The Committee on Global Thought
Global Thought is driven by the scholarship and activities of our faculty committee, chaired by Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History. Our academic programs are led by teaching staff and fellows, and supported by our staff team. Our Advisory Council provides leadership and guidance for Global Thought's students and programs.
Sarah Miller-Davenport is the Graduate Program Director for the Committee on Global Thought. She advises students in their course work and research, teaches MA Seminar, Global Thought Scholars, and the elective Global New York.
Sarah is a historian whose research and teaching focus on how the global circulation of ideas, people, and capital shaped American society in the decades after World War II, with a particular emphasis on how the local intersects with national and global scales of historical change. She is the author of Gateway State: Hawai‘i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire (Princeton 2019), which shows how Hawai‘i statehood was made necessary by global decolonization and, in turn, reconfigured racial and ethnic differences in postwar US politics and culture. She has also researched and published on the reinvention of New York as a global city after its 1975 fiscal crisis. Prior to joining Columbia, Sarah was a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sheffield, and she has held fellowships at the New York Historical Society and NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab.
A native New Yorker, she received her PhD in history from the University of Chicago and her BA from Oberlin College.
Sarah's recent publications include:
“‘We want a city of peace, a country of peace and a world of peace’: New Yorkers and the Municipal Foreign Policy Movement during the Reagan Era," chapter in Johanna Fernández, Kim Phillips-Fein, and Mason B. Williams, eds., Gotham on the Verge: The Remaking of a Modern Global American City (University of North Carolina Press 2027).
"Mamdani Lands at LaGuardia," The Ideas Letter, April 2, 2026.
Co-editor, “Curating New York’s ‘Raw Material,’” History Lab feature in The American Historical Review, Vol. 130, No. 4 (December 2025), 1542–1586.
“The Cultural Center of the World: Art, Finance, and Globalization in late-20th Century New York City” (Journal of Urban History, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2024), 123–144.
“The New York City Fiscal Crisis and the Domestic Origins of Globalization,” chapter in Daniel Bessner and Michael Brenes, eds., Rethinking U.S. World Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
“Where in the World is Hawai‘i? Shifting Geographies of the 50th State,” chapter in Anne Hyde and Alexander Finkelstein, eds., Reconsidering Regions in an Era of New Nationalism (University of Nebraska Press 2023).
“‘The Greatest Opportunity Since the Birth of Christ’: American Evangelical Missionaries at the Dawn of Decolonization,” chapter in John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, and Axel R. Schäfer, eds., Global Faith and Worldly Power: Evangelical Encounters with American Empire (University of North Carolina Press 2022).
Farryl Last is the Assistant Director of Academic Programs for the Committee on Global Thought. She manages critical aspects of Global Thought's academic and student outreach programs, including Global Thought Scholars, the Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought, and the MA in Global Thought, and teaches the spring MA elective course City of Ideas: Independent Study in Global New York.
Last is an international educator and writer. Prior to joining the CGT, she worked at CUNY – Hunter College’s Office of Education Abroad, coordinating semester exchange programs while advising students on all aspects of their study abroad experience. She also taught at Hunter, including the undergraduate course Arts through New York City, which sought to introduce students to various art forms produced in and inspired by the city while fostering students’ own creative work. Her experience includes a school year as an English instructor in kindergartens in Mantova, Italy. Last’s poetry explores impressions and (re)creations of the natural world, experienced both in person in situ as well as through myth and art, engaging with while disrupting expectations of form, narrative, and ekphrasis. She earned an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College as well as an MA in International Education and BA in Romance Languages from New York University.
Elisabeth (Lisa) Weir is Executive Director of the Committee on Global Thought. In this capacity, Lisa oversees all aspects of the execution of CGT programs and acts as a senior advisor to the CGT Chair and Executive Committee. Lisa manages the office that is responsible for all CGT activities, including the MA in Global Thought program, undergraduate initiatives including the UCGT and Global Thought Scholars, and CGT communications and outreach. Lisa also interfaces with CGT’s Advisory Council and executes public offerings like the Global Thought Leaders program, events on campus and those in partnership with Columbia’s Global Centers.
Before joining CGT, Lisa spent 16 years working in various capacities for New York University’s (NYU) global offerings. As part of the founding team of NYU Shanghai, NYU’s degree-granting campus in China, Lisa served as Senior Advisor to the Vice Chancellor and as Assistant Dean, Graduate and Special Programs. Lisa also led the global and executive programs portfolio for the NYU School of Professional Studies and worked in academic affairs at NYU’s study abroad program in Shanghai. Prior to joining NYU, Lisa was an instructor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Lisa has a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) from NYU Steinhardt, where her doctoral work focused on how global institutions innovate in response to crisis. She also earned a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) from NYU Wagner, and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan.