Global Academic Partnership (GAP) Fellows

The Global Academic Partnership (GAP) aims to strengthen interdisciplinary research and curriculum development on global themes, enhance international scholarly ties, and raising the international profile at the University of Pittsburgh. GAP awards support interdisciplinary research collaborations, curriculum development, student exchanges, and other scholarly endeavors that include the creation or development of meaningful and sustainable institutional partnerships with international universities, foreign governments, international organizations, NGO's, and think tanks. Preference is given to projects that align with the Center’s research initiatives in Contested Cities, Critical World Ecologies, Global Health, Human Rights and Social Justice, and Migrations.

Current GAP Fellows

Aala Abdelgadir

Aala Abdelgadir is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. She is a comparative scholar of identity and politics. In the European context, her research investigates the impact of institutional policies and societal attitudes on the meaningful inclusion of Muslim minorities. In sub-Saharan Africa, Abdelgadir's work examines the historical origins of conservative Islamic ideas and identities and their implications for contemporary political attitudes and behaviors. Professors Aala Abdelgadir (Political Science) and Andrea Peña-Vasquez (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs), in collaboration with Andrés Besserer Rayas (CUNY Graduate Center/El Colegio de México), have received a Global Academic Partnership (GAP) grant to launch the Migrant Regularization Archive and Data (MiRADa) project. MiRADa will create a global, publicly accessible database and digital repository documenting migrant regularization policies from 1950 to the present. By compiling source documents, conducting expert surveys, and building a global scholarly network, the project aims to bring greater conceptual clarity and visibility to an underexamined state response to irregular migration. The initiative emphasizes cross-regional research collaboration, with El Colegio de México as the lead institutional partner, and will serve scholars, policymakers, and advocates through a user-friendly platform and public-facing launch event at Pitt in 2027.

Andrea S. Medrano

Andrea S. Medrano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research explores how neighborhood contexts—such as exposure to community violence and sexual harassment—affect adolescents’ psychological and academic outcomes.Guided by a resilience framework and a strengths-based perspective, she investigates protective factors at the individual, family, neighborhood, and cultural levels that help buffer youth from negative experiences. Her work primarily focuses on Latino/a/x adolescents and their parents in both the United States and Mexico, with growing attention to the intersection of multiple marginalized identities.Dr Medrano employs a range of methodological approaches in her research, including cross-sectional and longitudinal statistical analyses, qualitative studies, and mixed-method designs. Dr. Andrea S. Medrano (Department of Psychology) and Dr. José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández (Department of Medicine) have received a Global Academic Partnership (GAP) award to launch an interdisciplinary, cross-border initiative addressing gender-based violence (GBV) and mental health in Honduras. In collaboration with Centro de Derechos de Mujeres (CDM), a leading Honduran NGO, the project will assess the impact of GBV on women’s psychological well-being, implement trauma-informed empowerment workshops, and build sustainable partnerships that foster healing and resilience. Grounded in human rights frameworks and mental health research, the project aims to center survivor voices and elevate community-driven solutions. This initiative exemplifies the Global Studies Center’s mission to promote justice-oriented global engagement, highlighting the transformative power of international collaboration in addressing critical social challenges.

Andrea Peña-Vasquez

Andrea Peña-Vasquez is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) with a focus on Immigration/Migration. Her research focuses on issues of legal status and identity documentation, race/ethnicity, and migration governance in multi-level states. Her work has been supported by the J. William Fulbright Foundation, the American Political Science Association, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Professors Aala Abdelgadir (Political Science) and Andrea Peña-Vasquez (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs) and, in collaboration with Andrés Besserer Rayas (CUNY Graduate Center/El Colegio de México), have received a Global Academic Partnership (GAP) grant to launch the Migrant Regularization Archive and Data (MiRADa) project. MiRADa will create a global, publicly accessible database and digital repository documenting migrant regularization policies from 1950 to the present. By compiling source documents, conducting expert surveys, and building a global scholarly network, the project aims to bring greater conceptual clarity and visibility to an underexamined state response to irregular migration.The initiative emphasizes cross-regional research collaboration, with El Colegio de México as the lead institutional partner, and will serve scholars, policymakers, and advocates through a user-friendly platform and public-facing launch event at Pitt in 2027.

Past GAP Fellows

Tyler Bickford

Tyler Bickford teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in children’s literature and childhood studies in the Department of English. He advises graduate students working in those fields, as well as students studying media and technology and using ethnographic methods. Trained as an ethnomusicologist, his research focuses on contemporary children's media, especially popular music and digital technology, using ethnographic and cultural studies methods. He is the author of Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020) and Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children's Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017). Over the next two years, Pitt’s Children’s Literature Program will partner with the Children’s Literature Unit at Newcastle University in the UK to launch a global scholarly network focused on children’s literature and social justice. The Children’s Literature Programs at Pitt and Newcastle have collaborated closely since 2018, and the Global Academic Partnership award will allow them to grow their network to include partner institutions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They will host a series of virtual and in person events (including simultaneous interpretation) focused on exploring the diverse meanings of social justice in children’s literature from different regions and sharing works that have not been translated into English. They hope to launch a critical series of translations of children’s books with social justice themes that have not been recognized by traditional publishers.

Professor of Children's Literature and Childhood Studies and 2022-2024 GAP Recipient

Adam Lowenstein

Adam Lowenstein works on issues relating to the cinema as a mode of historical, cultural, and aesthetic confrontation. His teaching and research link these issues to the relays between genre films and art films, cinema and digital media, the politics of spectatorship, and the construction of national cinemas (with particular attention to American, Australian, British, Canadian, French, Israeli, Italian, and Japanese cases). His areas of interest range from surrealism to trauma studies to Frankfurt School film and cultural theory. He is especially invested in horror studies and is the Director of Pitt’s Horror Studies Working Group as well as a board member of the George A. Romero Foundation. He played a central role in the acquisition of the George A. Romero Collection for Pitt’s Horror Studies Archive, an initiative that continues to grow through the University Library System’s Department of Archives and Special Collections. As GAP Fellow Dr. Lowenstein will work with colleagues to diversify and globalize the Horror Studies Archive recently created by Pitt's University Library System. The Global Horror Studies Archival and Research Network will be the first of its kind. Horror is a truly global vocabulary. Each nation has its own historically- and culturally- specific inflections regarding horror, but nearly every country in the world has an artistic horror tradition of some kind that is recognizable through the lens of the others, and all are shaped by transnational influences and global developments. To learn more and attend a virtual Global Horror Studios Session click here!

Professor

Philip Williams

As the Posvar Chair for International Security Studies and Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center, Williams conducts several student working groups, including the Russian Contract Killer Database which has compiled extensive evidence on Russian contract killings since the 1990s. Aside from his extensive consulting work for organizations like the United Nations and the CIA, he has also given Congressional testimony on organized crime.

Professor, Chair at the Matthew B. Ridgway Center

Abi Fapohunda

Dr. Abi Fapohunda is an instructor in the Department of Africana Studies as well as a trained epidemiologist and health educator with a focus on research in health equity, health in the African diaspora, and effectiveness of community-based public health initiatives. Over the next two years, aided by the GAP fellowship, Dr. Fapohunda has partnered with faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and Babcock University in Lagos, Nigeria in order to collect and share information regarding breast and cervical cancer awareness in underserved communities through the Global TEACH Project. Public health students, supported by this interdisciplinary group of faculty, will work to create a bridge between two specific communities of women: “hard-to-reach" women in Appalachia and the “invisible” women in Lagos, Nigeria. Dr. Fapohunda’s work will facilitate global partnership and additionally, help Pitt build a sustainable relationship with the Lakeshore Cancer Center in Lagos.

Assistant Professor