NIU Today

NIU’s Pick Museum of Anthropology has been awarded a $19,750 grant from the Dunham Fund for a two-year project to document and share the experiences of Burmese Karen refugees living in northern Illinois. Led by the museum’s research assistant, Rachel Drochter, the project employs NIU students who will work with a local Karen Advisory Group...

Phillippe Peycam, director of the International Institute of Asian Studies, will visit NIU at noon Wednesday, March 30, to present “Rethinking Asian Studies in the Global Perspective.” His talk takes place in Room 100 of the Campus Life Building. Sponsors include the Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures,...

Cooking together, relaxing over board games, sharing family stories and making new international friendships. That is the essence of the host family experience, as two NIU families know very well. Chemistry professor David Ballantine and engineering professor Michael Haji-Sheikh – and their families – have hosted more than 50 high school students and adult leaders over...

NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) and the Center for Non-Governmental Organization Leadership and Development (NGOLD) bid farewell Wednesday, Nov. 4, to 21 young Southeast Asian leaders participating in the Leading and Organizing for Change in Southeast Asia (LOCSEA) institute. Beginning Sept. 30, the trip concluded with a five-day study tour of the South...

In 1978, the Department of Political Science hired Dwight King, an Indonesian specialist from Connecticut College. Clark Neher had been teaching political science and Thai studies at NIU for nearly a decade, and the two Southeast Asian scholars soon became fast friends as colleagues, neighbors and as companions on early morning runs four times a...

NIU’s four area studies centers will be out in force with food, music and dance from three regions of the world from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, at this year’s International Area Studies Open House. The annual event, held outdoors on College View Court on east campus, will be hosted by the...

The NIU Music Building will resonate with the sounds from around the world this week when the “2015 World Music Symposium: From the Exotic to the Global” takes place today through Saturday, April 11. Nearly 100 music educators, ethnomusicologists, composers, performers and interdisciplinary scholars from around the world will converge at the School of Music...

For Sherine Elsawa, an assistant professor of biology at NIU, hosting international students for short-term home stays has been all about giving her son the experience of having brothers – if only for weeks at a time. “We decided to host because Kareem is an only child, and we thought it might be a good experience...

Cultural anthropologist and NIU Presidential Engagement Professor Susan Russell is no stranger to building bridges between people – in particular, those of the United States and of her area of specialty, the Philippines. Since 2004, Russell has directed U.S. Department of State-funded programs to bring Muslim and Christian youth and adult leaders from war-torn Mindanao...

NIU alumnus Anies Baswedan (Ph.D., political science, 2007), president of Paramadina University in Jakarta, has been named minister of Primary and Secondary Education in the cabinet of new Indonesia President Joko Widodo. After receiving his Ph.D. from NIU, Baswedan made his mark as a researcher and public policy consultant before being named rector at Paramadina. In 2008,...

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) two Title VI grants totaling $2 million to continue promoting the study and research of Southeast Asian languages and cultures over the next four years. This is the fifth time CSEAS has received such funding since its designation as a National...

NIU’s three area studies centers – the Center for Burma Studies, the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) – will host their fifth annual Area Studies Open House from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, on College View Court. Events include a regional food...