Illinois Humanities Welcomes New Staff and Board Members

Antoinette Burton is the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair of the History Department at the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana. She directs the Humanities Research Institute, which fosters interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts and social sciences at the University and which administers the Humanities Without Walls Consortium and includes an Odyssey course as part of its programming. She holds a B.A. from Yale University, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire, with a specialty in colonial India and an ongoing interest in Australasia and Africa. She’s written on topics ranging from feminism and colonialism to the relationship of empire to the nation and the world and has edited collections about politics, mobility, postcolonialism, and empire. At Illinois she has taught courses on modern British history and imperialism, gender and colonialism, autobiography and the archive, approaches and methods and world history. She is currently working on a Bloomsbury series on the cultures of western imperialism and a Duke University Press series on history teaching.

Fairouz AbuGhazaleh joined Illinois Humanities in March of 2022 as the Director of Statewide Programs. Prior to this, she was the Director of Immigrant Outreach at the New American Welcome Center at the University of Illinois YMCA in Champaign. She also coordinated an immigrant and refugee integration program in rural Colorado as part of a larger statewide initiative. She has worked as a women’s rights advocate, a journalist in the Middle East and a freelance writer and translator. She has published articles in the National Civic Review, the Denver Post, Minnesota Women’s Press, the Daily Iowan as well as several publications of the University of Iowa International Programs. Fairouz majored in journalism and sociology at the University of Iowa and later returned to Iowa City for an MA in International Development, which focused on women and economic development.

Mary Daniels is the senior director of programs at Illinois Humanities, which she joined in November 2022. She comes to Illinois Humanities from a long career in higher education, serving in both faculty and administrator roles. Most recently, she served as Associate Provost for Academic Innovation and Strategic Initiatives at Chicago State University, where much of her work focused on equity in college education attainment. Prior to that, she served as Associate Dean for Bridge and Partnership Programs at the University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. At Graham, she led the expansion and creation of a wide range of innovative, high-impact programs rooted in the liberal arts. Some notable partnerships include an urban sustainability training program for mayors from China’s biggest cities; interdisciplinary “big questions” courses for high school students in Bangalore, Hong Kong, and Beijing; and a year-long scholarship program for HBCU and HSI graduates. She has served on the faculty at Drake University and the University of Notre Dame. She holds a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a BA in Political Science from Reed College.

Joanne Hsu provides information on grant opportunities, guidelines, and procedures and manages grant review processes. Before joining Illinois Humanities in November 2022, Joanne worked at the Naperville Public Library, where she created library programs and was heavily involved with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. She was also a founding member and board secretary of Chinese American Women in Action, a non-profit based in Naperville, Illinois, and has worked as a lecturer at the University of Mainz, Germany, and in international education and teacher professional development. Joanne holds an M.A. in American Culture from the University of Michigan and an A.B. in English and American Literature from Brown University. She is a two-time winner of the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition – Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award and speaks German, Mandarin Chinese, and just a bit of French.