Adams Bodomo is African Studies Programme Director at the School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong. He obtained his PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology after obtaining Bachelors and Masters Degrees at the University of Ghana. Dr Bodomo has given invited lectures on the topic of Africans in China and on general Africa - China relations studies at several leading universities, including Yale University, SOAS, and Peking University. His latest book is entitled: Africans in China: An Investigation into the African Presence in China and its Consequences on Africa - China Relations (in press with Cambria Press, NY).

"Africans in China"- Watch Adams Bodomo talk about his new book.

Rafael Campo is an internationally recognized physician and poet, a leader in medical humanities and the award-winning author of seven books. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, he is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Office for Multicultural Affairs. A prominent figure in the LGBT medical community, Dr. Campo will lead writing workshops for medical and creative writing students during his time on campus. He was nominated by the Arts, Humanities, and Medicine Program at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.

Mario Carretero is a Professor of Psychology at Autonoma University of Madrid, and one of the most prominent leaders studying how young people develop historical consciousness and how they understand history. His work has been at the forefront of the “history wars” since the 1990s over what and who should determine the curriculum on the Spanish-speaking world. Carretero’s research, unlike scholars who explore such issues by dissecting textbooks, is unique in its commitment to fieldwork - conducting interviews with adolescents and observing them in real life situations to understand the dynamics of cultural transmission and resistance. He was nominated by the School of Education.

Catherine Gousseff is a world-renowned leading figure in East-Central European history, politics and society of the twentieth Century, as well as of the former Soviet Union. A researcher at the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) she is currently affiliated with the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin. While at Stanford, she will share insights into her new research project on collective memories of displacements, diaspora politics in wartime and post-war eras, notably the Polish-Ukrainian population exchange (1944-1950). She was nominated by the Europe Center.

James Laidlaw is an anthropologist at Cambridge University. Professor Laidlaw is deeply engaged in fieldwork in Asia, researching the Buddhist ethics of self-cultivation, looking at how the traditional means by which Buddhists practice self-cultivation –asceticism, meditation- are undergoing a massive restructuring. Practices once reserved for male monks are now being adopted by women and laity. James Laidlaw has edited seven books, the two latest ones on the cognitive approaches to religion, exploring them from an ethnographic perspective. He is also an expert on Jainism, a tradition of monastic renunciation like Buddhism that is also the religion of choice of a larger lay population. He was nominated by the Department of Anthropology.

Monica Quijada is a high-profile public intellectual and historian of Spain and Latin America at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid. Her engagement with the UN in Argentina (working with refugees) and her directorship of the investigation carried out in the late 1990s regarding Nazi activities during the Second World War and in post-war Argentina shows her commitment to the public space. She has written extensively on dictatorship, populism, and war and their effect on the public sphere in Argentina and Spain as well as on the relationship between nineteenth-century Latin American states and their indigenous populations. She was nominated by the History Department and the Center for Latin American Studies.

Monica Quijada will be visiting during Fall 2011

M.K. Raina is one of the most distinguished theatre practitioners in India today. He is a graduate of India’s premier theatre institution, the National School of Drama based in New Delhi and his unique talents have been recognized by India’s highest awards, including the B.V. Karanth Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2007. One of the few Indian artists who tackles the complex questions of human rights, democracy, and militant terror in the Kashmir valley--his birthplace--his work is informed by his dynamic engagement in secular activism and ranges from Kashmiri folk theatre (working with the Bhand Pather, Kashmiri folk performers) to classical Hindustani and avant-garde cinema. He was nominated by the Centre for South Asia. M.K. Raina will be present on campus in October 2011.

Patrick Wolfe is a historian at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a premier historian of settler colonialism, currently working on a comparative transnational history of settler-colonial discourses of race in Australia, Brazil, the United States, and Israel/Palestine. While at Stanford, he will give lectures based on his core work on Australia and also on his forthcoming book Settler Colonialism and the American West, 1865-1904 (Princeton University Press). He was nominated by the Bill Lane Center for the American West.