Dr. Jody Lynn McBrien is a Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida. Her professional interests involve teaching human rights, global migration, and international & comparative education. Jody's work has taken her to Ghana and Uganda, where she worked with resettled refugees, children formerly abducted by rebels to become child soldiers &/or rebel "wives," and community members affected by war. She spent most of 2014 in New Zealand working on the country's new Refugee Resettlement Strategy with the Ministry of Business/Immigration NZ, 2017 guest teaching at Soka University in Tokyo, and 2021-22 at the OECD in Paris as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow.
Dr. McBrien received Emory University's Humanitarian Award in 2004, and USF's Women in Leadership and Philanthropy Faculty Research Award in 2010 for her work with resettled refugees in the US and her work in Africa. When not working, she loves to practice ballroom and Latin dancing, and spend time with her husband and grown children, her mother, friends, and cat named Gandalf.
