Skip to main content
Elise Ahn

Elise Ahn

She/Her
  • Director of Operations and Outreach, SkAI Institute
  • Instructor, Higher Education Administration and Policy

Contact

elise.ahn@northwestern.edu
875 N. Michigan Ave. Suite 3500, Chicago, IL 60611
Website
Curriculum Vitae

Academic Area

Higher Education Administration and Policy

Affiliated Center(s)

Skai Institute

Research Interests

Dr. Ahn's research interests span from examining the impacts of language and education policy change in Central Asia to looking at emerging issues related to the internationalization of higher education.

Biography

Dr. Elise S. Ahn is the Director of Operations and Outreach at the SkAI Institute, led by Northwestern University. Prior to this position, she was the Founding Director of the International Projects Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a lecturer for the UW-Madison Educational Policy Studies Department. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in Education Policy Studies with a concentration on Global Studies in Education and a methodological specialization in Program Evaluation. Her research interests focus on the intersection of space, structure, and scale in examining the effects of internationalization in education and policy production processes. She is also interested in issues related to language, education, and equity/access with a focus on urban contexts. She co-edited Language Change in Central Asia with Juldyz Smagulova (KIMEP University, Kazakhstan), which was published in 2016. In 2021, she co-edited a special issue of the journal, World Englishes, focusing on English(es) in Central Asia with Andrew Linn (Westminster University, UK). In 2023, she edited Wisconsin in the World: Internationalization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an edited volume of 41 chapters providing a cross-sectional view of campus internationalization at UW-Madison.

Education

  • PhD, Educational Policy and Organizational Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • MA, Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • BA, English Literature and Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Awards and Honors

  • Fulbright Mid-Career Scholar (Kazakhstan), Alternate, 2024-2025
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison International Division Staff Excellence Award, 2020
  • Fulbright-Schuman Award (European Union), 2005-2026