The Keough School of Global Affairs is welcoming 10 new faculty members with expertise in political science, economics, migration, sustainable development, technology ethics and more. They join a distinguished group of Keough School faculty whose teaching, research and global partnerships prepare students to confront today’s most pressing challenges.
“We are thrilled to welcome this extraordinary group of scholars to the Keough School and Notre Dame,” said Mary Gallagher, Marilyn Keough Dean. “They bring a combination of academic rigor and real-world experience that will strengthen our research, deepen our global partnerships and enrich the education of Notre Dame students as they prepare to lead in a complex world.”
Read about the Keough School’s newest faculty:
Saad Gulzar, Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs
Saad Gulzar studies political economy, comparative politics, development, and environmental governance and conservation, with a regional focus on South Asia. His recent work, published in “Nature,” highlights how air pollution in South Asia can be reduced by incentivizing government bureaucrats to decrease crop residue burning. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Gulzar was a faculty member at Princeton University. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science within the College of Arts and Letters and is a faculty fellow of the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Rebecca Hardin, Professor of Sustainable Development
Rebecca Hardin’s work focuses on the intersection of environmental and digital justice, with the goal of engaging less formally educated specialists’ priorities and perspectives in addressing health, climate, food, energy and water challenges. Hardin is the director of Gala, an online collaborative learning platform focused on sustainability education. She joins the Keough School from the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. During the fall 2025 semester, she will teach the undergraduate policy lab course Innovation Ecosystems: Poverty and Creativity, Constraints and Collaborations. Hardin is a core faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development.
Amy Hsin, Professor of Migration
A sociologist and social demographer, Amy Hsin studies the intersection of immigration, race and ethnicity, education and social inequality in the United States. Her work examines how structural forces — such as immigration policy, immigration status, racial stratification and economic inequality — shape educational outcomes, labor market trajectories and family life. Hsin is completing a book manuscript titled "Beyond Dreamers: School, Work, and Identity among Diverse Undocumented New Yorkers" that highlights the racial, national and class diversity of undocumented youth in New York City. Previously a faculty member at the City University of New York, Queens College, Hsin served on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group and was named to City & State New York’s Education Power 100 list. She is an affiliate of the Keough School’s Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights.
Dahjin Kim, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Global Affairs
Dahjin holds a Ph.D. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis. A scholar of comparative politics, she examines political communication in online environments, with a particular focus on misinformation and its correction within online communities. Kim’s dissertation investigates how leveraging online group identities can enhance the effectiveness of misinformation corrections among community members. More broadly, her work explores elite communication behaviors and public opinion on social media. She is an affiliate of the Keough School’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
Ken Kollman, Professor of Political Science
Ken Kollman will join the Keough School in January 2026. He comes to Notre Dame from the University of Michigan, where he is the Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor and Professor of Political Science. A scholar of American politics and comparative politics, Kollman studies political parties and elections. He is co-author of the book “Dynamic Partisanship: How and Why Voter Loyalties Change” (University of Chicago Press), which examines changing patterns of partisanship in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia over the last 50 years. Kollman will hold a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science within the College of Arts and Letters. He is a 1988 Notre Dame graduate.
Rose Luminiello, Assistant Teaching Professor
Rose Luminello is a comparative and intellectual historian of modern Europe and migration, with a focus on the intellectual and social histories of Catholic political protest and resistance in Ireland and Poland. Specifically, she studies Catholic social teaching and its foundations in the papacy and philosophy of Pope Leo XIII and the 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” setting these in the global context of Catholic political engagement. Luminello, who holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, joins the Keough School in a new capacity after serving as visiting assistant research professor at the school’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies during the 2024-2025 academic year. She is a faculty fellow of the Keough School’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. During the fall 2025 semester, Luminello will teach the undergraduate courses Migrants and Mobility in the Age of Mass Movement and Catholic Social Teaching & “the People.”
Helge-Johannes Marahrens, Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science
Helge-Johannes Marahrens researches social science, data science and statistics, with the goal of expanding the methodological toolkit of social scientists, especially through use of machine learning, natural language processing, large language models, causal inference, networks and spatial analysis. He also focuses on the impact of globalization on inequality at the city level. To examine these dynamics, he uses tools from network science, geography and computational social science. Marahrens, who holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, has worked at Facebook’s core data science group and also was a postdoctoral fellow in the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University. During the fall semester he will teach Quantitative Analysis in the Master of Global Affairs program.
Isaac Mbiti, Professor of Poverty and Education
Isaac Mbiti studies African economic development, particularly the role of education policies such as free primary education and teacher performance pay programs, as well as the potential for new technologies such as mobile phones to incite development. His ongoing research projects in East and West Africa evaluate policies that aim to improve the livelihoods of African youth through training programs. In addition to publishing work in numerous academic journals, Mbiti has authored several policy reports for the Kenyan government, the World Bank and nongovernmental organizations such as the International Rescue Committee. Mbiti is a core faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, he was a faculty member in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Assistant Professor of Tech Ethics and Global Affairs
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat researches human-computer interaction, AI ethics, and critical social science through work that spans the Global North and South. He studies and builds sociotechnical systems that accommodate plural ethical, cultural and religious worldviews. Combining computational techniques with qualitative methods, he designs and develops systems to address societal problems that arise from diverse — and often conflicting — values. Rifat holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering within the College of Engineering. He also is a faculty fellow of the Keough School's McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business and Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion as well as Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and Common Good. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Toronto and a doctoral specialization in South Asian Studies.
Brenda Samaniego de la Parra, Assistant Professor of Development Economics
Brenda Samaniego de la Parra researches different work arrangements between workers and firms with a special focus on informality, how these arrangements respond to shocks, and their implications for wages and employment dynamics. An external consultant for the World Bank and the International Labour Organization, she also studies the root of differences in firms’ performance and barriers to growth in developing countries. Prior to joining the Keough School, Samaniego de la Parra was a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz; a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; an associate at Cornerstone Research, an economic consulting firm and a special projects deputy director for the National Banking and Securities Commission in Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and is a core faculty affiliate of the Keough School's Pulte Institute for Global Development. This fall, she is teaching Microeconomics for Policy Evaluation in the Master of Global Affairs program.
A warm welcome to all our new Keough School faculty!
Originally published by at keough.nd.edu on August 26, 2025.