Dr. Carolyn Kissane serves as the Associate Dean and is a Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University where she teaches graduate level courses examining the Central Asian region, transformations in China, the geopolitics of oil, comparative energy politics, resource security, civil society organizations, and women’s movements. She serves as the Coordinator of the Energy and Environment concentration at the Center and is faculty advisor to the Energy Policy International Club. She held a two year fellowship from the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and received a Fulbright Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Teachers College Columbia University Dean’s Grant, National Security Graduate Enhancement Fellowship, IREX Caspian Sea Fellowship, IREX travel grant for study in Kazakhstan, and an IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Grant to examine the impact of natural resources on civil society development. In recognition of her unwavering commitment to education Dr. Kissane was awarded the esteemed NYU Excellence in Teaching Award in 2007 and nominated for the NYU-wide Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008 and 2009. She received the SPS Award for Teaching Excellence in 2009.

In 2009 Dr. Kissane received a grant from the Canadian government to lead a group of students to visit the Canadian Oil Sands in Fort McMurray and to visit with oil sands leaders in Calgary. Her work with Canada continues in the form of event partnerships and a special series on the Arctic which she is organizing with the Government of Quebec. Complementing her academic, public service and consultant experience, Kissane is the author of numerous publications including an article on history education in Comparative Education, Freedom House: Countries at the Crossroads report on Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Great Decisions Series, and Evaluating Human Rights Education. She also has chapters on transitional challenges in education in Central Asia and human rights education in Europe, an article on Girls’ Education and Democratization in the Post-Taliban Era and another focusing on the oil extractive industry published in Globalization, Societies and Education. Dr. Kissane received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Dr. Sylvia Maier serves as the Academic Director and is a Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs where she directs the MSGA Concentration in Global Gender Studies, the annual Global Field Intensive to the United Arab Emirates, and serves as faculty adviser to the MSGA Gender Working Group. Sylvia’s principal fields of interest and expertise are women’s rights in the Middle East, South Central Asia, and the Gulf States, with a particular focus on the United Arab Emirates, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Afghanistan, where she has taught and conducted extensive field research. Sylvia is especially interested in women’s culturally-situated modes of resistance to patriarchy in deeply traditional societies, the “globalization-empowerment nexus” in the Gulf States, feminist urbanism, gender and migration, and the politics of integration and multiculturalism in Western Europe, chiefly the legal responses to cultural diversity and honor-based violence against women. She has spoken extensively and published on these and related subjects. Her co-edited book, titled EU Development Policies: Between Norms and Geopolitics was published by Palgrave Macmillan in February 2019. She is currently working on a comparative research study of feminist urbanism in global cities (Vienna, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, Delhi, and New York), on a field research project on biotrade, food security and women’s empowerment in Perú with her CGA colleague Jens Rudbeck, and, with another CGA colleague, Christopher Ankersen, on a book manuscript on Monarchies in Global Affairs. 

Sylvia’s teaching interests bridge the fields of gender studies and international politics and include Gender and International Affairs: Sex, Power and Politics, Gender and Migration, Women’s Rights in the Middle East and South Asia, International Relations Theory, The Geopolitics of Afghanistan, Ethics in International Affairs, and Analytic Skills. 

Complementing her academic work, Sylvia was the co-founder and deputy editor-in-chief of Women Across Frontiers, a digital women’s rights magazine, and currently serves as VP and Director of Education Programs as well as on the board of The Peace Project, Inc.

Prior to joining the CGA, Sylvia Maier was on the faculty of the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where she worked on Islam-state relations and the politics of integration and multiculturalism in Western Europe. 

Sylvia received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California in 2001.

Amy Jaffe is an energy consultant and leading expert on the geopolitics of oil, energy, security, and risk, and an influential thought leader on global energy policy and sustainability. She is currently serving as Director of the Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab and a research professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies.

She is the author of “Energy’s Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security,” published by Columbia University Press in January 2021. She is co-chair of the Women in Energy Initiative at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a faculty research affiliate at the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University.

Jaffe has taught energy policy, business, and sustainability courses at New York University (NYU) Tufts University, Rice University, University of California, Davis and Yale University. She served as the senior advisor for energy and sustainability at the Office of the Chief Investment Officer (OCIO)of the UC Regents from 2014 to 2017, contributing to the design of the UC pension system’s sustainable investing framework and training the team of investors at the UC OCIO how to incorporate sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics into investment decision making across portfolio activities including public equities, fixed income securities, real assets investment, and real estate.

Jaffe is a regular contributor to the popular podcast “The Energy Gang” and a frequent media commentator in television and print media, including the New York Times, the Financial Times of London, and the Wall Street Journal. A prolific author, Jaffe holds a career prize in energy economics from the US Association for Energy Economics and also served as the organization’s President in 2020.