Faculty Listing

Jody L. McBrien is a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus. She received her doctorate from Emory University in May 2005. She has received numerous awards for her research, including a 2021-22 Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship to work at the OECD in Paris, France, 2019 Fulbright Award to New Zealand, 2017 USF Global Engagement Award, 2014 Ian Axford (New Zealand) Fellowship in Public Policy, 2012 Florida Campus Compact Community Engaged Researcher Award, and 2011 Faculty Research Award from USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy. During Spring 2017 she was a Visiting Scholar at Soka University in Tokyo, Japan.

Dr. McBrien’s research focuses on children affected by war, whether they are resettled refugee students and their families, or children and families who have returned to their home communities following war. In June 2019, she edited the volume Educational Policies and Practices of English-Speaking Refugee Resettlement Countries, published by Sense/Brill. She conducted longitudinal work in Lira, Uganda on the use of arts in healing and education resulting in her co-edited book, Cold Water: Women and Girls of Lira, Uganda, published by Fountain Publishers in July 2015. At the OECD, McBrien published several working papers on refugee and newcomer students, gender, and LGBTQI+ students. She is currently co-leading a team of student researchers analyzing the work of an online educational platform for LGBTQI+ refugees called The Dream Academy, run by Safe Place International.

Dr. McBrien worked in the corporate world in education-related jobs prior to returning to academia. She is the former Senior Education Editor of CNN’s education website, and served as the Project Manager and Senior Editor of a high-school curriculum entitled Media Matters: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. She has also been Director of Communications at the National Reading Styles Institute in Long Island and Editor-in-Chief at the Family Education Network in Boston.