Category: Profiles

Jessika Rezende Souza da Silva Profile

ProfilesJessika Rezende Souza da Silva is a historian, educator, and activist in the struggle for anti-racist education. She has a master’s degree in History Teaching and is a PhD student in Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – in collaboration with New York University.

Jessika Rezende Souza da Silva

A member of the Laboratory of Studies and Research in History Teaching (LEPEH) and of the Group of Studies and Research in Anti-Racist Education (GEPEAR), both at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, she researches multicultural education, postcolonial curriculum, education in museums and sites of memory, teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture, and Anti-racist Education.

As a researcher, in her doctoral work, she has been studying the educational potential of museums in a transnational perspective. Putting in dialogue the exhibitions of the Afro-Brazil Museum in São Paulo and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D. C., she has been reflecting on how museum exhibits constitute narratives that educate and give way to intercultural communication, sense-making, and multicultural education. The partial results of this ongoing research have already been presented in lectures and congresses at Brazilian and US universities, such as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, New York University, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

Currently, Jessika works in the public school system of the state of Rio de Janeiro where she teaches high school. She also participates in a special program for Knowledge and Practices of Basic Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, teaching and advising students, who are mostly teachers from public and private schools in the country seeking to improve their pedagogical practices.

Publication:

Souza, J. R. (2016). Entre a cruz e o terreiro: uma análise em torno da integração entre a religiosidade afro-brasileira e o Ensino de História no Museu do Negro. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Work for CID:
Jessika Rezende Souza da Silva wrote KC97: Anti-Racist Education, and translated it into Portuguese. She also translated KC35: Media Ecology.

Sheyla Finkelshteyn Profile

ProfilesSheyla Finkelshteyn is an international student from Uzbekistan. She is currently working on her PhD in Communication at Ohio University.

Sheyla Finkelshteyn

Sheyla speaks English, Russian and Spanish, and has traveled to 17 countries, leading to a focus in intercultural communication. She is a member of the International and Intercultural Communication Division and Vice Chair Elect at the Peace and Conflict Division of the National Communication Association. Her dissertation focuses on Jewish Community Organizing efforts using theories like Co-cultural Theory and Communication Theory of Identity. She is also an engaged scholar, spending a lot of her time outside of academia helping build communities through fund-raising and event management.

Work for CID:
Sheyla Finkelshteyn translated KC3: Intercultural Competence and KC71: Safe Space into Russian.

Maria F. Townsend Profile

ProfilesMaría Fernanda Townsend is a graduate student in the Bilingual Education program at New York University from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Maria Townsend
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Maria holds a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Relay Graduate School of Education in New York and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and French from the University of Notre Dame. As a researcher, María’s area of study is bilingual early childhood education, and specifically the impact bilingual early childhood programs have on children’s linguistic and academic development as well as on communities of immigrants and other minority groups. María recently completed the Teach For America program, through which she taught 3K and Pre-K in a community based organization on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Work for CID:
María Fernanda Townsend translated KC35: Media Ecology into Spanish.

Atsushi Katayama Profile

Profiles

Atsushi Katayama is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at Tokyo Keizai University in Japan.

Atsushi Katayama

He earned his MA in Media Studies from New York University. He has been working in the advertising industry as a creative director and copywriter for about thirty years. Throughout his experience in both  the professional and academic fields, he has been fascinated by the concept of “narrative” and the ways in which it works as a communication system in advertising.

Work for CID:

Atsushi Katayama translated KC35: Media Ecology into Japanese. He has also reviewed translations into Japanese.

Eva Berger Profile

ProfilesEva Berger is a senior lecturer at the School of Media Studies of the College of Management Academic Studies (COLMAN), where she also served as Dean (2006-2012). She holds a B.A. from the Department of Film and Television at Tel-Aviv University (1985) and an M.A. (1986) and a Ph.D (1991) in Media Ecology from New York University.

Eva Berger

Dr. Berger has taught at NYU, Tel Aviv University, the Kibbutzim College of Education and the Sam Spiegel Film School, and has been part of the faculty at COLMAN for close to 30 years. She has served on numerous boards and public service organizations including the Israel Peace Initiative, Israel Press Council, and Institute of General Semantics.

Eva has been a frequent commentator in the Israeli press on issues relating to media, language, gender and culture. She served on the editorial board of EME: Explorations in Media Ecology (the journal of the Media Ecology Association), and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Giluy Daat, a Multidisciplinary Journal on Education, Society and Culture, as well as member of the Board of Trustees of  ETC.: A Review of General Semantics. She served as Chairwoman of the board of Women in the Picture (the Association for the Advancement of Women in the Visual Arts).

She is the author of various articles and book chapters in the fields of Communication and Media Studies. Eva’s research interests are Media Ecology, Gender, Advertising, Media and Technology, Health Communication, and General Semantics.

Publications include:

Berger, E. & Berger, I. (2014). The communication panacea: Pediatrics and general semantics. Fort Worth, TX: Institute of General Semantics.

Berger, E., & Berger, I. ( 2012). Hassan, Ami and Dalia’s mom:  Narrative medicine in pediatrics.  In R. Ahmed & B. Bates (Eds.), Medical communication in clinical contexts. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.

Berger, E., & Na’aman, D. (2011). Combat cuties: Photographs of Israeli women soldiers in the Israeli press since the 2006 Lebanon war. Media, War and Conflict, 4(3), 269 – 286.

Berger, E. (2010). Recapitulation, medical imaging technologies and media of communication: The medium is the message. EME: Explorations in Media Ecology, 9(4), 225-237.

Berger, E. (2008). Orality v. monotheism or media v. narratives: Biblical heroes and the media environment of the spoken word. In S. Drucker & G. Gumpert (Eds.), Heroes in a global world. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Berger, E. (2008). The Postmanian dialogue: Education on TV, for TV and about TV. In N. Aloni (Ed.), Empowering dialogues in humanistic education: Theoretical and practical aspects. Bnei Brak: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers, Sifriat Kav Adom. [Hebrew]

Berger, E., & Lavie-Dinur, A. (2007). Conservative outlook and liberal reflection: Homosexuals in Israeli television commercials. EME: Explorations in Media Ecology, 6(1), 35-48.

Shoval, G., Zalsman, G., Polakevitch, J., Shtein, N., Sommerfeld, E., Berger, E., & Apter, A. (2005). Effect of the broadcast of a television documentary about a teenager’s suicide in Israel on suicidal behavior and methods. Crisis, 26(1), 20-24.

Berger, E. (2004). The exhaustion of the literacy metaphor in education. EME: Explorations in Media Ecology, 3(2), 131-137.

Work for CID:
Eva Berger translated KC:35 Media Ecology into Hebrew.

Alessia Maselli Profile

ProfilesAlessia Maselli is a graduate of the International Education M.A. program at New York University (USA), currently working as an Exchange Program officer at Bocconi University (Milan, Italy), contributing to managing the exchange experience of over 1000 incoming exchange students from 200+ partner universities.

Alessia Maselli

Her research interests focus on the impact of globalization on education: more specifically, she is interested in understanding the relationship between international education and political changes on the global level, in the internationalization of the curriculum in higher education through the lens of critical pedagogy, and, more largely, on the international student experience. As a dual Italian American citizen, Alessia’s deep understanding of the international student experience translated into a strong personal and academic passion for improving it, as demonstrated by her various leadership roles, such as that of Assistant Teacher in the New International Student Seminar at NYU.

Alessia also contributed to the translation from English to Italian of the two UNESCO pedagogical guides on the prevention of violent extremism through education, in collaboration with the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (Venice, Italy) and the Centre for International Cooperation (Trento, Italy): A Teacher’s Guide on the Prevention of Violent Extremism (UNESCO, 2016) and Preventing violent extremism through education: a guide for policy-makers (UNESCO, 2017).

Work for CID:
Alessia Maselli translated KC35: Media Ecology into Italian.

Huan Zou Profile

ProfilesHuan ZOU is a lecturer at Shanghai International Studies University. From 2021 to 2023, she provided professional service as coordinator of onsite data/material collection for projects of climate change, migration, and adaptation at the Education University of Hong Kong. Before this, she worked as an editor in social sciences and foreign literature at Shanghai Translation Publishing House (2016-21).

ZOU HuanShe graduated from Fudan University with a Bachelor’s degree in Translation and the University of Hong Kong with a Master’s degree in China Development Studies. Her research interests span China studies, historical climate change and its educational practice, comparative literature, and native American studies. She has contributed to publishing projects of notable prize winners including The Sympathizer (100th Pulitzer Prize winner) & The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Collected Poems: 1931-2001 by Czeslaw Milosz (Nobel Laureate), No Room for Small Dreams: The Making of Modern Israel by Shimon Peres (former Israeli President), as well as works by Paul A. Cohen, Ezra F. Vogel, and Henry Kissinger.

She also works as a translator. Published translation works include:

Ishiguro, N. (2024). Common ground [共有之地]. [Zou, H., Trans.] Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Johnson, D. (2022). Sisters [姐妹] [Zou, H., Trans.] Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House.

Johnson, D. (2021). Everything under [深水] [Zou, H., Trans.] Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House.

St. Aubyn, E. (2020). Never mind [算了] [Zou, H., Trans.] Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Lum, C. M. K. (2019). Media ecology and media education: Reflections on media literacy in a globalized communication ecology [媒介环境学和媒体教育: 反思全球化传播生态中的媒体素养] [Zou, H., Trans.] Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication, 41(4), 2019.

Buckley, P. (2018). Classic Penguin: Cover to cover [经典企鹅：从封面到封面] [Zou, H., Trans.] Shanghai: People’s Publishing House.

Work for CID:
Huan Zou has served as a reviewer for Simplified Chinese.

Timea Németh Profile

ProfilesTimea Németh, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages for Specific Purposes at the Medical School of the University of Pécs, Hungary. She teaches English and Hungarian for medical purposes and intercultural communication and competence for Hungarian and international undergraduate medical students.

Timea NémethHer research interests include multiculturalism, intercultural communication and competence, intercultural language learning, study abroad programmes, internationalisation and internationalisation at home processes as well as the use of online educational tools in teaching. She is actively involved in international projects focusing on multicultural education and the development of intercultural competence in healthcare settings. She is member of the Hungarian Association of Teachers and Researchers of Languages for Specific Purposes and the European Association of Language Teachers for Healthcare. She is on ResearchGate; for further details, see her institutional website.

Selected publications:

Németh, T., & Szántóné, C. A. (2016). Intercultural orientation of freshmen at the medical school of the University of Pécs. Porta Lingua, 77-85.

Németh, T., & Csongor, A. (2018). Internationalisation at home: The case of non-mobile medical students in Hungary. Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies, 69(2), 160-170.

Németh, T., & Tseligka, T. (2018). Initial results of a virtual exchange project between Greece and Hungary to improve medical students’ intercultural and English language competence . ELTA JOURNAL , 6(6), 77-88.

Work for CID:
Timea Németh translated KC94: Cross-Cultural Kids and KC97: Anti-Racist Education into Hungarian. She has also served as a reviewer for Hungarian.

Katalin Egri Ku-Mesu Profile

Profiles

Katalin Egri Ku-Mesu, PhD, is Associate Tutor at the School of Arts, University of Leicester, UK.

Katalin Egri Ku-Mesu

 

She has a multidisciplinary background in languages, literatures and cultures, and she has taught and supervised at Hungarian and British universities at under- and postgraduate level in the broad disciplinary areas of English language and linguistics, English, American and postcolonial literature, English teacher training and education and applied linguistics. She has also taught Russian to students specializing in Russian language and literature and Hungarian to speakers of other languages. Katalin has also worked as Head of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) for a pathway organization, managing the delivery of EAP programs and supporting teachers across sixteen countries in Asia, Africa, South America and Europe.

Katalin’s research interests fall within the fields of postcolonial literature, World Englishes, cross-cultural pragmatics, sociolinguistics and cultural text-analysis. She is also interested in multilingualism, English language teaching and English teacher education, specifically the exploitation of literary material for language teaching purposes, the applicability of Western language teaching methods elsewhere in the world and the effect of extensive reading on language learning. She has researched various aspects of African literature, including the works of Ghanaian and Nigerian writers, cultural reference in Ghanaian English language fiction, and reading and censorship in Africa as well as the role of the mother tongue in teaching and learning English, creativity in the language classroom, academic literacies, genre pedagogy and language assessment.

For more information, please visit Katalin’s ORCiD or her LinkedIn profile.

Work for CID:
Katalin Egri Ku-Mesu translated KC23: Afrocentricity and KC73: Argumentative Dialogue into Hungarian.

Zhichao Qiu Profile

ProfilesZhichao Qiu (M.A. New York University, 2017, B.A. Ohio State University & Beijing International Studies University, 2016) is currently a program manager at International Division, Beihang University, Beijing, China.

Zhichao Qiu

He earned his M.A. degree from New York University in Foreign Language Education with a focus on Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. His research interests include the internationalization of higher education and cross-cultural communication. He has experiences not only in teaching foreign languages, but also in managing partnerships, student mobility programs, and intercultural training. His pioneering project “Buddy Program” at Beihang University has equipped over 300 students with advanced intercultural communication skills and global competence.

He is committed to pursuing research and professional work in intercultural communication and international higher education as his lifelong career.

Work for CID:
Zhichao Qiu translated KC35: Media Ecology into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.