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Scholars-in-Residence
The CGS scholars-in-residence program hosts researchers for up to one year. Interested in becoming a CGS scholar-in-residence? Consider applying!
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Hany Zayed
Dr. Zayed is a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Having recently completed his doctoral studies, his dissertation titled "The 'Digital Transformation' of Egyptian Secondary Education: From Technological Reason to Technological Realism" offers a critical sociology of education and technology. It moves away from idealized visions and utopian promises of positive technological transformations, examining instead the empirical realities, unintended consequences, and politics of techno-educational reforms within their political-economic and socio-historical contexts.
Drawing on fifteen months of digital ethnographic fieldwork, including field interviews, event observations, content analysis, and digital social research, his work reveals how digital technologies facilitate the platformization of education. This process integrates transnational private actors into public education, dissipates the pedagogical functions of schools, pushes for an individualized form of learning, and generates copious amounts of data that are utilized in state dataveillance and surveillance capitalism.
Dr. Zayed has a growing track record of scholarly publications and international conferences. His works include "The Political Economy of Revolution: Karl Polanyi in Tahrir Square" in the Journal of Theory, Culture and Society, and "Researching Digital Sociality: Using WhatsApp to Study Educational Change" in the Journal of Digital Social Research.
During his time at the Center for Global Studies, Dr. Zayed will be working on research and publications on digital education with faculty mentors. He will also provide guest lectures and research presentations.
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Melissa Whatley
Dr. Melissa Whatley is assistant professor of international and global education at SIT Graduate Institute. Her research applies quantitative and mixed-methods approaches to improve our understanding of policies and practices that impact access and equity in U.S. international education, particularly in the community college context.
Dr. Whatley will be observing the International Studies Research Lab as part of her broader research into and collaboration with community college international educators.
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Yasuyo Inoue
Yasuyo Inoue is a professor of library science at Dokkyo University, Saitama, Japan. Her current research focuses on how the relationship between the US (especially American Library Association) and Japan impacted the education and training of librarians in post-war Japan, especially the professionalization of children’s and Young Adult librarians. There were several well-known donation programs during the period of occupation, such as the CARE project, the Silver-Bell children’s library (which later became the Hiroshima prefecture library), and children’s services at the American Library (CIE library), but the process of education and training of library staff to become professional children’s librarians has been little studied. One example is Keio Library School, which hosted ALA professionals to teach children’s services and YA services for several years. Carnegie foundation sent a list of children’s books as a model collection attached to this teaching program, but no content of the list is known. As a CGS/UIUC visiting scholar, Prof. Inoue will be conducting research at the ALA archive at UIUC, the Carnegie foundation archive at NYC, and the National Archive at Maryland.
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Li She
Dr. She is an Associate Professor of Arabic at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China. Dr. She is interested in the economic development of Saudi Arabia and the influence of China on that development.
China’s economic and trade cooperation with Arab countries has evolved over the past several decades and has influenced its economic development and globalization processes. More than 30 years ago, China conducted a low volume of trade with a limited number of Arab countries, and focused mainly on trading traditional commodities. Today, China trades with all Arab countries, and has become one of their most important trading partners.
Dr. She conducted a lecture discussed China’s shifting role from being the recipient of development expertise to being the provider of advanced equipment, technology and management experience in various Arab nations such as Kuwait, Iraq and Egypt.
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Quinn O’Dowd
Dr. Quinn O’Dowd recently received her PhD in sociology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In her research, she takes up global and transnational, digital sociology, and STS perspectives to analyze transformations of platform work. Her dissertation, “Organizing the Hosts: Flexible Strategies of Formalized and Collaborative Labor in Airbnb Property Management,” was based on 11 months of fieldwork in Prague, Czechia, and utilized ethnographic methods including participant observation and interviews. At the heart of Dr. O’Dowd’s research program are questions as to how the commercialization of hosting on Airbnb is connected to the governance of platform technologies at different points of the labor process. In contrast to arguments that the commercialization of services offered on platforms is a platform-driven phenomenon, Dr. O’Dowd’s research presents a much more complex picture of how the process is negotiated. In researching the micro-level of property management companies, she is interested in how platforms are disciplined not only at the global scale of Silicon Valley, but also how certain actors on the local scale, such as property managers, carve out their own channels of power. Understanding the multi-scalar entanglements between algorithm, human actors, and the materiality of platform labor is crucial to ensure the efficacy of political efforts to curtail its harmful effects.
Dr. O’Dowd is currently conducting fieldwork on Airbnb property management in northern Italy. In addition to studying property management companies, her current research aims to map out the complex networks of subsidiary organizations, ranging from small businesses providing laundry services to transnational companies handling remote guest relations, which enable the production of rental units for Airbnb. This research aims to better understand the dynamic relationship between platforms, organizations, and the spatial dimensions of platform power. She plans to write a monograph based on this multi-sited research.