As vice chancellor for global affairs, Ariel C. Armony leads the University of Pittsburgh’s global strategy and engagement. He also directs the University Center for International Studies, home to top-ranked thematic and area studies centers.
A professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Armony has published extensively on civil society, democracy, human rights, South-South relations, and the globalization of cities. He received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Center and Fulbright, Rockefeller and Kellogg foundations. In 2023, he received the Medal of Merit from Ohio University.
Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh, Armony was the Martha Weeks Professor of Latin American Studies and founding director of the Miami Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas at the University of Miami and held the Audrey and Sheldon Katz Distinguished Chair at Colby College.
After his arrival at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015, Armony led a major transformation of the institution’s global infrastructure and operations to better position the University as a leader in internationalization. This work has been recognized with the nation’s most prestigious honors in the field, such as NAFSA’s Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. In 2022, for the first time in the University’s history, all six of its international and global centers received National Resource Center and Foreign Language and Area Studies awards from the U.S. Department of Education. These competitive awards place the University of Pittsburgh among the nation’s best in international and area studies. Under Armony’s leadership, the University also spearheaded a faculty cluster hire in Latinx studies, established a new Center for Ethnic Studies Research, and launched a Center for African Studies.