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.
PhD Student, Theater, Columbia University
Jason Fitzgerald is a PhD candidate in Theater at Columbia University, where he is working on a dissertation relating the politics of authenticity to radical performance practice in the American 1960s. Since earning his MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, Jason has also worked as a part-time dramaturg and theater critic in New York City. He has published book and performance reviews in Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Journal
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.
Doctoral Student, African American Studies, Yale University
Fadila Habchi received her B.A from the City College of New York and her PhD from Yale University. Her research explores the literature, culture and history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and in Europe. She examines the relationship between space, race, gender and literature, colonial history, postcolonial memory and contemporary decolonial movements.
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.