Matthew DeMaio
Graduate Administrative Fellow
Media Production and Marketing
Matthew DeMaio
Matthew DeMaio is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. His work mixes ethnographic, digital and archival methods to explore experiences of urban displacement and encampment across the Palestinian refugee diaspora. His ongoing dissertation project focuses specifically on the lives and experiences of the former residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp in southern Damascus who have faced multiple rounds of movement as a result of the Syrian Civil War. In doing so, the project analyzes how attachments to, and conceptions of, place are fashioned and carried across iterations of displacement and how these accumulated attachments shape encounters with new places of refuge and manifestations of belonging.
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Graduate Fellows
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.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Olamide Adejumo is a student of narrative medicine at Columbia University. He is a graduate of medicine and surgery from Obafemi Awolowo College of Health Sciences in Nigeria passionate about narrative care practices in medicine. His interests includes clinical care and research in Narrative Medicine, Personalized Medicine, Medical Humanities and Genetic Technologies in Disability Care.
Doctoral Student, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Fatemeh Adlparvar is a recent graduate of the Narrative Medicine program. She will begin her graduate studies at the Mailman School of Public Health where she hopes to study the intersections of narrative medicine, social work, and public health. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley with a major in Environmental Science with an Education minor. She went on to complete her MSW at Columbia School of Social Work, with a minor in Law and a concentration in health, mental health, & disability.
Ph.D. Candidate, Performance Studies, New York University
Luis Rincon Alba is a Colombian artist and scholar based in New York City since 2010. He has taught at the departments of Art and Public Policy and Performance Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Doctoral Student, Performance Studies, New York University
Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Sociology, and his M.A. degree in Philosophy from Bogazici University. Ertuğ’s primary fields of research are the politics of gender and sexuality in Turkey, with a focus on artistic and everyday performance, visual practices, fashion, and queer historiography.
Doctoral Student, Human Rights, Columbia University
Sydney Amoakoh is a Human Rights Studies MA candidate at Columbia University whose research takes a look at the considerations and constraints behind the drafting of human rights into humanitarian guidelines, with specific focus on the recent inclusion of a section on menstrual health management (MHM) in the 2018 edition of the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response.
PhD Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Patrick Anson is a PhD Candidate in English and Comparative Literature. He is writing a part-ethnographic, part-literary-critical dissertation about programs that propose reading groups focused on 20th and 21st century narrative literature as a means to address a range of social problems, from mass incarceration, where a reading group functions as an alternative sentence for people convicted of an offense, to military trauma, where a reading group helps to establish social connections among veterans.
Doctoral Student, International Affairs and Journalism, Columbia University
Teresa holds a BA in International Relations from Brown University and is currently pursuing a Master of International Affairs and an MS in Journalism at Columbia University. She previously worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (Rome), where she was responsible for the coordination and editing of high-profile publications. Among others, she edited the joint FAO-EL PAÍS publications series “The State of our Planet”. She is interested in how documentary video, photography and journalism at large can drive social action and improve public policy across geographical boundaries.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Matthew Argame is currently a graduate student in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University. Upon graduation, Matthew will continue on to medical school as an aspiring psychiatrist, advocating for the needs of vulnerable communities. Matthew hopes that his engagement with the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, Culture program will produce interdisciplinary dialogue on improving patient care by addressing societal injustices and by bringing attention the unique needs of queer and disabled communities.
Doctoral Student, Divinity, Union Theological Seminary
Linda Aristondo is a Latina bilingual woman of color and attorney championing the needs of vulnerable populations. Her field of interest is collaborating with nonprofit service organizations dedicated to serving the legally disenfranchised, including vulnerable undocumented immigrants and refugees.
PhD Student, Sociology, Columbia University
Larry Au is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Columbia University. He is broadly interested in science and technology studies, economic sociology, and political sociology. His dissertation examines the rise of precision medicine in China and the United States, focusing on the diffusion of the concept and its associated technologies, as well as the ways in which debates around ethical, legal, and social issues are constructed locally and globally. He is also interested in the recent controversies over human gene editing and the modernization of traditional medicines.
PhD Student, History, Bowdoin College
George Aumoithe focuses on 20th century American history and the history of public health, science, and medicine. He received his B.A. from Bowdoin College with a double major in history and Africana studies and a minor in gay and lesbian studies. His studies were supported by the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Point Foundation , the national LGBTQ scholarship.
PhD Student, Counseling Psychology, Columbia University
Michael Awad is a completing his Ph.D. in counseling psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. He earned dual master’s degrees in mental health counseling and professional counseling from Seton Hall University. He has experience working with diverse populations across the lifespan at every level of behavioral health care, including inpatient psychotherapy at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, neuropsychological assessment at the Cognitive and Research Center of NJ, intensive outpatient psychotherapy at Overlook Medical Center, community mental health at the Dean Hope Center, behavioral medicine at Morristown Medical Center, addictions counseling at the NJ Department of Veterans Affairs, and integrated health care through the Health Resources and Services Administration Graduate Psychology Education Program.
Doctoral Student, Health Promotion, Research and Practice, Columbia University
Olivia Balderes is an MPH Candidate at Mailman in the department of Sociomedical Sciences with a focus on Health Promotion, Research and Practice. She is interested in applying her Intervention Design and Evaluation background to improve community involvement within Precision Medicine programs/studies, maximize efficiency and efficacy of return of genetic results in clinical settings, and explore the determinants of genetic and general health literacy.
Doctoral Student, Global Health, Columbia University
Kayleigh Barrett is a current MPH candidate in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, working toward a certificate in Global Health. In the last three years, she worked as a Research Scientist at the University of Washington in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Disease and was involved in a structural genomics pipeline for an early structure-based drug design projects targeting a number of pathogens. Her current interests include research ethics, infectious disease, reproductive health and medical anthropology.
PhD Student, Sustainability Management, Columbia University
Naomi Batzer graduated from Barnard College with a degree in economics in 2017. She is particularly interested in the roles of health and gender in development economics and wrote her final paper on the effect of Ebola on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. She is in her first semester of the Sustainability Management program at Columbia University.
Doctoral Student, History, Columbia University
Iuri Bauler Pereira holds a B.A. in History from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His research focus on the transnational connections and geopolitical imagination of Latin American Countercultures (underground press, literature and film), Brazilian Critical Geography, and the Intellectual History of the Americas.
Doctoral Student, Disability Rights, Columbia Law School
Odelia Bay is a master’s student at Columbia Law School where she hopes to specialize in disability rights in North America, with a focus on comparative constitutional and civil rights jurisprudence. Odelia received her J.D. from the University of Ottawa in Canada and was admitted to the Ontario bar in 2012. She worked with one of Canada’s leading labor and civil rights law firms and has also participated in disability-related work with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and a community legal clinic in Ottawa.
PhD Student, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Veronica Belafi is the graduate assistant for PRECISION MEDICINE: ETHICS, POLITICS AND CULTURE and a PhD candidate in English & Comparative Literature. Her academic interests stem from the history and philosophy of science and technology, including the medical humanities, modern and contemporary media poetics, ecocriticism, and the growing field of petrocultures.
Doctoral Candidate, English, Princeton University
Joshua Bennett is a second-year doctoral candidate in the Department of English at Princeton University. His academic interests include but are not limited to: black studies, disability studies, affect, animal studies, and 19th century Afro-Protestantism(s). In addition to his graduate work at Princeton, Joshua is a also a full-time performance artist, and has recited his original work at events such as The Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards, the ESPN documentary "One Night in Vegas," and President Obama's Evening of Poetry and Music at The White House.
Doctoral Student, Oral History, Columbia University
Nicki Pombier Berger is an oral historian, educator, and interdisciplinary artist.
Nicki is on the faculty at The New School College of Performing Arts, where she teaches in the Drama BFA program. In collaboration with playwright Suli Holum, she is currently working as dramaturg on THE BAKKEN, an investigation of the Bakken shale, a rock formation roughly 350 million years old sitting deep below the surface of North Dakota.
PhD Student, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Liz Bowen is a Ph.D. candidate in English and comparative literature who works at the intersections of 20th and 21st century American literature, disability studies, and critical animal studies. Her dissertation, “Animal Abilities: Disability, Species Difference, and Aesthetic Innovation in the Long 20th Century,” traces the intertwined deployments of disability, animality, and cognitive otherness as sites for literary experimentation, from Faulkner to the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary poetics.
Doctoral Student, Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University
Christopher is a second year Master of Public Health student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. His certificate is in History, Ethics and Law. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His research interest is in using ethics to assess how policies in the fields of public health and medicine work to balance efficacy, efficiency, and effectiveness.
PhD Student, Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies, Columbia University
Christopher Cardona is a first year doctoral student in the integrated program in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies. He is excited to learn about the multiple aspects of precision medicine and how we can begin incorporating these in scientific research. He is currently working on muscle invasive bladder cancer in mouse models and will be working on Alzheimer's next semester. Both labs use comprehensive and computational tools to identify important regulators of these processes.
PhD Candidate, French and Romance Philology, Columbia University
Noni Carter is a historical and speculative fiction author. She has published work in RSA Journal, Kweli Journal (forthcoming August 2019), and is the author of the YA historical fiction novel, Good Fortune (Simon & Schuster, 2010), winner of the Parent’s Choice Gold award. She is a 2016 graduate of Voices of Our Nation and the recipient of the 2019 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her work-in-progress novel Womb Talk.
Doctoral Student, Cultural Studies, New York University
Henry Castillo is a doctoral student in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. He holds a B.A. in Applied Linguistics (Honors) from the University of California--Los Angeles and an M.A. in Performance Studies form New York University. His research interests include race and ethnicity; women, gender, and sexuality; memory and "Intangible Cultural Heritage" in the Americas; Blackness in Latin America; and Afro-Colombian "heritage" practices and performance.
Doctoral Student, Performance and Cultural Theorist, Columbia University
Luca A Castro Figari is a performance and cultural theorist, organizer, survivor and healer, and multimedia artist specializing in behavioral, ideological, and intimacy control structures. They've received awards in poetry and creative writing, perform and play-write professionally, are recording their first album, publish film and social criticism, and were Peruvian National Champion in Tae-Kwon-Do.
Master’s student, Human Rights, Columbia University
Laura Charney is a Master’s student in Human Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She completed her undergraduate degree in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.
Sohini Chattopadhyay is a PhD Candidate in the History Department at Columbia University. Her dissertation focuses on the science of managing mass death in colonial cities, with a particular interest in Bombay and Calcutta among other cities in the early twentieth century.
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Graduate Fellows
PhD Student, History, Lawrence College
Lindsey Dayton is a second-year PhD student in the field of U.S. History, focusing on African American, gender, and labor history in the 20th century. She received a BA in liberal arts and an MA in women’s history from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. Her MA thesis, “From Heavy Iron Blues to I Pay my Union Dues,” explored black women laundry workers’ successful efforts to organize a union in New York City during the Great Depression.
Doctoral Student, Medicine & Cardiology, Columbia University
Ersilia DeFilippis is a second year Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in the Seymour, Paul and Gloria Milstein Division of Cardiology in the Columbia University Department of Medicine. She completed her undergraduate degree at Yale University and attended Weill Cornell Medicine for medical school. Ersilia’s residency was done at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Doctoral Student, Film Studies, Columbia University
Julia Delgadillo is a second-year Film Studies MA student at Columbia University, focusing her thesis on Mexican horror films of the 1950s to 1970s, and their relationship to Mexican folklore and culture. This work is expanded upon from her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where her focus was manifestations of mental illnesses in horror films.
DNP Candidate, Nurse Midwifery, Columbia University
Lauren is a DNP candidate in Nurse Midwifery at Columbia University. Her passion for improving Black maternal and infant outcomes both locally and globally is driving her to the field. She is a recent graduate from Columbia’s Master Direct Entry Program in Nursing, and is the current President of Columbia’s Black Student Nurses.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Matthew Dias is a researcher at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and graduate student in Columbia’s bioethics program. Matt’s scholarship focuses on clinical research ethics and advances in medicine that intersect law and public policy. He is actively involved in various healthcare innovation and precision medicine initiatives in New York City and beyond. To this end, Matt looks forward to sharing his distinct perspectives and insights with the Precision Medicine Project and its affiliates.
Graduate Student, Genetics and Development, Columbia University
Sarah Dugger is a PhD student in the Department of Genetics & Development, who is working in the laboratory of Dr. David Goldstein in the Institute for Genomic Medicine. Sarah is originally from Akron, Ohio and obtained her undergraduate degree in Biology and a Masters degree in Genetic Counseling from Case Western Reserve University. She was a practicing full time prenatal genetic counselor for four years at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio—an experience that sparked her interest in precision medicine research.
Doctoral Student, History, Fundação Getúlio Vargas
Fernando Ermiro is a resident of Rocinha. He is currently completing a Master's degree at Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
PhD Candidate, Political Science, Birbeck Law
Basak Ertur is a PhD candidate and sessional lecturer at the School of Law, Birkbeck College. Her current research focuses on political trials, performativity, spectrality and sovereignty. She is the editor of Manual for Conspiracy (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2011) and co-editor of Waiting for Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said (Verso, 2008).
Doctoral Student, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
Yasmine Espert is an Art History doctoral candidate at Columbia University. Her research interests include the cinematic medium, the Caribbean, and diaspora. She is the Graduate Fellow for the Digital Black Atlantic Project, a working group supported by the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University. Yasmine is also an alumna of the Fulbright U.S. Student program.
PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Ethnomusicology, Columbia University
Maria Fantinato received her MA in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, with a thesis on the relationship between music, communication and aesthetics among local experimental musicians. As a PhD candidate at Columbia University she works at the intersection of sound studies, anthropology of the senses, Brazilian ethnomusicology and queer theories of the sensorial, focusing on the sonic as formative of the political.
Doctoral Student, Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
Lia attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a degree in psychology.
PhD Student, History, Columbia University
Susanna Ferguson is a PhD Student in the History Department at Columbia University, where she focuses on the history of the modern Middle East, particularly on questions of women and gender. She is also a certificate candidate at Columbia's Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality (IRWAGS). Prior to beginning her doctoral work at Columbia, Susanna graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a BA in History and received a Master's degree from NYU's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Ph.D. Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Mia Florin-Sefton is a Ph.D. candidate and University Writing Instructor in the English & Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University, where she specializes in 20th and 21st century transatlantic anglophone literatures and culture; with a focus on how narratives of succession mediate and explicate the shifting relationship between biological and economic theories of heredity and inheritance. She is also currently at work on a project that looks at the history of sex glands and early history of hormone replacement therapy in the context of theories of racial degeneration and eugenics post-World War I.
Undergraduate Student, Latin American and Caribbean Studies & Political Science, Columbia College, Columbia University
Gabriel Franco is an undergraduate student at Columbia University in the fields of Latin American & Caribbean studies and political science. His areas of focus are Brazilian slavery and race studies and public security in Brazil, especially regarding drug policy and dynamics of urban violence as part of the "war on drugs" mentality.
PhD Student, Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Diana Garofalo is a doctoral student in Epidemiology, in the school of public health. Her background in biochemistry and genetics led her to be interested in using epidemiologic methods to understand underlying biological mechanisms in human disease, especially in rare diseases. She also briefly worked at a clinical genetic testing company that screened potential parents for recessive mutations linked to severe diseases. This experience deepened her interest in exploring the technical, ethical, and scientific challenges of using genomics in medicine, with specific concern about the potential worsening of disparities in health care.
PhD Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Nicole Gervasio is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her dissertation is on the ethics of representing mass political violence in contemporary postcolonial literature. Her work focuses on intersections between queer, postcolonial, and feminist theory in relation to themes of survival, embodiment, and trauma in literatures of the Global South. She also has a B.A. in English and Growth & Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College and has been the recipient of Mellon Mays, Beinecke, and Javits Fellowships.
Doctoral Student, Neuroscience and Behavior, Columbia University
Danielle Goldman is a current graduate student studying Bioethics at Columbia University with a focus on the intersection between neuroscience, genetics, and pediatric protections. She graduated with an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience and Behavior from Columbia University in 2016. Her interest in translational research was ignited when she was named an Intel (now: Regeneron) Science Talent Search finalist in 2012. Since then, she has only augmented and diversified her scientific curiosities.
PhD Student, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Sandra Aguilar Gomez is a third year student in the Sustainable Development PhD program in Columbia University, where she was awarded the Wu Fellowship for her research in health, wellbeing and public policy. Her main research interests lie in the fields of health, climate change, and development economics. She holds a Master in Applied Economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), as well as a degree in Economics from the same university.
PhD Student, History, University of Chile
Marianne González Le Saux is a second year student in the History doctoral program, and her research is centered on the cultural and social history of the law in Latin America. She is a lawyer from the University of Chile. She has been awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, and she is funded by CONICYT, Chile, and Columbia's Richard Hofstadter Fellowship.
PhD Student, Germanic Languages, Columbia University
Alyssa Greene is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Germanic Languages and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. She studies twentieth-century German and Austrian literature, with a particular emphasis on the post-Second World War era. Her research interests include memory discourses in the postwar period; migration (especially in the German-Turkish context); feminist and postcolonial criticism; the figure of the child and depictions of childhood in Cold War and post-Cold War narratives of authoritarian states.
Doctoral Student, Human Evolutionary Biology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Emily Groopman is a third year MD/PhD student at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She was born and raised in Brookline, MA, and graduated magna cum laude with Highest Honors in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard College. Her PhD research, in the lab of Dr. Ali Gharavi, applies genomic methods to discover variants predisposing individuals to different forms of chronic kidney disease, in order to deliver personalized diagnoses and treatment. Her interests include bioethics, medical humanism, and integrating cultural differences into the delivery of care.
Doctoral Student, Adolescent Transitions and Environment, Columbia University
Caitlin Gruer, MPH, is a Senior Project Coordinator at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she supports the Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment (GATE) Program, based in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. Prior to joining Columbia, she worked at Plan International USA leading initiatives related to menstrual hygiene management (MHM), water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and integrated WASH and nutrition.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Jenny Gumer is an attorney practicing in the litigation department of Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, Los Angeles. As a member of the firm's FDA, Healthcare and Life Sciences practices groups, she advises pharmaceutical and medical device companies on regulatory compliance as well as represents them in large scale litigations. Jenny is also a student in Columbia University's Masters in Bioethics program which she will complete in Spring 2017.
PhD Student, History, Columbia University
Anna Danziger Halperin studies twentieth century American and British social policy and its effects on women and children, with a particular interest in child care. She graduated from Barnard College in 2006 with a degree in History and Human Rights. Before returning to Columbia in 2010, Anna conducted research and coauthored several reports on U.S. child care policies and other related issues affecting low-wage working families during her employment with the Urban Institute and the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Ph.D. candidate, American Studies, Yale University
Kristin Hankins is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Yale University. She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and previously worked as a program, project, and exhibition coordinator at a non-profit public art organization.
Graduate Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Sarah Harvin hails from the state of Michigan, where she completed her bachelor's degree in psychology at Hope College. Sarah moved to NYC in the summer of 2018 to pursue a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine. She was attracted to the Narrative Medicine program because she recognized a unique opportunity to combine her interest in having difficult conversations surrounding racial inequalities in health care with her pursuit of a career in medicine.
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Graduate Fellows
Jessica Jacolbe is a writer from Brooklyn whose work has been featured in Catapult, Garage Magazine, JSTOR Daily, and others.
Phd Student, Anthropology, Columbia University
Alyssa A.L. James is a PhD student and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow whose research examines the consequences of recasting colonial history for Caribbean subjectivities and futures. She interrogates the discourses and practices that transform commodities into heritage - and history into commodity - as it unfolds through Martinique’s nascent coffee revival project.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Courtni Jeffers is currently a graduate student in the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University. Prior to her time at Columbia she earned a bachelor’s degree in Medical Humanities and a bachelor’s degree in Biology at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana. After completing her M.S. in Narrative Medicine, Courtni hopes to pursue osteopathic medicine with a specialty in hospice care. She is passionate about writing and hopes to use the art of storytelling to facilitate honest and healing conversations about the end of life, with her hospice patients and their families.
Doctoral Student, Human Rights, Columbia University
Anna Jiang is a currently a Human Rights M.A. student here at Columbia. Her thesis concerns how traditions and cultural heritage informs reproductive/menstrual health and gender in the space of contemporary China.
Graduate Student, Systems Biology, Columbia University
Sunny Jones is a graduate student in the Systems Biology department working with Dr. Andrea Califano. Her research involves developing algorithms for analyzing cancer genomics data with the goal of better understanding their biology as well matching patients to highly specific treatments as based on their genetics. She has previous research experience in nutrient metabolism and is currently working in conjunction with a startup to build a platform for providing optimal meals and dietary suggestions to cancer patients and survivors. In her free time she enjoys rock climbing, biking and exploring New York City.
Doctoral Student, Education, Columbia University
Nick Juravich is a doctoral student in United States History, studying education, labor organizing, social policy, urban history, and social movements in the twentieth century. His dissertation, provisionally titled "An Education in Democracy: Paraprofessionals in Schools, Communities, and the Labor Movement, 1965-1980," examines the changing relationships between public schools, local communities, and public sector unions in this era.
PhD Student, History, Columbia University
Suzanne Kahn is a Ph.D. candidate in the U.S. History program. She works at the intersection of legal history, women’s history, and American Political Development. Her dissertation, “Divorce and the Politics of the Social Welfare Regime, 1969-2001,” examines how rising divorce rates shaped the politics and policies around women’s access to economic resources.
Graduate Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Guneet Kaur is originally from the Bay Area, CA and graduated from Scripps College earlier this year with a degree in Biology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in race. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Narrative Medicine here at Columbia University, looking at the intersections of bioethics, social justice, and clinical practice, with an emphasis on the use of patient narrative as a means of healing. She is passionate about the intersections of social justice and medicine in caring for underserved communities- particularly conversations around chronic condition management, mental health, and reproductive health.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Robin J. Kemper is currently studying for her M.S. in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. Hoping professionally to write and teach on disability-related matters, Robin has twice taught a Narrative Medicine seminar to Columbia University postbaccalaureate premedical students and undergraduate premedical students. She is also a Curriculum Committee Representative in the Narrative Medicine program. Robin earned her J.D. at Yale Law School and her B.A. in English at Yale University.
Phd Candidate, Anthropology & Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Corinne Kentor is a Ph.D student in Anthropology & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on the intersection of immigration and higher education policy. Her dissertation explores the educational experiences of older and younger siblings in mixed status families, with a specific focus on the institutional policies that shape their respective trajectories after high school.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Dhaval Khamar is a graduate student in Columbia’s bioethics program and previously attended the University of Central Florida, earning a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Religion and Cultural Studies both with honors. His areas of interest in bioethics are end of life ethics, access to medical innovation, and health policy ethics. Dhaval has also contributed to health policy efforts in New York as an intern at the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law.
Doctoral Student, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Shenila Khoji-Moolji received her doctorate in Education and additional certification in Feminist Theory from Columbia University in 2016. Her research interests include examining discourses on gender and education, and their entanglement with practices of power. Dr. Khoja-Moolji’s work problematizes the centering of girls’ education and empowerment as a solution to societal problems, especially in relation to Muslim-majority nations.
Doctoral Student, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University
Sarah Kleinstein is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University, currently studying under Dr. David Goldstein in the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University. Her primary research focus is determining the genetic underpinnings behind differential responses to infectious diseases, such as HIV-1, HSV-2, HCV, and HBV. Kleinstein also holds a BS in Biochemistry and an MS in Genetic Epidemiology (both from the University of Washington, Seattle).
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Julia Knox is a researcher at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and an M.S. Candidate in Narrative Medicine in the Columbia Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics. She is interested in the methods by which data takes narrative form in our society. The focus of her research includes exposure to environmental mixtures, maternal/paternal-child health, and transgenerational epigenetics.
Ph.D. student, History, Columbia University
Nancy Ko is a scholar of race, capital, and migration working at the intersection of Jewish and Middle East Studies. A Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Columbia University, her present research traces the consequences of the emergence of Sephardic identity politics in the global Middle East. Nancy holds an MPhil at the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. from Harvard University, where she was a founding organizer of the Open Hillel movement.
Doctoral Student, English, City College of New York
Leah Kogen-Elimeliah is a poet, essayist, short story and nonfiction writer from Moscow, currently living in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at City College of New York, is the Founder and Director of WordShedNYC Reading Series and an Editorial Associate for Fiction literary magazine.
Doctoral Student, Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Kathleen Kraus is a second year Master of Public Health student at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. Her academic focus includes chronic disease prevention and health policy. Prior to attending Mailman, Kathleen worked as an Associate at Voz Advisors (formerly MK&A), a patient advocacy relations consultancy to the pharmaceutical industry.
Ph.D. Candidate, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Anna Krauthamer is a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia's English & Comparative Literature department, where she studies and writes about contemporary novels, theories of literary character, and disability. She is currently beginning a dissertation project focused on character typologies in contemporary fiction.
PhD Student, Genetics & Development, Columbia University
Daniel Krizay is a PhD student in the department of Genetics & Development, who is currently a researcher in the lab of Dr. David Goldstein in the Institute for Genomic Medicine. Daniel is originally from Centreville, Virginia and attended Northeastern University where he received his B.S. degree in Biochemistry. Before moving to New York City for graduate school, Daniel worked full-time for nearly two years in Boston as a researcher in fields ranging from antibiotic characterization to Spinal Muscular Atrophy research.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Hippocrates said, “Wherever the art of medicine is loved – there is also a love of humanity.” This quote explains her own reflections and values in life. She loves humanity, and she chose to devote her life to science and medicine because she wants to make a difference in patients’ lives, alleviate patients’ suffering, and positively influence the healthcare system of the United States and worldwide. Presently, she is a graduate student in the Program of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University.
Ph.D. Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Aya Labanieh is a Ph.D. candidate in the English and Comparative Literature Department, where she works on imperial conspiracies and their conspiracy-theory afterlives in 20th and 21st century Middle Eastern literature and politics. Her broader interests include conspiratorial thinking within a global digital context, and how conspiracy theories function as alternate histories, heretical discourses, popular critiques, epistemic injuries, and modern enchantments.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Delilah Leibowitz is currently a graduate student studying Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2019. She holds a B.A. in Health and the Human Sciences, with an emphasis in Internal Health. Delilah participated in several research labs throughout her undergraduate studies, ranging from studying fluoresced vasculature pathways of Zebrafish embryos to her work in understanding the relationship between blood proteins and cognitive function.
PhD Student, Sociology, Columbia University
Moran Levy is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University and a fellow with the working group on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture. Moran’s research focuses on classification of patients and diseases. She examines the role of social institutions in shaping biomedical classification as well the social consequences of diagnostic practices.
PhD Student, Biological Sciences, Columbia University
Aaron Limoges is a PhD student in the Department of Biological Sciences. His doctoral research is performed at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he studies cell- and circuit-level mechanisms through which stress affects cognition and mood. As a neuroscientist, Aaron wants to find new ways to merge biological and behavioral data.
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Penelope Lusk is a graduate student in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University. She holds a BA in English Literature from Bowdoin College. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she currently she works as a Project Associate for the Program for Medical Education Innovations and Research at New York University. In the future, she hopes to continue working at the crossroads of medical education and the health humanities.
Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University
Trisha Maharaj is a MA candidate in the Human Rights Studies program at Columbia University. Her research focuses on cultural and religious practices related to menstruation and women’s experiences and attitudes in the Hindu diaspora of Trinidad.
Doctoral Student, Journalism, Columbia University
Larry Madowo is a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University. He is also a candidate for an M.A. in Business and Economics at Columbia Journalism School. Before taking up the fellowship in New York City, he was the BBC Africa Business Editor. Larry launched 6 syndicated BBC TV shows in English, Swahili and French and led the broadcaster’s coverage of business in Africa.
Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology, Columbia University
Amar Mandavia is currently a second-year doctoral student pursuing clinical psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University from where he also holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology. In his current involvement with ELSI, Amar is assisting in a systematic review to identify genetic markers and subsequent variations among different racial and ethnicity groups to inform PMI research efforts. His master’s thesis focused on analyzing longitudinal epidemiological data to identify prospective psychosocial factors that impact transition to and recovery from homelessness among adults in the US.
Doctoral Student, Global Health, Columbia University Medical Center
Lianna Marks is a Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Fellow at the Children's Hospital of New York and Columbia University Medical Center. She is a graduate of Columbia College and the Indiana University School of Medicine and completed her pediatric residency at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her interest in Global Health has lead her to clinical work in Kenya, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Her research investigates using natural killer cell immunotherapy in the treatment of cancer.
Doctoral Student, Genetic Counseling, Columbia University
Bree Martin is from Los Angeles, CA, and received a bachelor’s degree in psychobiology with a minor in philosophy from UCLA. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Columbia University in Genetic Counseling. Bree has past research experience in genetic factors in schizophrenia, and was an active member of UCLA’s Bioethics Society. She hopes to be an advocate for equitable healthcare, specifically within genetic medicine.
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Graduate Fellows
Doctoral Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Katie Neimeyer is a graduate student in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University, where she also works as a research coordinator in the Taub Institute and Sergievsky Center on several neurogenetic studies. As an intern in the Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics Canada (SING Canada) 2019 program at the University of Alberta, she participated in a dialogue about Indigenous bioethics and approaches to genomic sciences. She plans on pursuing a career in genetic counseling after she completes her M.S. in Narrative Medicine.
Doctoral Student, Social Personality Psychology, CUNY
Akemi Nishida is a doctoral student in the social personality psychology PhD program and an adjunct lecturer in Psychology and Disability Studies at City University of New York. Using frameworks of social justice studies and critical disability studies, her work focuses on the politicization of disabled people and community building in relation to intersecting oppression and privilege. She is also a performer in a project ‘GIMP’ by Heidi Latsky Dance and a starting member of DISLABELEDtv, a media organization by disabled youth/young adults.
Doctoral Student, Biomedical Science, Columbia University
Christie Oliver will be starting at Columbia University, School of Professional Studies, as a graduate student in the Bioethics program in Fall 2017. She is from Edinburgh, Scotland and has a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Biomedical Science (Anatomy) from University of Aberdeen. Her thesis focused on fetal testosterone and the role it plays in the development of autism spectrum disorders. She is fascinated by the differences in health care systems globally and is passionate about the development of emerging medical fields. She is an active runner and loves to do yoga.
Curator, Oral History and Art, Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art Istanbul
Işın Önol is a curator and writer based in New York. She has been working as an independent curator (predominantly in the USA, Austria and Turkey) since 2009. Before that, she led the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art Istanbul as its director and curator. (2006-2009). Her curatorial research focuses on interconnecting archival information with oral histories to create platforms for collective memory through collaborative art practices
PhD Student, American Studies, Yale University
Ittai is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies. His dissertation is an intellectual history of intelligence and intellectual ability in 18th- and 19th-century America with a focus on popular literary texts. His other areas of expertise include the history of race, sexuality and gender studies, disability studies, and the history of capitalism. He has been a tutor for the undergraduate non-fiction writing course “Daily Themes,” a writing instructor, and an LSAT-prep tutor and instructor. His work has been published in American Quarterly and Public Books, and he has presented at the Modern and Contemporary Studies Initiative, American Studies Association and the Modern Language Association.
Doctoral Student, General Studies, Columbia University
Jeremy Orloff is a premed postbac student in the School of General Studies. Prior to his interest in medicine, he studied political science and history at Johns Hopkins University. He later worked in local New York City government relations. As a postbac, Jeremy has been involved in clinical research around obesity and related diseases.
Doctoral Student, International Finance and Economic Policy, Columbia University
Giovanni Pagán Vélez is a student from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is an MPA candidate at Columbia SIPA, concentrating in International Finance and Economic Policy.
Doctoral Student, Medicine, Columbia University
Ming Pei is currently a pre-health student in the Pre-Medical Post Baccalaureate Program at Columbia University. Previously, she attended University of California, Berkeley earning a B.A. in Statistics and B.A. in Economics. She is interested in public health research and aims to make an impact on healthcare policy making.
Doctoral Student, Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University
Adrienne Pichon is a Research Coordinator under Dr. Noemie Elhadad in Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research interests center around leveraging emerging health technologies coupled with user-centered design to improve access to health-related information, access to care, and meaningful and actionable personal insights, particularly for vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Hannah Pivo is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in 19th- and 20th-century design and architecture, with a focus on the history of graphic design and information visualization. Her work has appeared in the journals Design Issues and Public Art Dialogue and she has contributed to exhibition catalogs on various topics in modern and contemporary art and design.
PhD Student, Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University
Ronna A. Popkin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociomedical Sciences (SMS) with a concentration in Sociology at Columbia University. She was a Fellow in SMS's NICHD predoctoral training program in Gender, Sexuality, and Health. Her multi-disciplinary research interests span the fields of sociology, public health, science and technology studies, and gender studies, and include adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, genetic risk, and women’s health in the United States. Prior to attending Columbia, Ms. Popkin worked as a community sexuality educator for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and lectured courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on sexuality education, women’s health, and the politics of fertility control. Ms. Popkin earned her M.S. in Health Education and B.S. with Honors in Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Doctoral Student, Public Health, Columbia University
Kenia has a clinical background and is an MHA '22 graduate of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.
Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, Columbia University
Hannah Pullen-Blasnik is a Ph.D. student and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. She is also a Graduate Research Fellow at the Columbia Justice Lab on the Pennsylvania Solitary Study and the Rikers Island Longitudinal Study. Her primary research interests include social movements, political economy, and algorithms and technology.
Doctoral Student, Precision Medicine, State University of Bangladesh
Sikder Nahidul Islam Rabbi completed his Bachelor and Master’s in clinical pharmacy and pharmacogenetics from State University of Bangladesh. In the arena of research, he has worked with clinical pharmacokinetics, drug protein binding study, pharmacogenetics, SNP genotyping, HLA research and cancer genetics, better understanding about drug activation and pharmacodynamics variation based on patient’s genetics. His research interest includes, epigenetics, proto-oncogene mutation, cancer genetics and neuroscience.
Doctoral Student, Public Health, Columbia University
Syed Raza is a master of public health candidate in the department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University where he is also completing a certificate in the Social Determinants of Health. His work focuses on the political economy, sociocultural aspects, and research methodologies of public health. His research interests include historical sociology, geopolitics, science and technology studies, social epidemiology, world-ecology analysis, and critical animal studies.
PhD Student, Systems Biology, Columbia University
Andrew Ressler is a PhD Candidate in the department of Systems Biology. Andrew is currently a researcher in the Institute for Genomic Medicine in Dr. David Goldstein’s lab. He received his Bachelors of Science in Applied Math and Biology from Brown University in 2013. After graduating, Andrew worked as an associate in finance at Amgen for two years before beginning his PhD at Columbia University in 2015. As a graduate student, Andrew’s research focuses on developing methods to model and characterize neuropsychiatric disease using human stem cell derived cultured neuronal networks.
Doctoral Student, Anthropology, Columbia University
Chazelle Rhoden is a third-year doctoral student of anthropology at Columbia University. She conducts research through a transnational black feminist lens on the relationship between climate change conservation and race in Brazil.
Doctoral Student, Performance Studies, New York University
Leticia Robles-Moreno is a PhD student at New York University’s Department of Performance Studies. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Humanities with emphasis in Linguistics and Literature from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She also holds a Master’s degree in Latin American Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has taught Spanish, Latin American culture, and Writing classes in several college levels.
Graduate Student, Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Leah Rosen was raised in Denver, CO and graduated from Duke University in Durham, NC. At Duke, she created her own interdisciplinary major titled "Illness and Identity" and completed that in conjunction with the standard pre-med curriculum. She would describe the "Illness and Identity" curriculum as a medical humanities approach to patient-centered care--pulling from disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, religious studies, and biology. She is excited to pursue a degree in Narrative Medicine at Columbia and then hopefully continue onto medical school.
PhD Candidate, Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University
Daniel S. Sáenz is a Colombian-Canadian Settler, writer, art historian, and occasional independent curator based in Lenapehoking (New York City) and Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal). He is currently a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University, where he holds a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Doctoral Student, Creative Writing, The City College of New York
Laura Salvatore is a poet, currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The City College of New York, where she will be completing her thesis this fall. She studied Art History and English at Southern Connecticut State University.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Taylor Santoro is a graduate student in the Bioethics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. In May 2017 she graduated with honors from Wake Forest University with a double B.A. in Economics and Studio Art. After graduate school she plans to attend medical school and continue to pursue her research interests in the biomedical field. In her free time she focuses the majority of her time between her passion for cooking and completing her current painting projects!
Doctoral Student, Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Columbia University
Srishti Sardana is a graduate student in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, in the Global Mental Health Lab, Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also a Research Assistant at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center. She has assisted on various projects with the aim to build skills needed to conduct high-impact mental health research in low-resource settings.
Doctoral Student, Nursing, Columbia University
Maureen Saylor is currently a student in the Master's Direct Entry program at Columbia University School of Nursing. She also graduated in May 2019 from Mailman School of Public Health with her MPH in Population and Family Health. Previously, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana where she primarily worked on projects related to HIV/AIDS and issues surrounding gender-based violence. She is passionate about participatory qualitative research and hopes to pursue a career in community health upon graduating from the MDE program in summer 2020.
Doctoral Student, English, Rutgers University
Katherine Schaap Williams is a doctoral candidate in the department of English at Rutgers University. She has held fellowships from the graduate school and the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, where she is a fellow in the 2011-2012 “Public Knowledge: Institutions, Networks, Collectives” seminar. Her research interests include sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature and culture, disability studies, and performance theory, and she is writing a dissertation tentatively titled Irregular Bodies: Disability on the Early Modern Stage.
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Graduate Fellows
PhD Student, Sociocultural Anthropology, Columbia University
Rishav is currently a third year PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University. He studies articulations of, and claims around, identity and belonging in Assam, India.
Ph.D. candidate, Film, Columbia University,
Madiha Tahir has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and is a writer, filmmaker, and former journalist focusing on drone warfare, surveillance, and empire. She is the director of Wounds of Waziristan, a short documentary essay film on survivors of drone attacks.
Doctoral Student, Health Policy Management and Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Columbia University
Jade Tan is a graduate student in Public Health at Columbia University, concentrating in Health Policy Management and Infectious Disease Epidemiology. She has a B.A. from the University of Virginia in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law (PPL), as well as Biomedical Ethics. Her work and interests focus on human genetic engineering ethics, precision medicine technology, neuroscience, synthetic biology, philosophy of mind, jurisprudence and constitutional law, and the ethical, philosophical, sociopolitical, legal, and deeply human dimensions of future technologies.
Doctoral Student, Medicine, Columbia University
Lewis is a student associate of On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics. He completed Columbia University’s post-baccalaureate pre-medical program in May 2019, and is currently in the process of applying to medical school.
Fern Thompsett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation research explores the Anti-Civilization Movement, an anarchist environmental movement that coheres around an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist critique of mass agriculture.
Doctoral Student, Genomic Medicine, Columbia University
Solomon Torres currently works at the Columbia University’s Institute for Genomic Medicine as the Operations Manager for the All of Us Research Program. In the present-day where big-data and genomics are shaping the future of medical care and public health, he is interested in gaining the skills in epidemiological research methods and biostatistical analysis to contribute to the advancement of biomedical and public health research. Through the PMEPC project, he hopes to gain additional insight as to the research that will make use of the precision medicine approach to address health disparities, inequalities, and emerging diseases nationally and globally with an emphasis in Latin America.
Doctoral Student, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Kate Trebuss is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her dissertation, entitled "Critical Care: Medical Life Writing, Memory, and the Politics of Health," investigates how contemporary autobiographical stoies of illness and medical care facilitate the remembering and forgetting of certain histories and current conditions of violence, oppression, invisibility and inequality, as well as the connections between them.
Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, Columbia University
Brendane Tynes is a queer Black feminist scholar and storyteller from Columbia, South Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Education from Duke University. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University, where she studies the affective responses of Black people to multiple forms of violence within the Movement for Black Lives. Her scholarship receives generous support from the Ford Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Doctoral Student, Philosophy, CUNY
Alanna Valdez is a Master’s student in philosophy at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. She also holds a Master’s degree in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs from American University’s School of International Service, where she wrote her thesis on how the recently ratified UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities shifts disability rights to a human rights perspective. Her philosophical interests include: personhood, agency, and non-rational justifications for human rights.
Doctoral Student, Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, Columbia University
Stephanie Valentinetti is a Project Coordinator at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center and a graduate student in Columbia's Master's in Bioethics program. She studies ethical issues related to mHealth technology, wearable devices, and data ownership. Stephanie's thesis will focus on the ethics of professional athletes' use of wearable and biometric technologies. Prior to CUMC, she spent four years at Major League Baseball working in anti-doping for the Department of Investigations.
Ph.D. Candidate, Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
Ife Salema Vanable is an architect, theorist, and historian who holds professional and post-professional degrees in architecture from Cornell and Princeton Universities. Ife is founder and leader of i/van/able, a New York based architectural workshop and think tank. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union and a Ph.D. candidate in architectural history and theory at Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).
Doctoral Student, Health, Medicine and Society, University of Cambridge
Naazanene Vatan is a medical student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her interests include the intersections of literature and medicine; pregnancy and childbirth; and philosophies of scientific progress. Naazanene graduated with a B.A. from Columbia College in Biology and Medicine, Literature, and Society.
Doctoral Student, Art History, Hunter College
Emmanuel von Schack is a deaf art history graduate student at Hunter College; his master's thesis focuses on German artists who were veterans of the First World War and the works of art they created during and after the War. By interweaving disability theories with Foucauldian feminist and queer theories, he explores the complex relationship between masculinity and disability as conveyed in Weimar culture and art. He works as an educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R.
PhD Student, Sociology, Columbia University
Amy Weissenbach is a first-year PhD student in sociology at Columbia University. She is interested in the sociology of knowledge and expertise, cultural sociology, and law and society. She aims to understand dynamics among individuals and institutions shaping notions of social responsibility in tech, and in biotech in particular. She holds an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine from Cambridge University and a B.A. from Stanford University.
PhD Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Kevin Windhauser is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, writing on the relationship between Renaissance literature and the development of library systems in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.
Doctoral Student, Neuroscience, Biobehavioral Sciences, Columbia University
Glenn Wolther is a Master of Science candidate in Neuroscience within the Biobehavioral Sciences Department. His diverse research interests include the interrelated genetic, transcriptional, and proteomic changes involved with short- and long-term synaptic potentiation; ways of better integrating research in neurobiology at the molecular, cellular and systems level with cognitive and affective neuroscience and neuropsychology; and the relationship of neuroscience to the law.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Alexa Woodward is a newly accepted graduate student in the Bioethics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. She graduated with honors from California State University Chico with a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2015, having also competed an Honors Thesis focused on autonomy, futility, and end of life issues. After graduate school, she plans on attending medical school or pursuing a Ph.D. program. Outside of academia, Alexa is an ardent fitness enthusiast, artist, and vocalist.
Doctoral Candidate, Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University
Daniella Wurst is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. She is a graduate member at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality and a Teaching Scholar at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.
Ph.D. Candidate, Spanish & Portuguese, New York University
Lee Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at New York University. She holds a B.A. in Spanish (high honors) and Journalism (double major) from New York University. She works at the intersections of diaspora studies and feminist aesthetics: her dissertation considers how Chinese diasporas are remembered in contemporary feminist aesthetic practices in Latin America and the Caribbean
PhD Student, Anthropology, Harvard University
Armanc Yildiz is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. His current research interests are sexuality, race, labor, political economy, colonialism, migration, Germany, and the anthropology of Europe. He received his master’s degree (with Distinction) in International Performance Research at the University of Warwick. He has a bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in Cultural Studies with a minor on Art Theory and Criticism at Sabanci University.
Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University
Jon Zaikowski is the co-founder of CapCell Biologics, a NASA-spinout biotechnology startup developing implants to treat rare diseases. He is a graduate student in Bioethics at Columbia University, having previously graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with a BA in History and Philosophy.
Doctoral Student, Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Rafia Zaman is presently pursuing her doctoral thesis in Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India under the supervision of Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan. She is interested in the intersectionality of gender and identity politics represented by Muslim women. As part of her M.Phil, she wrote a dissertation on the topic “ ‘Islamic Feminism’: A Critical Appraisal”. Her current research focuses on Muslim women’s activism in India from the period following the Shah Bano controversy till the present.
PhD Candidate, Philosophy, Columbia University
Helen Zhao is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Columbia University, specializing in the philosophy of science and medicine. As the inaugural Graduate Fellow in Medical Humanities, she is the Network Administrator for the CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network.