Directors

Kim Rapp received an MA in African Languages and Literature and a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After serving as the Associate Director of the Center for African Studies at Stanford she became the Executive Director of ICA in 2008. Specializing in the sociology of educational administration, Rapp’s doctoral research was funded in part by the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE), and she was a Wisconsin-Spencer Doctoral Research Program Fellow. Her dissertation examined the effects of area studies programs on doctoral degree completion. Her publications include studies of the state of MA, MLS and undergraduate accounting education in the United States. Before coming to Stanford she worked at community colleges, state universities and national foundations, but the majority of her administrative experience has involved international and area studies. Her teaching experience has ranged from African literature to international research methods and she has lived and worked in several countries including England, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal. She is passionate about facilitating the international interests and research goals of students and faculty.

A professor of American history, Gordon Chang’s research focuses on the history of United States-East Asia relations and on Asian American history.  He is affiliated with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, the American Studies Program, International Relations Program, and the Center for East Asian Studies.  He is particularly interested in the historical connections between race and ethnicity in America and foreign relations, and explores these interconnections in his teaching and scholarship.  He is a recipient of both Guggenheim and ACLS fellowships, and has been a two-time fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.Chang is the editor or author of a number of essays and books, including American Asian Art: A History, 1850 - 1970, Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present (2006), Asian Americans and Politics: An Exploration(2001), Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Wartime Writing, 1942-1945 (1997), and Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (1990).  Chinese American Voices is a collaboration with two other historians and presents the words of Chinese Americans from the mid-19th century to the recent past.  Many of the personal narratives included in the book appear in print for the first time and offer unique insights into Chinese American experiences.  He also helped complete a collection of the last work of Yuji Ichioka, the pioneer historian of Japanese Americans who died a few years ago.

Rodolfo Dirzo, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, is also Bing Professor in Environmental Science, where he directs his own lab (The Dirzo Lab) that looks at a broad range of topics, from species interactions and community ecology to genetic diversity and population ecology. He teaches, among other biology courses, "Tropical Ecology and Conservation," a course that brings Stanford students to a biological preserve in Mexico over spring break each year, followed by lab analysis upon return to campus, followed by individual and group student presentations. Formerly at Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Professor Dirzo also directed the Los Tuxtlas Research Station near Veracruz, Mexico. His interests are centered on the study of plant-animal interactions, trying to understand how the ecology and evolution of plants are affected by their biotic environment, particularly animals. Professor Dirzo’s work is focused on tropical forest ecosystems, primarily in Mexico, Costa Rica and Amazonia.
  He has published extensively in journals such as Evolution and Ecology Letters. He received his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Wales in 1980.

Thomas Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor in South Asian Studies and Professor in Anthropology. He is also the Director of Stanford’s Center for South Asian Studies where he is charged with building a substantial new program. He has many and broad interests spanning South Asia and Southern Africa, several cities and multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism. Much of Professor Hansen’s fieldwork was done during the tumultuous and tense years in the beginning of the 1990s when conflicts between Hindu militants and Muslims defined national agendas and produced frequent violent clashes in the streets. Out of this work came two books: The Saffron Wave. Democracy and Hindu nationalism in Modern India (Princeton 1999) which explores the larger phenomenon of Hindu nationalism in the light of the dynamics of India’s democratic experience, and Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in postcolonial Bombay (Princeton 2001) which explores the historical processes and contemporary conflicts that led to the rise of violent socioreligious conflict and the renaming of the city in 2005.

Professor Milani is the Director of the Iranian Studies Program and Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is in US-Iran relations as well as in Iranian cultural, political, and security issues.  His courses at Stanford include "US Relations with Iran," "The Aesthetics of Dissent: The Case of Islamic Iran," "Politics in Modern Iran," and "Islam, Iran and the West." Milani is the author of many books, including: Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (1998),The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran in English (2004) and Persian (2004), Eminent Persions (Syracuse, 2008), The Myth of the Great Satan, (Hoover, 2010), and - most recently - The Shah (New York, 2011).  Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English. His articles have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers including The Washington Quarterly, the Encyclopedia Iranica, the Hoover Digest, Iranshenasi, the Journal of the Middle East, Middle East Journal, and The New York Review of Books.

Michael Tomz is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.Tomz has published in the fields of international relations, American politics, comparative politics, and statistical methods. He is the author of Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries and numerous articles in political science and economics journals.Tomz received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award, given to a scholar who, within 10 years of earning a Ph.D., has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. He has also won the Giovanni Sartori Award for the best book developing or applying qualitative methods; the Jack L. Walker Award for the best article on Political Organizations and Parties; the best paper award from the APSA section on Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior; the best paper award from the APSA section on Experimental Research; and the Okidata Best Research Software Award. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation.In recognition of his teaching, Tomz has received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Cox Medal for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research at Stanford. He founded and continues to direct the Summer Research College program for undergraduates in political science.Tomz holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University; a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Hoover Institution, the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, and the International Monetary Fund.