Neftalie Williams (he/him) Provost’s Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. Visiting Fellow in Race, Culture & Community, Yale Schwarzman Center

Dr. Neftalie Williams is a sociologist who investigates global issues of race, diversity, identity, and youth empowerment, using the lens of action sports culture. Williams holds a Ph.D. from the University of Waikato and has upcoming books with Artisan Books and UC Press focused on skateboarding culture. The first ‘Ambassador of Skateboarding,’ and envoy for the US Department of State, he introduced the concept of skateboarding as a tool for cultural diplomacy in both theory and practice. Utilizing ‘skate diplomacy,’ he aided the US Embassy in the Netherlands in integrating young Syrian refugees into Holland. In Cambodia, his skate diplomacy efforts created new engagement between the U.S. embassy, Cambodian youth, and academic and cultural institutions. As former Chairman of Cuba Skate, Neftalie and the Cuba Skate team created fruitful cultural exchanges between Cuban youth and American professionals in Havana. Expanding the public dialogue around diversity and inclusion, Neftalie founded “The Nation Skate,” a series of public panels, lectures, skateboarding demonstrations, and media that explores the relationship between race, diversity, and diplomacy through skateboarding, academia, and popular culture. He co-founded the College Skateboarding Educational Foundation (CSEF), a non-profit dedicated to creating scholarships for young skateboarders to pursue higher education, and serves on the Boards for the Tony Hawk Foundation, Skateistan, McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, and chairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for USA Skateboarding.

Nicholas J. Cull, (he/him) Professor of Public Diplomacy and founding director of the Master of Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California (USC)

Nick Cull is Professor of Public Diplomacy and is the founding director of the Master of Public Diplomacy program at USC. He took both his BA and PhD at the University of Leeds. While a graduate student, he studied at Princeton as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. From 1992 to 1997 he was lecturer in American History at the University of Birmingham in the UK. From September 1997 to August 2005 he was Professor of American Studies and Director of the Centre for American Studies in the Department of History at Leicester.

His research and teaching interests are inter-disciplinary, and focus on public diplomacy and — more broadly — the role of media, culture and propaganda in international history. He is the author of  two volumes on the history of US public diplomacy: The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989 (Cambridge 2008), named by Choice Magazine as one of the Outstanding Academic Texts of 2009 and The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001 (Palgrave, New York, 2012). His first book, Selling War, published by OUP New York in 1995, was a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor. He is the co-editor (with David Culbert and David Welch) of Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present (2003) which was one of Book List magazines reference books of the year, co-editor with David Carrasco of Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2004).  He is an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources.  His publications in this area include two books co-authored with James Chapman: Projecting Empire: Imperialism in Popular Cinema (IB Tauris, London, 2009) and Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction in Popular Cinema (IB Tauris, 2013). He has published numerous articles on the theme of propaganda and media history.  His most recent volume (co-edited with Francisco Rodriguez and Lorenzo Delgado), is US Public Diplomacy and Democratization in Spain: Selling Democracy?  (Palgrave,New York, 2015).

He is editor of the journal Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, President of the International Association for Media and History, and a member of the Public Diplomacy Council.