program at the University of Illinois. She holds two Ph.D. degrees, one in Sanskrit literature and Religion from India and the second in Linguistics from UIUC. Her research and Teaching primarily focus on Sociolinguistics, South Asian languages, and Language of Religion, Asian Mythology, Hinduism, and Religion in Diaspora. She has published four books and over sixty research articles in scholarly journals. She held the position of the Director of the program for the Study of Religion (2002-5). Professor Pandharipande received the title "University Scholar" by the Chancellor for her outstanding research at the University of Illinois, and Harriet and Charles Luckman All Campus Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, and William Prokasy Award for the outstanding excellence in undergraduate teaching at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This year (2008-09), she received the prestigious Award “University Distinguished Teacher Scholar’” for her outstanding record of teaching and research at UIUC.

Graduate Assistants

Nilufer Duygu Eriten, Graduate Assistant

Nilufer Duygu Eriten

Duygu is from Istanbul, Turkey, where she lived all her life before coming to the US in 2007. She studied in Istanbul University and has a BA and MA in economics. Currently, Duygu is a second year MA student in the CSAMES at the UIUC, and planning to graduate in Spring 2010. Her interests are the formation of the ethnic identities in the Middle East and in the Balkans during the nineteenth century, the late Ottoman Empire era and the Turkish and Kurdish nationalism.

Wanju Huang, Graduate Assistant

Wanju Huang

Wanju Huang is a doctoral student from Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research interests include children’s Internet activities (such as IM and online gaming) and holistic education. Her dissertation topic is the role of Instant Messaging of Taiwanese fifth graders in their development as full persons.