N. D. B. Connolly
Dr. N. D. B. Connolly is Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University, where he occupies the Herbert Baxter Adams chair and sits on the boards for the Center for Africana Studies and the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism.
Prof. Connolly’s 2014 book, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida, received awards from the Urban History Association, the Southern Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. He has also helped build digital archives as a three-year co-hosting of the US History podcast, BackStory, which enjoyed over 6 million downloads its final year and entered the Library of Congress American Archive of Public Broadcasting. In 2015, Prof. Connolly co-founded Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America. The go-to source for maps of government housing discrimination in the 1930s, this website now stands as part of the Library of Congress, through its Manuscript Division Web Archive. A frequent contributor to public debates on historical and current events, Connolly’s editorials and review essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, Dissent, Public Books, and elsewhere.
Working Group Affiliation:
Director of Black Archipelago and the Crisis of Place
Brandi T. Summers
Brandi T. Summers, PhD is Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Columbia University. Her research examines the relationship between and function of race, space, urban infrastructure, and architecture. Her first book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (UNC Press, 2019), explores how competing notions of blackness organize efforts to structure economic relations and develop land in gentrifying Washington DC. Her forthcoming book, Oakland Afterlives: How Black Cities Survive Their Unmaking (University of California Press, 2027), traces the systematic destruction and persistent resistance of Black Oakland across six decades of "Black urbicide," the intentional killing of Black urban space. Through the concept of the "spectral city," Summers examines how Black Oakland exists simultaneously as a disappearing demographic reality and an omnipresent cultural force, haunting the landscape even as displacement accelerates.
Dr. Summers was Principal Investigator of the Mellon Foundation-supported Archive of Urban Futures (2022-2024), in collaboration with the Oakland, California-based housing justice organization, Moms 4 Housing. Alongside Dr. Nathan D.B. Connolly (Johns Hopkins University), Dr. Summers is co-director of the Black Archipelago working group, supported by the Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) at Columbia University.
Dr. Summers is a Contributing Writer for Places Journal and has published several articles and essays that analyze the relationship between race, power, aesthetics, and urbanization that appear in both scholarly and popular publications, including New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Antipode.
Working Group Affiliations
Director of Black Archipelago and the Crisis of Place
Nadia Christidi
Associate Director
Associate Director
Nadia Christidi is the Associate Director at the Center for the Study of Social Difference. She holds a PhD in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society from MIT. Nadia’s research explores how cities in drylands—namely Los Angeles and Dubai—are envisioning and planning for the future of water in the face of climate change. It looks at the political, economic, and social forces shaping sustainable water solutions in each city, focusing on whose sustainability is prioritized and the challenges posed by entrenched interests to achieving new, much-needed socio-environmental realities.
Nadia was previously part of the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded research cluster Governing through Design. There, she co-developed Against Catastrophe , a project that interrogates how catastrophic thinking in the present has fueled technosolutionism and reactionary politics and that fosters anti-catastrophic scholarship and practice through a web platform, edited volume, and art and design commissions. Additionally, Nadia has been a TBA-21 Academy Ocean Fellow, a Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions at MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, and an Art Jameel Arts Research and Writing Resident.
Nadia is committed to working at the intersection of art, science, and policy; producing multimedia work and public programming to engage diverse audiences in research; and nurturing alternative imaginaries of the future. Her work and programs have been presented at the Sharjah Art Biennial, Jameel Arts Centre, SALT Galata, SALT Ulus, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Beirut Art Center, and TBA-21 Ocean Space in Venice, among other venues.
Nia Paz-Diaz
Project Coordinator
Project Coordinator
Before joining Incite, Nia Paz-Diaz held various research positions, including data analysis, urban planning, housing advocacy, environmental justice, and mapmaking. At the Office of the NYS Attorney General, she advocated for NYC's disadvantaged communities through spatial analysis and housing policy research. While at Barnard College, she served as a researcher for the Undesign the Redline exhibit, documenting the history of structural racism and inequality in New York City with a focus on redlining's enduring impact on Black and brown communities.
She specializes in GIS and merges quantitative and qualitative data to create compelling research projects for social action. Her experience in urban planning includes developing innovative transit and bike plans for cities across America using GIS. Additionally, her research experience extends to astrophysics, where she utilized Python programming to locate and analyze dwarf galaxies and conducted historical research interviews for NASA's upcoming book on the Explorers Satellite.
She completed her BA at Barnard College in Urban Studies with a concentration in Environmental Science and a minor in Astronomy. Her thesis examined the intersection of ethnic enclave gentrification, displacement, and modes of community care in Little Havana, Miami, Florida. Driven by her commitment to mutual aid and community development, Nia worked with the Housing Equity Project at Columbia, advancing housing advocacy and providing essential resources to individuals experiencing homelessness in Morningside Heights, New York.
Beyond her research, Nia is a passionate film photographer whose work focuses on queer identities and the transformative power of human connection. Her photography has been featured in various literary arts magazines and art shows.
Nadia Latif
Nadia Latif
Nadia Latif is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. Her scholarship focuses on forced migration and human rights. She has published in the fields of urban anthropology, refugee studies, gender and conflict, law and development, and the history of anthropology. Her current research examines the emergence of local political economies in long-term refugee camps and the ways in which these are shaped by war and the provision of humanitarian aid, as well as by labor migration and migrant remittances. She conducts long-term fieldwork in Burj al-Barajneh camp in Lebanon. She is a coordinator for the ELHN Working Group on Labour Migration History.
Daniela Perleche Ugás
Daniela Perleche Ugás
Daniela Perleche Ugás is a first-year PhD student in Urban Planning at Columbia University. She is interested in the intersection of forced displacement, housing, and the care infrastructures of immigrant communities, particularly those from Latinx communities. She holds a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University and is also a Researcher at URBES-LAB, a research center that analyzes and debates the challenges of urban space production in Peru and Latin America.
Shana L. Redmond
Faculty Director
B.A., Macalester College (2002); Ph.D., Yale University (2008). Shana L. Redmond (she|her) is the Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER) at Columbia University. A writer and interdisciplinary scholar of race, culture, and power, she is the author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU Press, 2014) and Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020), which received a 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation with the special citation of the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism. Named a “Best Book of 2020” by National Public Radio (NPR), Everything Man also received the 2022 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music, 2021 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society, a 2020 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, and finalist and honorable mention designations for the Sterling Stuckey Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and the inaugural book prize of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History. In addition to being co-editor of and contributor to Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke UP, 2016), she is co-editor of the University of California Press series “Phono: Black Music and the Global Imagination” and has published chapters, articles, and essays in outlets including The Futures of Black Radicalism, Current Musicology, Black Camera, Black Music Research Journal, Race & Class, Women & Music, American Quarterly, and Brick: A Literary Journal as well as NPR, the BBC, Boston Review, and Mother Jones. Her work with artists and labels includes the critical liner essay to the soundtrack vinyl release for Jordan Peele’s film Us (Waxwork Records, 2019) as well as an annotation to the screenplay from Inventory Books (2024). She has also authored the notes for String Quartets, Nos. 1-12 by Wadada Leo Smith (TUM Records, 2022), Nina Simone’s You’ve Got to Learn (Verve, 2023), and the multi-volume Paul Robeson: Voice of Freedom (Sony, 2024). Redmond’s current project is a forensic listening to Black life before mourning. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, she was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow.
Mairead Hynes
Events Coordinator
Events Coordinator
Mairead Hynes is the CSSD Events Coordinator for 2024-2025, and is a PhD candidate in the History Department, studying Japanese feminist and women’s activism in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, she traces feminist movement practices and strategies that engage the themes of war responsibility, colonial responsibility, and positionality / structural perpetratorhood. Before entering the Ph.D. program at Columbia University, Mairead graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2013 with a BA in History, and in 2018 earned her MA at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.
Shreyaa Suresh
Communications Coordinator
Communications Coordinator
Shreyaa Suresh is the Communications Coordinator for CSSD from 2024-25. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Sociocultural Anthropology at Columbia University focusing on performing arts in Anthropology and decolonizing performance. She did her undergraduate studies in Economics and Sociology & Anthropology from Ashoka University.
Jackie Orr
Jackie Orr is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Sociology Department at Syracuse University.
Working Group Affiliation:
Khloe Swanson
Events & Finance Coordinator
Khloe Swanson
Events & Finance Coordinator
Khloe Swanson is a designer and researcher from Brooklyn, New York. Khloe holds a BA from Occidental College in Urban Policy with a minor in Fine Art and is currently a Master’s of Architecture student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
Evan Berk
Communications Coordinator
Evan Berk
CSSD Communications Coordinator
Evan Berk (he/him) is an MA student in the Anthropology Department. His research brings together legal-historical anthropology and political ecology as a means to understanding how land, property law, and daily life produce and change ways of life and conceptions of self in Palestine and amongst Palestinian diaspora in Jordan.
Ashley Lopez
Administrative Assistant - Media Production and Finance
Ashley Lopez is a current junior studying economics at Columbia University. She is interested in the intersection of economic policy and social justice.
Ashley Lopez
Former Administrative Assistant - Media Production and Finance (Spring 2023)
Ashley Lopez is a current junior studying economics at Columbia University. She is interested in the intersection of economic policy and social justice. Her involvement with Management Leadership for Tomorrow has allowed her to gain valuable experience in consulting and further study her interests.
Kasheba Marshall
Associate Director
Leadership and Finance
Kasheba Marshall
Associate Director
Leadership and Finance
Kasheba Marshall is the Associate Director of Columbia University's Center for the Study of Social Difference, where she provides financial and operational oversight to the Department. Before joining the Center, she was Assistant Director of Individual Giving at Columbia Business School's Office of Development & Alumni Relations, where she drove the stewardship program and contributed to activities that raised funds to support scholarships, student services, faculty research, curricular innovation, and other initiatives.
Kasheba's extensive twenty-year journey in nonprofit management is a testament to her unwavering dedication and profound expertise. She proudly holds degrees from New York University, where she earned her B.A., and Columbia University, where she obtained her M.S. in Nonprofit and Fundraising Management from the School of Professional Studies and her M.P.A. in Management Innovation from the School of International and Public Affairs.
Fahmida Hussain
Business Officer
Fahmida Hussain
Business Officer - Management and Administration (2020/21, 2021/22, 2022)
Fahmida is the Business Officer at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, where she is managing the financial administration and human resources functions for the center. Most recently, Fahmida worked as the Assistant Finance Officer in the Office of Councilman Azadur Rahman in Bangladesh. Some of her previous experiences include HR Operations Assistant with Verisk Analytics, Data Associate with JBK Associates and Global Shoring, Procurement and Global Security Assistant for Automatic Data Processing. Fahmida is a Barnard alumna having received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. She also speaks fluent Bengali and advanced Spanish.
Ann Kaplan
Chair, WCCLC
New York
Ann Kaplan
Chair, WCCLC
New York
Ann Kaplan is a partner of Circle Wealth Management (CWM) a registered advisory firm. She is also the chair and founder of Circle Financial Group, a wealth management membership group for women. Ms. Kaplan was previously a general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. where she served as the head of the municipal bond department. Ms. Kaplan is a Columbia University Trustee Emerita. She currently serves on the Board of Overseers of the Columbia University School of Business, the Board of Advisors of School of Public Health and the Board of Advisors at the Medical Center. Ms. Kaplan also serves as a board member of the Goldman Sachs Bank USA and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York and the International Women’s Forum. Ms. Kaplan holds a B.A. from Smith College and a M.B.A. from Columbia University.
Sara Ababneh
Fellow, Strategic Studies, University of Jordan
Sara Ababneh is Assistant Professor at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. She is the Refugee Studies Diploma and CSS Internship program coordinator, and she wrote her dissertation on female Islamists in Hamas in occupied Palestine and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan.
Sara Ababneh
Sara Ababneh is Assistant Professor at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. She is the Refugee Studies Diploma and CSS Internship program coordinator. Ababneh earned her DPhil in Politics and International Relations from the St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford in 2010. She wrote her dissertation on female Islamists in Hamas in occupied Palestine and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. Ababneh has conducted research on Mandate Palestine, gender and Islamism, Muslim family laws, and labor movements. Her research interests include class, gender and struggles for liberation and change. Currently, Ababneh studies the popular Jordanian protest movement (al-Hirak al-Sha‘bi al-Urduni). She has recently published a piece on women in the Jordanian Day Wage Labor program in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Ababneh was selected as the Carnegie Centennial Fellow at the Middle East Institute at the University of Columbia in the fall semester 2016.
Working Group Affiliation
Bürge Abiral
Doctoral Student, Cultural Studies, Sabanci University
Bürge Abiral is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She received her BA from Williams College and her MA in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University, Turkey. Her research interests include human- environment relations, climate change, agriculture, political violence, and gender and sexuality. Her translation of Toward an Anthropology of Women (ed.
Bürge Abiral
PhD Student, Johns Hopkins University
Bürge Abiral is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She received her BA from Williams College and her MA in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University, Turkey. Her research interests include human- environment relations, climate change, agriculture, political violence, and gender and sexuality. Her translation of Toward an Anthropology of Women (ed. Rayna Reiter, 1975) was published in Turkish in 2015. She was a member of the organizing committee of Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence Young Researchers Conference, which was held in Sabancı University in April 2014.
Working Group Affiliation
Mimi Abramovitz
Fellow, Social Work, Hunter College
Mimi Abramovitz is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She has published widely on issues related to women, poverty, human rights and the U.S Welfare State.
Mimi Abramovitz
Mimi Abramovitz is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She has published widely on issues related to women, poverty, human rights and the U.S Welfare State. Professor Abramovitz is currently writing a book on the history of low-income women’s activism in the U.S. Her previous books include the award-winning Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S., Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy From Colonial Times to the Present, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy and Taxes Are A Woman’s Issue: Reframing the Debate. She has also published more than 80 articles in scholarly and popular journals. Among her honors and awards, Dr. Abramovitz has been inducted into the Columbia University School of Social Work Hall of Fame.
Working Group Affiliation