By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications
The International Institute welcomes friends and new colleagues as center directors in the 2026–27 academic year.
UCLA International Institute, October 27, 2026 — The International Institute is delighted to announce that several new faculty members have joined (or will join) the institute in the 2026–27 academic year as center directors, associate directors and interim directors. We welcome both friends and new colleagues to these posts and thank the faculty members who recently stepped down from these positions for their many contributions, as well as their gracious and effective service.
Asia Pacific Center
UCLA historian Andrea S. Goldman has become the new director of the Asian Pacific Center, or APC. She takes the helm from UCLA Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies Min Zhou, who served in the role from 2016–2026. Goldman previously served as interim director of the center during the 2024–2025 academic year.
An associate professor of history, Goldman specializes in the cultural and social history of early modern and pre-modern China (1000–2000 CE). Her research explores the intersections of culture and power in Qing and modern China, focusing on urban history, gender, sexuality and opera performance.
Her first book, “Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770–1900” (Stanford, 2012), was awarded the 2014 Joseph A. Levenson Prize for the best monograph on China (pre-1900) of the Association for Asian Studies. She is co-translator (with Zhu Xingwei 朱星威) of the Chinese-language version of the book: “Wenhua zhong de zhengzhi: xiqu biaoyan yu Qingdu shehui (文化中的政治：戏曲表演与清都社会)”(Social Sciences Academic Press of China, or SSAP, 2018). The translation was selected for a Top Ten 2018 Book Award by SSAP.
The UCLA historian is presently working on her second book project, tentatively titled “The Frenchman and the Chinese Opera: Imperialism, Homoeroticism and Transnational Masculinities in China, 1900–1950.” In addition to her scholarly work, Goldman has performed in Taiwan with a semi-professional xiangsheng (Chinese comedy) troupe and apprenticed with a professional xiangsheng master in Beijing.
The institute deeply thanks Min Zhou for her 10 years of service as director of APC, to which she made many exceptional and enduring contributions. In addition to strengthening the center’s global profile and academic impact, Zhou helped raise nearly $8 million in private gifts and government grants. Under her leadership, the Taiwan Studies program grew from the original Taiwan Studies Lectureship into four major initiatives, including a Taiwan studies endowment. Zhou also created the Global Chinese Philanthropy Initiative, the China-and-Beyond Forum, the Cantonese Heritage Initiative, a course on Asian community and revenue generating summer institutes.
Next year, comparative literature and cultural theorist Shu-mei Shih will become interim director of APC for winter quarter 2027, when Goldman will be on leave. The Irving and Jean Stone Professor in Humanities at UCLA, Shih has a joint academic appointment as a professor of comparative literature, Asian languages and cultures, and Asian American studies at UCLA. She is well-known for her work on transnationalism, creolization, comparative modernism, Sinophone studies, postcolonial studies, critical race theory and relational studies.
Shih is recognized as a pioneer in Taiwan studies, having spent decades promoting the study of Taiwan as both an active participant in global history, a generator of ideas and an emblematic site for the decolonization of knowledge, and has directed the UCLA-National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) Taiwan Studies Initiative since its inception in 2017. The program was grown to encompass annual conferences (with subsequent publications), graduate student and faculty fellowships and exchanges, and other publication projects. Professor Shih also serves on the APC Faculty Executive Committee and is faculty advisor to the Taiwan Studies Working Group at UCLA.
Burkle Center for International Relations
Connor Huff, assistant professor of political science, has become associate director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. Huff joined UCLA in 2024, after teaching at Rice University as a faculty member for several years. During the 2024–2025 academic year, he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Global Department for Social Development at the World Bank.
Huff’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of conflict, shining a spotlight on how state-perpetrated human rights violations, repression and discrimination shape individual behavior on the battlefield. His book, “Why Rebels Reject Peace: Injustice and the Making of Extremists” (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), shows how the repressive behavior of governments — both before conflicts begin and as they unfold — is a central reason why rebels refuse to accept compromise peace settlements. His published research also addresses how discriminatory policies, institutions and beliefs lead to inequality in who bears the costs of war.
The institute expresses its sincere gratitude to Margaret Peters, professor and vice chair for graduate studies in the UCLA Department of Political Science and professor in the International Institute, for her service as associate director during the period July 2024–February 2026. During her tenure, Peter held numerous book events and talks on international events, such as the U.S. invasion of Venezuela. With help from the Burkle Center, she also hosted the International Political Economy Society Meeting, a prestigious event of over 150 political scientists and economists.
Center for India and South Asia
Bharat Jayram Venkat has become interim director of the Center for India and South Asia (CISA) for fall quarter 2026, stepping in for Director Anna Morcom during her sabbatical leave. An associate professor at UCLA, Venkat has a joint appointment in the Institute for Society & Genetics, department of history and department of anthropology. He is also the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, which conducts interdisciplinary research on thermal inequality.
Venkat’s first book, “At the Limits of Cure” (Duke, 2021; Bloomsbury India, 2022), garnered three awards: the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the RAI Wellcome Medal (awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Wellcome Trust) and the Edie Turner Book Prize for Ethnographic Writing of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. An historical and ethnographic study of tuberculosis treatment in India, the book explores the questions: What does it mean to be cured? and What does it mean for a cure to come undone?
His second book, “Swelter: Our Bodies in a Warming World” (forthcoming July 2027, Crown Publishing, U.S./ Picador, UK) examines the history and fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world.
Center for Near Eastern Studies
Kevan Harris, associate professor and vice chair in the UCLA Department of Sociology, has become interim director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, or CNES. Harris, who has a joint academic appointment in the UCLA International Institute, took the reins from Aomar Boum over the past summer. A professor of anthropology and the Maurice Amado Endowed Professor in Sephardic Studies, Boum served as interim CNES director during the 2025–2026 academic year. Ali Behdad, John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature in the Department of English, officially stepped down as the director of CNES, which he led from 2018–2026, at the end of June 2026.
Harris is a comparative historical sociologist with a research focus on modern Iran and the Middle East, as well as social inequality, the welfare state and civil protest. His first book, “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran” (UC Press, 2017) investigates how the expansion of social policy reshaped Iranian society after 1979. The book won the 2018 Nikki Keddie Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association and the 2018 Middle East Political Economy Book Prize from the Political Economy Project of the Arab Studies Institute; it was published in Persian translation in 2019. He is also co-editor (with J. Breman, C.K. Lee and M. van der Linden) of “The Social Question in the Twenty-First Century: A Global View” (University of California, 2019).
Harris directs the Iran Social Survey, whose 2016 and 2022 iterations provided rare nationally representative data on Iranian households, everyday social life and economic status before and after the 1979 revolution. The sociologist also created the Iranian Diaspora Dashboard, an interactive resource on the changing demographics of Iranians who live outside of their country. The sociologist regularly teaches courses for the international development studies program of the International Institute on the economics of developing countries, theory and history in international development, social change in modern Iran, and a capstone senior seminar in which undergraduates design and carry out their own original research.
The institute thanks Aomar Boum for his steady and strong interim leadership over the past year, when he led CNES through a challenging period of Title VI cuts, oversaw the center’s five-year review and helped initiate and develop UCLA’s collaboration with the International University of Rabat. Under his leadership, CNES relaunched its Amazigh Studies Initiative and organized a rich program of scholarly events and continued to support student research and faculty professional development. During the 2025-26 cycle, CNES awarded 21 fellowships and grants, including FLAS fellowships, Mosafer Travel Fellowships, Kerr Family Fellowships, conference travel grants and student conference support.
Finally, the institute deeply thanks Ali Behdad for his eight years of service as director of CNES. Beginning in 2018, he worked to broaden the center’s scholarly reach and relevance, shifting the discourse in the field beyond the traditional emphases on Arab and Muslim cultures to include the experiences of minorities in the region.
Behdad secured three transformative grants to support curricular innovation and programming, as well as student financial support: two Department of Education Title VI and FLAS grants that each exceeded U.S. $2,000,000; an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant of $350,000 for an initiative to reframe Middle Eastern Studies at UCLA with a focus on the region’s many minorities; and a $35,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a yearlong general education cluster course on “Global Islam,” which was first offered in the 2020–2021 academic year.
In addition, the former CNES director helped secure an endowment for travel and conference funding for graduate students, as well as a $410,000 grant from the Ebrahim Family Foundation to launch the “Program on Iranian Diaspora in Global Perspective,” as well as an estate gift of $2.5 million to establish the Elaine and Mokhtar Mokhtefi Graduate Fellowships (which will also fund an annual conference on Algeria and/or North Africa).
Latin American Institute
Fernando Pérez-Montesinos, member of the faculty advisory committees of the Latin American Institute (LAI) and its Center for Mexican Studies, will become interim director of the Latin American Institute (LAI) in winter quarter 2027, when Director Rubén Hernández-León will be on sabbatical leave. An associate professor in the department of history at UCLA, Pérez-Montesinos is a historian of modern Mexico with a focus on the 19th century and the Mexican revolution. His research combines environmental, social and indigenous history to study the connections between the processes of land privatization, class and state formation, and ecological change.
His first book, “Landscaping Indigenous Mexico: The Liberal State and Capitalism in the Purépecha Highlands” (UT Press, 2025), examines the survival of the Purépecha people of Michoacán, Mexico, amid environmental and political change. The book won both the Bolton-Johnson Prize and the María Elena Martínez Prize in Mexican History of the Conference on Latin American History in 2026, as well as honorable mention for best book by the Environment Section of the Latin American Studies Association.
The UCLA historian teaches courses on modern Latin America and Mexico, as well as on environmental and indigenous history. He is currently chief editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review, the leading journal in Latin American history in the United States.
Published: Tuesday, October 27, 2026
