The Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame has appointed six new faculty who are new to the Keough School and an additional three from within its ranks who are taking on expanded roles in the School. The new faculty bring diverse areas of expertise that include environmental policy; Latin American politics; peace agreements; Chinese politics; rural poverty and food insecurity; Korean studies; immigration law; domestic policy and national security; and international development and epidemiology.
“The range of talent and diversity of background of the ‘Keough faculty cohort of 2020’ reflects and helps to realize our aspiration to enter the upper ranks of international and global policy schools,” said Scott Appleby, Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School. “Each of these scholars brings world-class expertise in his or her field, leavened with a career-spanning commitment to advancing human dignity and constructive social change.”
Ellis Adams, assistant professor of geography and environmental policy, brings expertise in environmental policy with particular focus on water, sanitation, and hygiene. Professor Adams will work closely with Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative and the Eck Institute for Global Health. His work examines the social, political, institutional, and governance dimensions of environmental and natural resources. Trained as a human environmental geographer with expertise bridging the natural and social sciences, Adams is broadly interested in nature-society relations. His research to date has primarily focused on understanding human-water interactions in different urban contexts in the Global South. Adams holds a PhD in geography, environment, and spatial sciences from Michigan State University.
Abby Córdova, associate professor of global affairs, studies comparative politics, political behavior, and Latin American politics. She is affiliated with the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Professor Córdova’s research focuses on the consequences of inequality and marginalization for democracy, integrating topics related to crime and violence, gender inequality, economic inequality, and international migration in the context of Latin America and the Caribbean. She seeks to identify public policies that can improve the well-being of disadvantaged citizens and in this way advance democratic consolidation across the world.
An expert on survey research methodology, Córdova relies extensively on public opinion and elite survey data for her research. A 2019 visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute, Córdova also was the 2016-2017 Central American Visiting Scholar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
Josefina Echavarría is associate professor of the practice and director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) at the School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The PAM program is home to the largest existing collection of implementation data on intrastate peace agreements, and PAM team members regularly provide research support to ongoing peace processes on issues of peace agreement design and implementation. Echavarría’s research explores sustainable peacebuilding after violence, methods and facilitation of conflict transformation, studies and practices of reconciliation, and migration. She holds a PhD in peace, conflict, and democracy from the University Jaume I in Spain.
Kyle Jaros, associate professor of global affairs, is a scholar of Chinese politics and the politics of urban and regional development. Professor Jaros holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of Political Science. Before coming to Notre Dame, Jaros was associate professor in the political economy of China at the University of Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies. He also held a China Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Ash Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. Jaros earned a PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University.
Paul Winters is the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Global Affairs. His research and teaching focus on rural poverty and food insecurity and the evaluation of policies and programs designed to address these issues. Prior to joining the Keough School, Professor Winters was the associate vice-president in the Strategy and Knowledge Department and director of the Research and Impact Assessment Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome. From 2004-2015 he was a professor in the Department of Economics at American University in Washington, DC, where he taught courses on impact evaluation, development economics and environmental economics. Winters also has worked at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, the University of New England in Australia, and the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC.
Sharon J. Yoon has been appointed assistant professor of Korean studies and is affiliated with the School’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Professor Yoon holds a PhD in sociology from Princeton University. Her research focuses on global and transnational sociology; race, ethnicity, and migration; economic sociology; sociology of culture; qualitative and ethnographic methods; and East Asia. Yoon is an ethnographer who has spent many years conducting in-depth fieldwork in Korean diasporic communities in Seoul, Beijing, and Osaka. Her first book, The Cost of Belonging: An Ethnography of Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing’s Koreatown (Oxford University Press, 2020), analyzes how the rise of transnationalism has affected the social and economic lives of Korean migrants searching for wealth and stability in Beijing’s Korean enclave.
Three additional faculty members have been appointed to new roles within the Keough School.
Erin Corcoran, who has served as executive director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies since 2018, has been appointed associate teaching professor. Corcoran’s work has focused on immigration and refugee law, human rights law and other complex legal topics at the national and local level. Prior to joining the Kroc Institute, Corcoran provided counsel to Kids in Need of Defense and the Vera Institute of Justice. As a Professor of Law at University of New Hampshire School of Law, her research centered on protecting vulnerable non-citizens including developing best practices for adjudicating claims of unaccompanied children seeking international protection. Professor Corcoran, who will continue to serve as executive director of the Kroc Institute, holds a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.
Denis McDonough, who has served on the Keough School faculty since 2017, has been appointed professor of the practice of public policy. From February 2013 until January 20, 2017, McDonough served as White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama. In that role, McDonough managed the 4,000-member White House staff, as well as Cabinet Secretaries and agency leaders. He provided strategic advice to the President on the most significant domestic policy, national security, and management issues facing the federal government and enforced plans and accountability for performance and goals, maintaining the Obama Administration’s reputation for effective, ethical operation.
At the Keough School, Professor McDonough teaches courses for master of global affairs and undergraduate students in areas of his expertise, including public policy analysis and formulation, writing for policy, government and nongovernmental organization management and leadership, and selected topics (e.g. migration and refugees, national and international security). He also contributes policy expertise to the Keough School’s Global Policy Initiative.
Paul Perrin, the director of monitoring and evaluation at the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development, has been appointed associate professor of the practice. Perrin’s areas of expertise include international development; monitoring and evaluation; global health; epidemiology; humanitarian response; implementation science and operations research; dignity; mixed methods instrument development; and information and communications technology for development. Professor Perrin holds a PhD in international health and a certificate in humanitarian assistance from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before coming to Notre Dame, Perrin served as director for monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning at Catholic Relief Services and was a member of the senior management team for the Overseas Operations Division.
Also joining the Keough School as a visiting assistant professor of global health is Yenupini Joyce Adams, who is affiliated with the Eck Institute for Global Health. Adams researches maternal health, maternal mortality, and postpartum care, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Adams holds a PhD from the College of Nursing at Michigan State University. With clinical expertise in maternal and newborn nursing, Adams is passionate about using research and community interventions to improve maternal health, promote safe motherhood, and decrease maternal mortality and morbidity among vulnerable populations in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of maternal mortality is most severe.
The Keough School of Global Affairs advances integral human development through research, policy and practice; transformative educational programs; and partnerships for global engagement. Founded in 2014, the Keough School builds on the strengths of nine institutes focused on international research, scholarship, and education at Notre Dame. The School offers academic opportunities at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including a joint doctoral degree in peace research, a master of global affairs degree and a supplementary major in global affairs.
