Center Associates

Harry Anastasiou
Professor of International Peace and Conflict Studies, Conflict Resolution Graduate Program and International Studies Program, Portland State University
Contact Information:
Office: NH 231
Phone:503.725-9711
E-mail: harrya@pdx.edu

Harry Anastasiou is professor of International Peace and Conflict Studies at Portland State University. He has taught, published and lectured widely on nationalism, ethnic conflict, multi-dimensional peacebuilding, and international peace and conflict issues. He has designed and facilitated innumerable interethnic conflict-resolution workshops, policy developing think tanks, dialogue groups, and peace-enhancing projects and programs. For two decades, he has been playing a leading role in peace-building initiatives engaging Greek and Turkish citizens and policy leaders from Greece, Turkey and ethnically divided Cyprus. Professor Anastasiou has been an invited lecturer for The International Visitor Leadership Program of the U.S. Department of State. He has also been an invited frequent lecturer for the “Great Decisions” series of the World Affairs Council, and has been included in the organization’s annual Recommended Speakers Book since 2007. In 2010 he was appointed by Rotary International as an academic advisor to the Rotary Peace Centers Committee.

Pelin Basci
Associate Professor, Department of World Languages & Literatures, Turkish Language and Literature, PSU
Contact Information:
Office: NH 490
Phone: (503) 725.9598
E-mail: bascik@pdx.edu

Prof. Basci received her BA and MA from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin (1995) with additional doctoral coursework at Ankara University, Faculty of Letters. She is a recipient of various awards including a Fulbright scholarship for doctoral work and research scholarship by Free University, Kennedy Institute in Berlin (1989). She taught at Ankara University, Faculty of Letters, and at the University of Texas-Austin before her appointment at PSU in 1997. Dr. Basci served as editor of the AATT Bulletin, a publication of the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages between 1999-2006. PDF format copies and issues can be accessed at http://www.princeton.edu/~turkish/aatt/bulletin.htm

Dr. Basci is the co-designer of the Turkish Proficiency Assessment Tool, a computer and Internet-based proficiency test (2003),  developed as part of the STAMP project of the Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the University of Oregon with funds from the US Department of Education. She is also the co-author (secondary author) with Yildiray Erdener of Learning a Foreign Language. Book and two audio tapes. Ed. Gönül Ertem. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Turkish Studies, 1996.  Dr. Basci’s work appeared in publications such as Milliyet Sanat, Olusum, Gençlik ve Toplum, Birikim, in addition to the selection below. Her research and teaching interests include Turkish language instruction (first-through third-year modern standard Turkish), Turkish literature (the novel), Turkish cinema, television and popular culture, and women and gender in Turkey.

Evguenia Davidova
Associates Professor, Department of International Studies, PSU
Contact Information:
Office: 337 EH
Phone: 503-725-8992
E-mail: evguenia@pdx.edu

Prof. Davidova is an associate professor of International Studies and University Studies at Portland State University. Her research interest is in the social history of Southeastern Europe and her research topics include Balkan commerce, modernization and nationalism, and travel practices. Dr. Davidova has published in East European Quarterly, Journal of European Economic History, New Perspectives on Turkey, Studia Pontica (Mediterranées), and Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Europeennes, among other journals, and has just completed a book manuscript for Brill, The Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States through the Eyes of the Three Generations of Merchants (1780s-1890s). Her latest article, “Gender and Culture in the Turkish Province: The Observations of a Russian Woman Traveler (1868),” was published in Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History 6 (2012): 79-85.

Grant Farr 
Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, PSU
Contact Information:
E-mail: farrg@pdx.edu

Prof. Farr has worked and lived in the Middle East for over 40 years, beginning with his experience in Afghanistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1966 to 1968. He has traveled several times in the last few years to Afghanistan for research.  In addition, he was a professor at Pahlavi University, in Shiraz, Iran, a Senior Fulbright Professor at the University of Peshawar, and the Director of a university exchange program at Osh State University in Osh, Kyrgyzstan.  He was the Director of the Middle East Studies Center at PSU. He worked as a consultant with various groups and agencies in Washington DC on the issue of Afghanistan and Islam.

James Grehan
Associate Professor, Department of History, Portland State University
Director, Middle East Studies Center
Contact Information:
Office: CH 441T
Phone: 503-725-3994
E-mail: grehanjp@pdx.edu

Kristen Kern
Fine and Performing Arts Librarian
Liaison to Middle East Studies
Contact Information:
Office: 220F Millar Library
Phone: 503-725-5218
E-mail: kernk@pdx.edu 

Kristen Kern, Fine and Performing Arts Librarian since 2009, was formerly preservation/catalog librarian at PSU. She has AB degree in Arabic from the University of Michigan. She completed her MA degree in Speech Communication at Portland State University. She holds a MLS degree from Emporia State University.

Tugrul Keskin
Assistant Professor, Department of International Studies, PSU
Contact information:
Office: EH 309
Phone: (202) 378.8606
E-mail: tugrulkeskin@pdx.edu

Prof. Keskin is an Assistant Professor of International and Middle Eastern Studies and an affiliated faculty of Black Studies, Sociology and the Center for Turkish Studies at Portland State University. He is also the Middle East Studies Coordinator for International Studies. His research and teaching interests include Sociology of Islam and the Middle East, Social and Political Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Islamic Movements, Development and Urbanization in the Middle East, Sociology of Africa, and Modern Kurdish, Uyghur and Turkish Nationalism.  Previously, Dr. Keskin taught as an instructor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech University and has also taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at James Madison University and Radford University. He received his PhD in Sociology from Virginia Tech, with certificate degrees in Africana Studies, Social and Political Thought, and International Research and Development. He is the founder and moderator of the Sociology of Islam mailing list, and editor of the Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies Newsletter: http://www.pdx.edu/sociologyofislam. Dr. Keskin has recently had his edited book, The Sociology of Islam: Secularism Economy and Politics published by Garnet/Ithaca Press, 2011.Tugrul Keskin is a board member of Sociologists Without Borders and serves as a book review editor of Societies Without Borders http://societieswithoutborders.org/. 

Jon Mandaville
Professor, Department of History, PSU
Former Middle East Studies Center Director
Contact Information:
Office: CH 441-J
Phone: 503-725-3983
E-mail: mandavillej@pdx.edu

Anne McClanan
Professor, Department of Art, School of Fine & Performing Arts, PSU
Contact Information:
Office: Art Building, Room 123
Phone: (503) 725.3338
E-mail: anne@pdx.edu

Prof. McClanan teaches medieval art, art history methodology, and thematic classes, such as Nature into Art. She brings the first-hand study of artworks to her teaching whenever possible, and with her students has developed a website of Medieval objects in Portland collections: www.medievalportland.pdx.edu. She has published a book on Byzantine empresses and edited an anthology on Iconoclasm and another on the material culture of sex, procreation and marriage. Her current research investigates images of animals in early medieval art.  She studied at Harvard, the Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities and has excavated Roman and Medieval sites in Turkey, Jordan and Israel.

Peter Noordijk
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Political Sciences, School of Government, PSU
Contact Information:
Office: URBN 530H
Phone: (503) 725.8309
E-mail:noordijk@pdx.edu

Peter Noordijk is an adjunct assistant professor of Political Science at Portland State University and a researcher with the Center for Turkish Studies.  His research areas are International Political Economy, the European Union, and government effectiveness and policy diffusion- especially in the European context.  He has published reviewed articles on a diverse range of topics including International Politics, European Integration, Public Administration, Forest Economics and Sociology. Mixing his research interest in social capital with real-life, he is also active in a number of local civic and sports organizations.

Peter Paquet
Director of the Watershed Management Professional Program, PSU Hatfield School of Government Executive Leadership Institute
Contact Information:
E-mail: ppaquet@nwcouncil.org

Dr. Peter Paquet, Ph.D. is the director of the Watershed Management Professional Program. He is also the Fish and Wildlife Division Manager of the Northwest Power Planning Council, a regional agency overseeing the Columbia River watershed hydroelectric system. Peter has been on the Council staff since 1983. Initially he was responsible for the water budget and Council dealings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He was lead staffer in the development of protected areas and is currently taking the lead in wildlife mitigation planning. He came to the Council from the Oregon Department of Energy where he served as an environmental specialist. Before that, Peter worked for NASA and taught biology at the University of Santa Clara in California. Peter has undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology and a Ph.D. in environmental science and natural resources from Portland State University. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles including "Adaptive Strategies for the Management of Ecosystems: The Columbia River Experience" published by the American Fisheries Society. In January 2000, Dr. Paquet represented PSU and the Watershed Management Professional Program as an advisor to the G.A.P. Project on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Turkey. In addition to his role as the WMPP Director, Dr. Paquet teaches the WMPP Columbia Watershed Salmon and the Endangered Species Act course.

Leopoldo Rodriguez
Associate Professor, Department of International Studies, PSU
Contact information:
Office: EH 346
Phone: (503) 725.8245
E-mail: leopoldo@pdx.edu

Prof. Rodriguez is Associate Professor of International Studies and Economics. He coordinates the International Development Studies track of the International Studies major. During his doctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin his focus was on political economy, development and financial crises. In addition to analyzing the Mexican and Argentine crises of 1995 and 2002, Prof. Rodriguez has researched the intersection of migration and labor markets in North Cyprus and in Oregon. More recently he has reoriented his work towards issues of sustainability in development. Prof. Rodriguez remains interested in Turkey and North Cyprus and hopes to reactivate his research in the area.

Dannelle D. Stevens, PhD, Graduate School of Education, Curriculum & Instruction, PSU
Office: Graduate School of Education Bldg., 602F
Phone: 503-725-4679
Email: stevensd@pdx.edu

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Jamie Surface
Office Coordinator and Assistant to the Director                                                                                         Graduate Research Assistant, Public Affairs and Policy Program