UC Faculty Abroad Profiles

Last Updated: Tuesday October 07 2008

Australia Brazil China Chile Egypt France Germany India Italy	Japan Mexico Russia Scandinavia (Denmark & Sweden) Spain UK/Ireland  Study Center Address List

Australia Melbourne Professor Russell L. Jones, Study Center Director UCB, Department of Plant & Microbial Biology January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2008 Russell Jones completed his BSc and PhD degrees plant biology at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. After a postdoctoral at the Michigan State University Plant Research Lab, he joined the University of California, Berkeley faculty as an Assistant Professor of Botany in 1966. At Berkeley Professor Jones teaches undergraduate classes in biology and plant physiology as well as graduate seminars in plant biochemistry. He particularly enjoys mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students. Jones was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 to study at the University of Nottingham, received an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist award in 1986 to study at the University of Gottingen, was a RIKEN Eminent Scientist at RIKEN, Japan, in 1996, and was awarded a Sir Frederick McMaster Research Fellowship to study at the CSIRO, Canberra in 2006. In addition to his research program that focuses on how plant hormones function to regulate growth and development, Jones has served as an editor of several journals and has co-authored a successful textbook on plant biochemistry and molecular biology. He is currently working on a revision of this book and on a new volume directed at undergraduates in plant biology. Jones chaired the Botany Department at UC Berkeley from 1981 to 1986 and was president of his professional society, the American Society of Plant Biologists, from 1993-1994. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001 and a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biology in 2007. He has received Honorary Doctorates from the Mendel University of Agriculture, Czech Republic and the University of Toulouse, France.

Australia Melbourne Professor Sharon Block, Study Center Director UCI, Department of History January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

Brazil Rio de Janeiro Professor Steven M. Helfand, Study Center Director UCR, Department of Economics August 1, 2006 through July 31, 2009 Steven Helfand received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. He was a UC EAP student in Mexico City as an undergraduate, and a Fulbright scholar in Brazil as a graduate student. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Economics at UCR since 1995. His research focuses on rural poverty and agricultural policy in Brazil. In April, 2007 he organized a large international conference in Brasilia on “Rural Poverty in Brazil: the Role of Public Policy.” Several recent publications include: “The Impact of Policy Reforms on Rural Poverty in Brazil: Evidence from Three States in the 1990s,” “The Impact of Sector-Specific and Economy-Wide Policy Reforms: The Case of Brazilian Agriculture, 1980-98,” and “Farm Size and the Determinants of Productive Efficiency in the Brazilian Center-West.”

Chile Santiago Professor Heidi Tinsman, Study Center Director UCI, Department of History January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009 Introduction pending.

China Beijing Professor King-Kok Cheung, Study Center Director UCLA, Departments of English and Asian American Studies January 1, 2008 through August 31, 2010 King-Kok Cheung received her PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and joined the English Department at UCLA in the same year. She is currently Professor of English and Asian American Studies at UCLA. Her interests include American Ethnic Literatures, Asian American Literature, Renaissance British Literature, and Comparative Heroic Traditions. She has received several awards including an ACLS fellowship, a Mellon fellowship, a Fulbright lecturing and research award to Hong Kong, a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award to Germany, and a resident fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford. Her publications include Articulate Silences (1993), Words Matter (2000), An Interethnic Companion to Asian American literature (1996), and The Heath Anthology of American Literature (2002-2007). She is currently working on a monograph on transnational and interracial approaches to Chinese American literature.

China Shanghai Emeritus Professor John C. Jamieson, Study Center Director UCB, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures July 1, 2004 through December 31, 2008 John Jamieson is Emeritus Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Berkeley where he received academic degrees through the PhD. His scholarly focus is on 9th through 13th century China, in particular cultural influences between China and northern neighbors who would occupy China in whole or part for nearly all of the last millennium. His collateral focus on applied linguistics has produced several widely used Chinese language texts. He studied as a graduate student at National Taiwan University, Seoul National and Koryo Universities, and has been Visiting Professor at Cambridge, Kyoto and Peking Universities as well as at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In service to the Education Abroad Program, he was founding director of the Peking University (1986-88) and Shanghai Study Centers (2004-present) as well as of the California House – Shanghai (2007-present). He also chaired a committee that led to the establishment of the Yonsei University Center in the early ‘90s. On secondment from Berkeley at the time diplomatic relations were reestablished between the US and China, he served for two years in Beijing at the US Embassy (1979-81) as Academic Attaché.

China Shanghai Professor Hu Ying, Study Center Director UCI, Department of East Asian Languages & Literature January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009 Introduction and photo pending.

Egypt Cairo Professor Fadi A. Fathallah, Study Center Director UCD, Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

France Bordeaux & Paris Professor Barbara B. Prézelin, Study Center Director UCSB, Department of Biology, Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology (EEMB) July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

France Lyon Professor Christopher Newfield, Study Center Director UCSB, Department of English July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

Germany Göttingen Professor Margaret Morse, Study Center Director UCSC, Department of Digital Arts/Film & Digital Media July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

India Delhi Professor Vinay Lal, Study Center Director UCLA, Department of History July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009 Vinay Lal joined the history faculty at UCLA in 1993 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He holds a joint appointment in Asian American Studies and is also Chair of the South Asia Interdisciplinary Program (IDP). Vinay was raised in India, Japan, Indonesia, and the US, and, appropriately enough, among his present interests is the question of how to theorize diasporas, and the particular trajectories taken by the worldwide Indian diaspora. He also writes widely on Indian history, the popular and public culture of India, global politics, and the politics of knowledge systems. He also has a column on American affairs in the "Economic and Political Weekly", India's most respected left-wing journal. His most recent books include Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2002), The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (Oxford, 2003), Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture (Penguin, 2005), Introducing Hinduism (London: Icon Books, 2005), and, co-edited with Ashis Nandy, The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the Twenty-first Century (Viking Penguin, 2005).

Italy Immersion Programs Professor Marina Pianca, Study Center Director UCR, Department of Hispanic Studies July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009 Professor Marina Pianca joined the University of California Riverside in 1990. She is currently Professor of Latin American Studies, Theatre, Film and Visual Culture and former Chair of the Latin American Studies Program. She came to UCR after having taught in Universities in Argentina, Panama, and the Eastern United States. Professor Pianca received her Ph.D from UCLA in Romance Linguistics and Literatures. While at UCLA she also pursued an MFA in Film and Television. Also trained at the Université d’Aix-Marseille and at the Sorbonne, she is well versed in the articulations of Latin American, European and United States cultures. After serving as co-curator of the First International Latin American Theatre Festival in San Francisco, California, in 1972, the American Theatre Association awarded her a Letter of Commendation for “having established the first bridges between Latin American and Chicano/Latino theatres in the United States” thus joining the pioneers of a then emerging discipline in the United States: Latin American Theatre. Since then she has published several books on Latin American Theatre and Cultural Studies, including Testimonios de Teatro Latinoamericano which enters into dialogue with the theatre and performative practices that emerged in extreme circumstances: concentration camps in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, war zones in Nicaragua and Peru, women’s prisons, exile and neo-exile. Since 1984 she is founder and editor of the journal Diogenes: Anuario Critico del Teatro Latinoamericano. Professor Pianca also undertook Full Psychoanalytic training and practiced for close to a decade in California. Her current book project, The Dislocated Self addresses the many forms of dislocation present in this “globalized” Post-Cold War era –from psychic dislocations produced by profound violence to hope, to geographic, historical, cultural and ideological disarticulations of previous places of attachment, In this work, she explores both the causes and the impact of these dislocations on memory, identity, cultural production, social engagement and power.

Japan Meiji-Gakuin Professor Janet S. Shibamoto Smith, Visiting Professor UCD, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Group in Linguistics April 1, through July 31, 2008 and September 1, through December 31, 2008 Janet Shibamoto Smith is Professor of Anthropology and a member of the Linguistics Group at the University of California, Davis, where she has been on the faculty since 1978. Her academic specialty is Japanese language, gender, and sexuality, with a particular emphasis on the dynamic interaction between ideology and practice. She also is involved in a project aimed at elucidating the cultural models of romantic love through textual analyses of popular print and televisual materials spanning the period 1970 to the present. Recent publications include the edited volume Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People (with Shigeko Okamoto, Oxford University Press 2004). She is currently at work on a book entitled, Texting True Love: Romance in Japan.

Japan Tokyo Professor Susan Blakeley Klein, Study Center Director UCI, Departments of Religion, East Asian Languages and Literatures July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009 Susan Klein joined the East Asian faculty at UC Irvine in 1992. She is currently an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, and from 1999 to June 2007 she was Director of the Religious Studies Program, which she helped to found. The main focus of her research has been on the ways that literature and theater attempt to symbolically resolve certain cultural problematics. In so doing, she pays close attention to both thematic and performative aspects of the texts, and how those aspects may be symptomatic of their historical context. As a feminist scholar she is particularly interested in identifying the blind spots and limitations of contemporary western theory when confronted with texts from differing temporal and cultural contexts. She began her scholarly career examining the political and social context for the emergence in the early 1960s of the postmodern dance form Ankoku Butoh (Ankoku Buto: The Premodern and Postmodern Influences on the Dance of Utter Darkness, 1989); she then turned her research focus back in time to medieval Japan and Noh Theater. She is currently working on a two-volume research project. The first volume, (Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan, 2003) examines the development of a group of thirteenth century secret esoteric commentaries that religiously allegorize two tenth-century secular texts, The Tales of Ise and the first imperial waka poetry anthology Kokinwakashu. The second volume (Dancing the Dharma) will be on the use of those commentaries by fifteenth and sixteenth-century playwrights to create Noh plays which function as complex religious and political allegories. In the future she hopes to return to a project (which she began working on in 1989) on changing constructions of gender and subjectivity in Japanese literature and theater, with special attention to the historical development of ghosts and other supernatural creatures. She has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and grants from the Fulbright program (to Japan), Woodrow Wilson/Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her M.A. and Ph.D. in East Asian Literature was granted by Cornell University.

Mexico Mexico City Professor Max Parra, Study Center Director UCSD, Department of Literature September 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

Russia Moscow Professor Viktor K. Zhivov, Study Center Director UCB, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2009 Viktor Zhivov joined the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCB in 1995. He previously taught at Moscow State University, Russia, and, as a visiting professor at UCLA and several German and Italian universities. He retains a position at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since his Berkeley appointment, he has taught there graduate and undergraduate courses in Slavic historical linguistics, and history of Russian literature and culture, history of Orthodox culture (mainly of the medieval and early modern periods) and has participated in various departmental activities (serving as a chair of the Teaching committee, as a member of the Admissions committee and so on). His scholarly interests are broad ranging; they include Russian and Byzantine cultural history, Orthodox Church history and history of medieval Christian religious culture, Russian and Slavic historical linguistics, and language typology. In these fields he has published more than ten books and over two hundred other scholarly contributions. He is presently working on two major projects. One of them is a monumental two-volume history of the Russian written language (the project is now in its final stages); the other deals with sin, salvation and penitential discipline in Orthodox religious history.

Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) Copenhagen and Lund Professor Robert Alan Lindenmann, Study Center Director UCLA, School of Dentistry July 1, 2008 through August 31, 2009 Introduction and photo pending.

Spain Barcelona Professor Jordi Aladro-Font, Study Center Director UCSC, Department of Literature July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2009 Professor Jordi Aladro has been on the UCSC faculty since 1992. He received his Masters´degrees from the University of Barcelona in Spanish Literature (1983) and Comparative Literature (1985) and he earned his PhD from the University at Albany, State University of New York in Spanish Golden Age Literature (1992). He is a member of the Focused Research Group in Pre- and Early- Modern Studies at UCSC, and a member of the Cervantes Society. His scholarly interests are literatures of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with special focus on Cervantes and religious iconography. He has published numerous articles on Don Quijote, sermons and society, the picaresque novel, female figures of the Bible, etc. He also published several books ranging from Pedro Malon de Echaide to the History of Printing in Girona; his main research interest, however, lies in the figure of Mary Magdalen and the multiple re-readings, manipulations and interpretations through the Reform and Counter Reform periods. He has published widely on this topic.

Spain Granada Emeritus Professor Ramon Piñon, Study Center Director UCSD, Department of Biological Sciences July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009 Introduction and photo pending.

Spain Madrid Professor Giorgio Perissinotto, Study Center Director UCSB, Department of Spanish and Portuguese January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009 Giorgio Perissinotto is Professor of Hispanic Languages and Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Santa Barbara. He joined the UCSB faculty in 1976. A native of Italy, he studied in Italy, Spain, Mexico and the United States (Columbia University, M.A., Ph.D.). He moved to California in 1977 and has been Department Chair as well as Member and Chair of several Academic Senate Committees. He has published widely in the fields of Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics, with an emphasis on language variation and the formation of Spanish-speaking communities in the Western United States and in Mexico.

United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland Edinburgh Professor Michael Parrish, Study Center Director UCSD, Department of History July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009 Introduction and photo pending.

United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland London Professor Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Study Center Director UCSB, Department of Sociology July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2010 Introduction and photo pending.

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