Announcing the 2021 Templeton Fellows

• May 24, 2021

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is pleased to announce the appointment of its 2021 Templeton Fellows. Templeton Fellows work across FPRI’s research programs on a variety of projects throughout the year.

The Templeton Fellowships are named for the late John M. Templeton, Jr., M.D., who had a decades-long association with FPRI, serving as Vice Chair of FPRI’s Board of Trustees, and along with his beloved wife Josephine “Pina” Templeton, generously supported FPRI for many years. We’re deeply grateful to them both and to the Templeton Family and the Psalm 103 Foundation for their support to FPRI and its mission. 

Africa

Dr. Carla D. Jones is a Templeton Fellow in the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Associate Professor in the Management, Marketing & IS Department of the College of Business at Sam Houston State University. Dr. Jones will be working on a project examining motivations underlying Chinese economic engagement in Africa. Her research interests focus on the influence of executives. She primarily examines how the leadership of a firm influences firm outcomes. More specifically, she studies how the board of directors and members of the C-Suite influence firm strategy and performance. Among these groups, several advancements have been initiated to improve governance and the link between executives and performance, such as increasing independence among board members and tying compensation incentives to stock performance.

Her current projects examine heterogeneity among the leaders of an organization and its influence on group dynamics and group outcomes. Several of her projects examine how the dynamics among the upper echelon of an organization influence competitive dynamics and ultimately firm performance. 

Dr. Hermann A. Ndofor is a Templeton Fellow in the  Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is currently a faculty member at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University and Associate Editor for the Africa Journal of Management. He received a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Prior to joining the Kelley School of Business in 2015, he was on the faculty at the Mays Business School, Texas A&M.

His research interests include competitive dynamics, resource management, Top Management Teams, and entrepreneurship, with specific interest in Africa. His research has been published in a range of journals including the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Managerial Issues, Journal of Management Inquiry, Long Range Planning, and Leadership Quarterly. 

Dr. Mengge Li is a Templeton Fellow in the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute researching Chinese economic engagement in Africa. Currently, Dr. Li is an Assistant Professor at University of Texas at El Paso, where he teaches international business and corporate strategy classes. He received a Ph.D. in Business Administration from University of Houston and a M.S. in Information Systems and Operations Management from University of Florida. 

Asia

Mr. Anton Louthan is a Fellow and Research Assistant in the Eurasia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Having lived and worked in China, Anton’s research revolves around Chinese economic statecraft, with a particular interest in measuring the political impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative with China’s trading partners. Currently, he is finishing a project evaluating the effects of Chinese economic interactions on Kazakhstan’s political economy.  He holds an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Georgetown University with a concentration in the politics and security of Asia.

Education

Dr. Ronald J. Granieri is the Executive Director of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West and has for many years designed and led FPRI’s educational simulations for Philadelphia area students, in collaboration with the Museum of the American Revolution. He is also the co-author of several FPRI primers for students.  He is a specialist in Contemporary German and International History with degrees from Harvard and the University of Chicago. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Syracuse University, Furman University, and the University of Tubingen. He is the author of The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949-1966 (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), and is currently completing a book entitled: The Fall and Rise of German Christian Democracy, From Detente to Reunification, for Oxford University Press.

Geopolitics

Mr. Robert D. Kaplan, the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is the bestselling author of nineteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

Latin America

Dr. Barbara Fick is a Senior Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a U.S. Army Colonel, serving as Director of the Americas Program and Faculty Instructor at the Department of National Security at the U.S. Army War College. Prior to serving at the U.S. Army War College, she was the Political Military Affairs Chief at U.S. Southern Command. 

Her previous assignments include: Senior Defense Official/Defense Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay; Strategic Advisor to the Commander International Security Assistance Forces Afghanistan (ISAF); Special Assistant to NATO Supreme Allied Commander; Security Cooperation Strategy/Plans Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia; and various regional and country advisor positions at U.S. Southern Command. 

National Security

Dr. Lawrence Rubin is an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His research interests include Middle East politics and international security with a specific focus on intra-regional relations, religion and politics, nuclear proliferation, and emerging technologies. Dr. Rubin was also the guest editor of the fall 2020 Orbis special issue on national security and technology. 

Dr. Rubin received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA (2009) and earned degrees from University of Oxford, London School of Economics, and UC Berkeley.