ICC Advisors

The World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence is honored to have the following experts as ICC Advisors on the World Council. Advisors are invited to join the World Council given their groundbreaking and dedicated work on intercultural and global competence development. As ICC Advisors, these experts are available to provide guidance to the World Council’s working groups, as well as overall guidance to World Council on projects, endeavors, and initiatives related to intercultural and global competence. They also participate in virtual discussions in the World Council community and contribute to resources, including the Intercultural Connector newsletter.

Dharm Bhawuk, PhD

Dharm P S Bhawuk, PhD (University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign) is professor of Management and Culture and Community Psychology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA. His research interests include indigenous psychology and management (focus on India and Nepal) and cross-cultural training. He has taught in China (2015-19), New Zealand (2002), and Nepal (2002) as Visiting Professor. He was H Smith Richardson, Jr. Visiting Fellow, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina (2009 -2010).

Ken Cushner, Ed. D.

Dr. Kenneth Cushner, an Emeritus Professor of International and Intercultural Teacher Education at Kent State University (1987 – 2015), completed his doctoral studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa while a degree scholar at the East-West Center. Dr. Cushner is a Founding Fellow, Past-President and currently the Executive Director of the International Academy for Intercultural Research; has been a Fulbright Scholar to Sweden (2008) and Poland (2016); and twice served as director of COST – the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching. He is author or editor of several publications in the field of intercultural education including: Teacher as Traveler: Enhancing the Intercultural Competence of Teachers and Students (2018), and Human Diversity in Education: An Intercultural Approach (10th ed, 2021). He has taught with Semester at Sea many times, directing Teachers at Sea (Summers, 2010 and 2011), serving as Intercultural Specialist (Fall 2017, Spring 2019), and will direct the Global Studies course on the Spring 2022 voyage.

Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, PhD

Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, PhD is past president of the World Communication Association. She received her doctoral degree in communication from Indiana University Bloomington, where she is currently professor and director of Graduate studies in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Her areas of specialization are intercultural communication, empathy and conflict, transforming divided communities, pedagogy of empathy, communication in black America, and civic engagement.
She is author of Empathy in the Global World: An Intercultural Perspective, coauthor of Intercultural Communication Roots and Routes and Intercultural Communication: A Text with Readings, and coeditor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse. Her coauthored book, Intercultural Communication between Chinese and North Americans, is forthcoming in 2023. She is a member of the Central States Communication Association’s Hall of Fame, and has given hundreds of talks on intercultural communication, empathy, diversity, and intercultural competence both nationally and internationally. Her many awards include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Carnegie Scholarship, and the National Communication Association’s Samuel L. Becker Distinguished Service Award.

Xiaodong Dai

Xiaodong Dai is associate professor of Shanghai Normal University, P. R. China, and a Fulbrighter. Presently he serves as the vice president of China Association for Intercultural Communication. His major research interests are intercultural competence and intercultural communication theories. He has published numerous articles in Chinese and English journals, and his most recent books include Conflict Management and Intercultural Communication (2017, Routledge), and A Study on Intercultural Competence (2018, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press).

Alvino E. Fantini, PhD

Dr. Fantini holds degrees in anthropology and applied linguistics, and has worked in language education and intercultural communication for over 50 years. His research interests include bilingualism, language development, and cross-cultural matters. Fantini worked in the U.S. and abroad with intercultural exchange, development projects, and the Peace Corps, and conducted workshops around the world. He served on a National Advisory Panel that developed Foreign Language Standards for U.S. education and is past president of SIETAR International.

Hairong Feng, PhD

Hairong Feng (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a Professor of Communication at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Feng’s research interests include supportive communication across cultures and politeness across cultures. Her most recent research in Intercultural Competence involves interdisciplinary collaborations with scholars across the globe. Dr. Feng has been teaching Intercultural Communication in the U.S. and China’s major universities. Dr. Feng served as President for the Association for Chinese Communication Studies from 2014 to 2015.

Jorge Enrique González, PhD

Dr. Jorge Enrique González is the Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Intercultural Dialogue at the National University of Colombia. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Paris. Dr. González is a Research Associate at the Laboratoire de recherche en relations interculturelles (LABRRI) at the University of Montreal and the Institute of Philological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico—UNAM. Some of his works are Análisis cultural hermenéutico (Buenos Aires, 2016; Paris, 2019), Diversidad y diálogo cultural (Bogotá, 2017; Paris, 2019) co-authored with Mauricio Beuchot, and the edited volume of Multiculturalismo e interculturalidad en las Américas (Bogotá, 2019; Montreal, 2019) .

Michael B. Hinner, PhD

Michael B. Hinner was born in Germany and grew up in the US. This bicultural and bilingual experience influenced his academic focus on intercultural communication. He holds a PhD in English and an MA in German. His teaching experience includes Stony Brook University, NY, the British Royal Army Education Corps in Germany, Hannover University, the University of Applied Sciences Hannover, Dresden International University, and the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. His research and instruction focus on business, intercultural, and organizational communication. He is the editor of the Freiberger Beiträge zur interkulutrellen und Wirtschaftskommunikation and has written several book chapters and numerous articles on a variety of intercultural communication topics.

Wenhong Huang, PhD

Wenhong Huang, Ph. D, is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, China Foreign Affairs University Beijing, P.R. China. Her main research area is intercultural sensitivity and language education. Recent publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development and Language and Intercultural Communication.

Ildikó Lázár, PhD

Dr. Ildikó Lázár is a senior lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, offering courses on language pedagogy and intercultural communication. She has also worked as a researcher and trainer in many Council of Europe and Erasmus projects as well as for local and international NGOs. She has been coordinating a voluntary community of practice for teachers’ professional development for eight years. She has published research articles on intercultural language teaching with a special focus on ways to bring about change in teachers’ beliefs and practices in the field of intercultural competence development. She is author and co-editor of several practice-oriented resource books for teachers and teacher educators, including Developing Intercultural Competence through Education (2014) and TASKs for Democracy (2015) published by the Council of Europe.

Akira Miyahara, PhD

Dr. Miyahara is professor of communication studies at Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan. He has taught in both Japanese and U.S. colleges. Miyahara has served as president of Japan Communication Association, and Japan-U.S. Communication Association (NCA affiliate). He has also consulted for many Japanese organizations for productive intercultural, interpersonal, and organizational communication.

Peter Nwosu, PhD

Peter Nwosu, PhD (the “N” is silent), American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow and Fulbright Scholar, started his tenure in 2019 as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Student Success at the Herbert H. Lehman College, a Hispanic and Minority Serving Institution and a senior college of the 25-member colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY), the nation’s largest urban public university system. Prior to this role, he served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Clark Atlanta University (CAU), Atlanta, Georgia, a private Historically Black College and University, and Associate Vice President for Academic Programs and Accreditation Liaison Officer at California State University, Fullerton, a Hispanic Serving Institution. A passionate advocate for access to high quality education for our nation’s increasingly diverse student body, and a systems thinker and strategic planner with a strong belief in the power of collaboration and shared governance, he has led strategic initiatives to foster institutional effectiveness, advance student success outcomes, and enhance these institutions’ national reputation and visibility as engines of upward mobility and community engagement.

Dr. Nwosu began his career at California State University, Sacramento, one of the 23 campuses of the California State University System, rising through the ranks to become tenured full Professor of Communication Studies. A nationally recognized teacher-scholar of intercultural and international communication, Dr. Nwosu has served as journal editor, presented at regional, national, and international conferences, and authored/co-authored more than 90 scholarly writings, including three books, refereed journal papers, book chapters, and training manuals. A graduate of the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education, he earned his Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Nwosu serves as Principal Investigator, CUNY-NYC-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in STEM involving 12 CUNY colleges and funded by the National Science Foundation as well as co-director of the CUNY Leadership Institute funded by the Mellon Foundation. He also chairs the board of directors of the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute and the CUNY Institute for Health Equity. In addition, he serves as vice chair of the board of directors of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), a nonprofit research and advocacy organization committed to promoting access and success in higher education for all students, and sits on the advisory boards of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Committee on Academic Innovation and Transformation, the national Association of Chief Academic Officers (ACAO), and the Sacramento-based California Urban Partnership (CUP). He was formerly member of the board of directors of the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program, chaired the Western States Communication Association Intercultural Communication Interest Group, and served as secretary of the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association. His work has taken him to more than 40 U.S. states and 30 countries.

Junko Saruhashi, PhD

Junko Saruhashi, Ph.D., is Professor of sociolinguistics at the Department of International Communication, School of International Politics, Economics and Communication, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include language policy studies, focusing especially on language ideology and identities, and immigrants’ language management at individual and community levels. She is the co-author of A Language Management Approach to Language Problems (John Benjamins, 2020) and The Routledge International Handbook of Language Education Policy in Asia.(Routledge 2019).

Brian H. Spitzberg, PhD

Brian H. Spitzberg is Senate Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Communication at San Diego State University. He is author or coauthor of over 160 scholarly articles, book chapters, and several scholarly books on communication competence and the dark side of communication. His primary areas of research involve social media and meme diffusion, assessment, interpersonal communication competence, jealousy, conflict, threats, coercion, violence, and stalking.

Shunu Sun, PhD

Shunu Sun, PhD is anassociate professor at Zhejiang International Studies University, where she heads the Center of Cross-Cultural Communication. She received her PhD in English Language and Literature from Zhejiang University in China and was a visiting scholar at North Carolina State University in the United States. Her works are mainly on the cultivation of college students’ intercultural competence, and the localization and construction of intercultural adaptation theories.

Fons Trompenaars

Fons Trompenaars is a Dutch organizational theorist, renown speaker & management consultant, and author in the field of cross-cultural communication. He is known for the development of Trompenaars' model of national culture. He studied Economics at the VU University Amsterdam and later earned a Ph.D. from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, with a dissertation on differences in conceptions of organizational structure in various cultures. He is author of best seller, Riding the Waves of Culture, Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business which has sold over 200,000 copies and translated into more than 17 languages. He is also a 2017 inductee into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

Lihong Wang, PhD

Lihong Wang holds her PhD from the School of Education of Durham University in Foreign Language Education and Intercultural Studies. She is a professor of the Faculty of Foreign Studies and the Dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at Beijing Language Culture University, teaching Intercultural Communication: theory and practice, Intercultural Teaching and Learning in Foreign Language Classroom. Her research interest is mainly in the field of study abroad and intercultural education.

Yi’an Wang, PhD

Yi’an Wang is Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Hangzhou Dianzi University in PR China. He holds a PhD in Intercultural Communication from Shanghai International Studies University in China. His research interest focuses on intercultural competence development and assessment and its application in different contexts, intercultural adjustment, and intercultural training.

Zheng Xuan, PhD

Zheng Xuan is an assistant professor at the institute of linguistics and applied linguistics, school of foreign languages, Peking University in China. She has received a PhD in English applied linguistics from the University of Washington. Her current research explores people’s attitudinal changes towards difference (why and how, the role of emotions, and in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic), while developing innovative methods to facilitate attitudinal changes through education.

Sun Youzhong

SUN Youzhong is Vice President of Beijing Foreign Studies University, and serves as President of the China Association for Intercultural Communication, Director of the Chinese Ministry of Education Steering Committee for Undergraduate Programs in Foreign Languages and Literatures, President of China English Language Education Association, and Editor-in-Chief of Intercultural Studies Forum. His research interests span intercultural/global communication, media studies, American studies, and English education.

Rhonda S. Zaharna, PhD

Dr. R.S. Zaharna is a professor, School of Communication, American University, Washington, and the 2018 Distinguished Scholar in International Communication, awarded by the International Studies Association. She specializes in public diplomacy and international strategic communication and has advised governments, multinational corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. Her books include Battles to Bridges: U.S. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11 (Palgrave, 2014) and Ambassadors of Humanity: Three Logics of Communications and Public Diplomacies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).