Lynne Rudasill is Associate Professor of Library Administration and the Center for Global Studies Librarian. Her research is focused on national and supra-national information policy, and she has also published in the areas of library user instruction and web page development. Lynne has presented papers at conferences in Ireland, Poland, South Africa, and Greece. Professor Rudasill serves on the Faculty Senate, the Military Education Committee, and is a member of the Library's Executive Committee.
Karen Hewitt is Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Global Studies. She organizes educational programs and activities for university researchers, K-12 educators and students, and the general public. She is the Center's liaison to the NGO Affiliate program of the United Nations Department of Public Information, and is the administrative coordinator for the International High Schools Initiative in Illinois. For almost twenty years Karen worked in the publishing industry, including a decade as an acquisitions editor in the humanities at the University of Illinois Press. Before joining CGS, she was deputy director of a university art museum where she helped organize collaborative educational programs with community organizations and academic units in order to expand and diversify audiences. Karen received her master's degree in Community Informatics at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois. Her areas of research interest include community engagement, service learning, and sustained collaborations between institutions of higher education, K-12 schools, and community organizations.
Steve Witt, Associate Director of the Center for Global Studies, is a librarian with professional and research interests in the role of NGOs in knowledge creation and dissemination. He recently edited the volume Changing Roles of NGOs in the Creation, Storage, and Dissemination of Information in Developing Countries (K.G. Saur, 2006). Mr. Witt is an adjunct lecturer in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently serves as the Chair of the International Federation of Library Associations' (IFLA) Social Science Libraries' standing committee and member of IFLA's Governing Board.
Edward Kolodziej, Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science, is the Director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois. He has written or edited fourteen books on security, foreign policy, and global politics; contributed more than 100 articles to professional journals; and lectured in over 40 countries around the world. His latest publication is Security and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He is currently working on a volume on the theory and practice of global governance.
Hadi Salehi Esfahani is a Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, he currently serves as the Editor of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, the President of Middle East Economic Association, and the Director of Global Studies Initiative at the University of Illinois. 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 journals The Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, International Economic Review, Oxford Economic Review, and World Development, among others.
