Administration
Ian Hurd
Ian Hurd is the Professor of Political Science and Director of the Roberta Buffett International Studies Program at Northwestern University. The 4th Edition of his book International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice was published in 2020. His book How to Do Things with International Law (2017) looks at the political uses of international law around war, drones, and torture to reconsider the idea of the international rule of law. His book After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the UN Security Council (2008) won the Chadwick Alger Award from the International Studies Association and the Myres McDougal Prize from the Policy Sciences Society. He is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (2016).
His research and teaching focus on international law and politics in theory and in practice, and on political science research methods. He is a frequent contributor to public debates on global affairs, foreign policy, and international law. His work has appeared in leading academic and policy journals, including International Organization, Foreign Affairs, International Politics, Global Governance, and Ethics & International Affairs. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times and other media outlets, and he is interviewed frequently by Chicago Public Radio and the Chicago PBS station, WTTW. He has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, WZB in Berlin, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, EHESS in Paris, and elsewhere.
David Boyk
Director of Undergraduate Studies, International Studies Program
Associate Professor of Instruction, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
David Boyk teaches courses in Hindi-Urdu language and literature, and on South Asian literature, film, and history. He received his PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include South Asian urban and regional history, Bollywood cinema, food studies, and the history of Hindi-Urdu language and literature.
His book, Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2025), tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region of Bihar, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A century and more earlier, Patna had been an important and populous city, but it came to be seen by many—and is still seen today—as merely part of the mofussil, the provincial hinterland. Despite Patna’s real decline, it continued to nurture a vibrant intellectual culture that linked it with cities and towns across northern India and beyond. Urdu literary gatherings and other Islamicate traditions inherited from Mughal times helped animate the networks sustaining institutions like scholarly libraries and satirical newspapers. Meanwhile, English-educated lawyers sought to bring prominence to their city and region by making Patna the capital of a new province. They succeeded, but as Patna’s political influence grew, its distinctive character was diminished. Ultimately, Provincial Metropolis shows, Patna’s intellectual and cultural life thrived not despite its provinciality but because of it.
His other scholarly publications include “Collaborative Wit: Provincial Publics in Colonial North India,” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and “Nationality and Fashionality: Hats, Lawyers and Other Important Things to Remember,” “Bound for Home: Books and Community in a Bihari Qasba,” and (with Andrew Amstutz and C. Ryan Perkins) “Unpacking the Library,” all in South Asia. Two annotated translations appeared in Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, eds., Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women. He has also published essays in various publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Caravan, The Wire Urdu, and The Wire Hindi. With Daniel Majchrowicz, he coauthored an open-access, interactive textbook, Zer o Zabar: An Introduction to the Urdu Script. He is currently translating short story collections by the Urdu writers Saadat Hasan Manto and (with Daniel Majchrowicz) Qazi Abdul Ghaffar.
staff
The Roberta Buffett International Studies Program is supported by the staff of the Weinberg College Center for Global Studies
Bianca R. Jimenez
Associate Director, Weinberg College Center for Global Studies
Bianca has been at the University since 2006 working with various area studies programs including Asian Studies, International Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, and Middle East & North African Studies. She received her M.A. in Social Sciences with a concentration in Anthropology, from the University of Chicago. As Associate Director she oversees the administration of the center's programs and works with the faculty Directors to advise students, manage curricular development, and provide program management. Prior to joining Northwestern she worked for the Environmental and Conservation Program at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago where she worked closely with a local NGO in Peru, CIMA-Cordillera Azul to protect cultural diversity and land security, and to integrate improved quality of life into the management of Cordillera Azul National Park. While at the Museum, she also worked with the interactive program expeditions@fieldmuseum™, which followed Field Museum scientists as they conduct groundbreaking scientific research around the world and communicate it to a wider audience through dispatches, interactives and photos.
Nina Goad
Program Coordinator, International Studies
Nina received her dual B.S. in Global Studies and Organizational Communication with minors in French and Spanish from Middle Tennessee State University. As Program Coordinator for International Studies, she supports student advising, undergraduate engagement, program management, course coordination, graduate assistants, and visiting professors and practitioners.
Prior to joining Northwestern, she supported the City of Chicago’s international strategy and subnational diplomacy, as well as helped lead the Chicago Sister Cities International Program through World Business Chicago.