Global Studies in Education Online Masters Program
GSE Online Faculty & Graduate Assistants
Faculty
GSE Faculty includes world-renowned scholars from different countries. They have extensive international networks and have conducted research in most regions of the world. Scroll down to read profiles of each outstanding member!
Cameron McCarthy
Director of Global Studies in Education
Dr. Cameron McCarthy is Communication Scholar and University Scholar in the Department of Educational Policy, Leadership and Organization (EPOL) and in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor McCarthy teaches courses in globalization sudies, postcolonialism, mass communications theory and cultural studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published widely on topics related to globalization, canon formation, race and the class conquest of the city, postcolonialism, problems with neoMarxist writings on race and education, institutional support for teaching, and school ritual and adolescent identities in journals such as Harvard Educational Review, Oxford Review of Education, Studies in Linguistic Sciences, The British Journal of the Sociology of Education, The European Journal of Cultural Studies and Education, Contemporary Sociology, Communications Inquiry, Cultural Studies, Discourse among many others. He is the author or co-author of several books including: Reading and Teaching the Postcolonial (Columbia University, TC Press, 2001), Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality (SUNY Press, 2003) The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation (Routledge, 1998), Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method and Policy (Peter Lang, 2007), and Transnational Perspectives on Culture, Policy, and Education: Redirecting Cultural Studies in Neoliberal Times (Peter Lang, 2008) and New Times: Making Sense of Critical/Cultural Theory in a Digital Age (Peter Lang, 2011). Professor McCarthy is currently one of the lead-investigators of the “Elite Schools in Globalizing Circumstances” global ethnography study of youth and education across 5 continents: Australia, Africa, India, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
Tina Besley
Dr. Tina Besley is a Research Professor in Educational Policy Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a New Zealander who has lived in USA for the last 5 years. Prior to this she spent 5 years at University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Tina has been a secondary school teacher, school counsellor and has owned small businesses. She is a prolific scholar, writing eleven books in only ten years in academia. Her research ranges widely over philosophy of education, school counseling, educational politics and policy, globalization, subjectivity, youth studies, e-learning, social networking and entrepreneurial studies in education. Her four books on Michel Foucault have been critically acclaimed. In 2009, her book, Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of Self (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), co-authored with Michael A. Peters, was awarded the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award. In 2009 she was made a Faculty Fellow in the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership, College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is Co-Editor of E-Learning and Digital Media, http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/ and Associate Editor of Educational Policy and Theory, http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0013-1857. For further details, see: http://ed.uiuc.edu/eps/frp/tbesley
Nicholas Burbules
Dr. Nicholas Burbules is the Grayce Wicall Gauthier Professor of Educational Policy at UIUC. Dr. Burbules is a leading philosopher of education, whose research focuses on philosophy of education; teaching and dialogue; critical social and political theory; and technology and education. His major current projects include work on ethical and policy issues with new technologies in education; virtual reality; collaboration; and dialogue and "third spaces." He has authored and edited many books and currently edits the prestigious journal, Educational Theory. He is a co-editor of Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives (Routledge 2000). For further details see: http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/
Peter Kuchinke
Dr. Peter Kuchinke is an associate professor in Human Resource Education where he also serves as Graduate Programs Coordinator. Dr. Kuchinke's research interests focus on the history and philosophy of workforce education and on leadership and management development in public and private organizations. A native of Germany with residency in the US for over 25 years, he conducts much of his research in US- European comparative settings. For further details see: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/frp/k/kuchinke
Nicole Lamers
Dr. Nicole Lamers is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership. She also holds a partial appointment in the Office of International Programs at the College of Education. Her research and experience are in the fields of Internationalization – both at the Secondary and Post-Secondary level – as well as in the emerging field of Global Studies – and more specifically Global Studies in Education. As a graduate student, she was involved in the initial development and implementation of the Global Studies in Education Online Program, which eventually became a part of her dissertation research. She has also been involved in the revision of curriculum for the on-campus undergraduate major of Global Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Science. Her current research revolves around both the theoretical and practical aspects of a pedagogy for Global Studies. She is also interested in what schools have to learn from alternative school movements on both a local and global scale.
Adrienne Lo
Dr. Adrienne Lo is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the co-editor (with Angela Reyes) of the edited volume Beyond Yellow English: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America (Oxford, 2009) and the co-editor of a forthcoming volume, South Korea’s Education Exodus: Pre-College Study Abroad and the Global Project. Her articles have been published in The Journal of Sociolinguistics, Linguistics and Education, The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Pragmatics. Her current research examines discourses of globalization and citizenship in portrayals of Korean Americans in the South Korea popular media. For further details, see: http://www.anthro.illinois.edu/people/adr
Michael Peters
Dr. Michael A. Peters is a professor of Educational Policy Studies at UIUC and adjunct professor in the School of Art, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia . He is executive editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory, and editor of Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning and Digital Media as well as a number of books series, including Global Studies in Education (Peter Lang). His research interests are in educational theory, philosophy and political economy of education and knowledge. He has published some fifty books in these fields, including most recently the trilogy Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (2009) Global Creation: Space, Connection and Universities in the Age of the Knowledge Economy (2010), Imagination: Three Models of Imagination in the Age of the Knowledge Economy (2010) (AESA Critics Book Award 2010), (all with Simon Marginson & Peter Murphy); Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of the Self (2008) (AESA Critics Book Award 2009), and Building Knowledge Cultures: Educational and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism (2006), both with Tina (A.C.) Besley. For further details, see: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/frp/mpet001
Fazal Rizvi
Dr. Fazal Rizvi is an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, having worked there for almost a decade. He created and directed GSE online program until the end of 2009. He is now a professor in Global Studies at the University of Melbourne in Australia, from where he will continute to teach in Illinois's GSE Program. Fazal was born in India and educated in India, Australia and the UK. His major research interests include: globalization and education policy, higher education, post-colonialism and the politics of cultural difference and the problems of democratic reforms in education. He is currently working on issues of mobility of students and the internationalization of higher education. His recent books include: Globalization and the Study of Education (Blackwell-Wiley 2009) and Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge 2010). For further details, see: http://education.illinois.edu/frp/r/frizvi
Graduate Assistants
GSE is fortunate to have a large cohort of PhD students who act as teaching and course assistants for the online EdM courses. At present, we have three PhD students who are EdM alumni (James, Lucinda, and Majhon) whose experiences in the online program are invaluable for students.
Anjali Forber-Pratt
Leadership and Policy Online Coordinator
Anjali Forber-Pratt is pursuing a Ph.D. in Human Resource Education. She is interested in role models and leadership development specifically for students with disabilities. Anjali is also a member of the 2010 World Championship U.S. Paralympic Track and Field Team.
Daniel Araya
Origin: Canada
The focus of Dan's research is the confluence of digital technologies and cultural globalization on systems of education. He was selected for the 2009 Oxford Internet Institute's Summer Doctoral Programme (SDP) and the 2010 HASTAC scholars fellowship program. He has recently co-edited a book with Michael A. Peters, Education in the Creative Economy (2010), published by Peter Lang, New York. For further details, see: www.danielaraya.com
Huseyin Esen
Origin: Turkey
Huseyin Esen earned his Master’s degree from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. His master’s thesis was on multiculturalism and the lack of multicultural education policy in Turkey which is one of the very first contributions in the field in Turkey. Huseyin has a wide range of scholarly interests related to education and education policy formation: globalization, citizenship education, identity formation, cosmopolitanism, postmodernity, neoliberalism, biopolitics, biotechnology, information technology, philosophy of technology, restructuring of higher education institutions in the 21st century.
Margaret Fitzpatrick
Origin: U.S.A.
Margaret Fitzpatrick has spent more than seven years studying and teaching overseas, including studies at the National University of Singapore and the University of Heidelberg, and teaching experiences in Japan, Korea, Egypt and Kuwait. She earned her bacherlor's degree in English literature from UIUC, and she also holds one master's degree in secondary English education from the University of St. Thomas, and another master's degree in communication/print journalism from Stanford University. She has also worked as a journalist and editor, and she is interested in global girls education.
James Geary
Origin: U.S.A.
James Geary received his Master’s degree from UIUC in Global Studies in Education (online program), writing extensively about Taiwan where he lived and taught for ten years. Before returning to pursue studies at UIUC, he was teaching Literature and Writing at an international school in Phuket, Thailand. His current research interests include the theory of secularization, spirituality in education, and ideas of global citizenship in the realm of education.
Lucinda Morgan

Lucinda obtained her BA in East Asian Studies with a minor in Religion from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. She received a TESL Certificate from St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, and taught for three years in provincial teacher training colleges in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces and worked for three years as the Language Development Coordinator at a British Columbia offshore high school in Nanjing. While working full-time in China, Lucinda earned her Ed.M. in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Global Studies in Education from in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education’s online program. Now living in Champaign, Illinois, Lucinda is a recipient of FLAS Fellowships to pursue advanced studies of Mandarin, and is a graduate research assistant in the College of Education’s Office of International Programs. Her research interests include educational policy and reform, identity formation, globalization, the internationalization of education, and the East Asian region.
Mousumi Mukherjee
Origin: India
Mousumi Mukherjee is a Fulbright alumna from India. She is the secretary of South Asia (SIG) at Comparative and International Education Society. Recently she participated in the 14th World Congress of Comparative and International Education Societies in Istanbul, Turkey. She has 10 years teaching experience (higher ed. level) in India and here in the U.S. She received M.A and M.Phil degrees in English and Comparative Literature from Calcutta University, India. With her educational background in language and cultural studies from India, she further received an M.A in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University Chicago. For her M.A thesis, Mousumi compared attitudes towards global civic-mindedness and engagement among two groups of students studying abroad in Italy and China. She is passionate about education and social change. Her scholarly and research interests are in the educational, social and cultural aspects of Globalization. In the future she wants to continue teaching and get actively involved in educational policymaking across the world and especially in South Asia.
Rushika Patel
Origin: India
Rushika's undergraduate training was in Sociology, Psychology and Secondary English Literature Education at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Her graduate training was Linguistics at the University if North Texas and Social Justice Education as the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She began her career as a Detroit Public Schools teacher and has worked in various educational setting across the US and Asia over the past 10 years. She is currently a PhD student analyzing globalization, neoliberalism and race and gender inequality in US schooling with a focus on South Asian working class women and girls.
Majhon Phillips
Origin: U.S.A.
Majhon earned degrees in German and Music from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in 2008. She was fortunate enough to travel abroad many times throughout her educational career, the most recent was when she lived, studied, and taught in Jena, Germany. She began a Masters in German from Portland State University in Oregon after finishing her Undergraduate program, however, when she discovered the GSE program online, she knew that she had to jump on the opportunity. She recently moved to the Champaign/Urbana area with her husband to begin work on her PhD through the Global Studies Program. She teaches music and language privately, as well as working with the GSE program. Her current research interests include popular culture and discourse, art and aesthetics in education, technology and global education, youth culture, and educational theory.
Fauzia Rahman
Origin: U.S.A.
Prior to her doctoral studies Fauzia obtained her B.A. in History with a focus on South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UIUC. She then went on to teach History and English to middle school and high school students at a small private religious school in the south suburbs of Chicago. Soon after she obtained her Master’s in Education from the department of Educational Policy Studies at UIUC. Her area of specialization was in the history of education and religious education, where she looked at the historical and contemporary role of moral education within U.S. institutions of learning. Her current research work is on how globalization has shaped and re-shaped narratives of identity, gender, and development within the context of education, specifically women’s/girl’s education. Soon she is hoping to begin her ethnographic study of a small women’s madrasa located in a rural village near the Afghan border in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
Gabriela Walker
Origin: Romania
Gabriela Walker obtained her B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and continued to study special education at the University of Georgia , U.S.A, where she earned her Education Specialist degree. Her research interests are global educational policies, with an emphasis on European special educational policies, and applied teaching methodologies with students with special needs, especially students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Gabriela's work experiences include news-related editorial work at various newspapers in Romania , teaching children with a range of special education needs both in Romania and the U.S. , teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses in the U.S. , and being involved in various research projects as part of her graduate assistantship responsibilities.

