Aditi Surie von Czechowski
Junior Research Fellow, Churchill College
Aditi Surie Von Czechowski is Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. She recently received her PhD from the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her work focuses on the intersection of humanitarianism and human rights and theories of the human.
Aditi Surie von Czechowski
Junior Research Fellow, Churchill College
Aditi Surie Von Czechowski is Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. She received her PhD from the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her work focuses on the intersection of the anthropology of development and humanitarianism, human rights, and black feminist theory. From 2013-15, she conducted research on humanitarian aid and gender-based violence in Tanzania. Her article “Humanitarianism: Histories, Erasures, Repetitions” was published in the Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and her article “Together in the Flesh” (2019) appeared in Cultural Anthropology’s forum “Theorizing the Contemporary Fieldsights.” She is the author of “Commoditising Architecture” in Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (2013), among other earlier articles and she is currently working on a book entitled “Being Human”: Humanitarian Confinement, Refugee Bodies, and Human Rights.
Working Group Affiliation
David Wasserman
Fellow, Ethics, Yeshiva University
David Wasserman is Director of Research at the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University. He oversees the research and scholarly activities of the Center with an emphasis on the philosophical aspects of bioethics, health care ethics, and disability studies. His current projects focus on prenatal selection and parental role-morality. He publishes widely on these and other topics. At Yeshiva University, Mr. Wasserman presents his research at faculty seminars and a variety of student events. He also presents his work at a wide range of national and international conferences.
David Wasserman
Director of Research, Center for Ethics, Yeshiva University
David Wasserman is Director of Research at the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University. He oversees the research and scholarly activities of the Center with an emphasis on the philosophical aspects of bioethics, health care ethics, and disability studies. His current projects focus on prenatal selection and parental role-morality. He publishes widely on these and other topics. At Yeshiva University, Mr. Wasserman presents his research at faculty seminars and a variety of student events. He also presents his work at a wide range of national and international conferences. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Wasserman was a Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He has a J.D. from the University of Michigan (Magna Cum Laude), an M.A. in psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in philosophy from Yale University.
Laura Wexler
Fellow, Women’s and Gender Studies, Yale University
Laura Wexler is co-Principal Investigator of the Women, Religion and Globalization project. She is the author of Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U. S. Imperialism (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and Pregnant Pictures (Routledge, 2000), co-authored with Sandra Matthews. Tender Violence was awarded the 2001 annual Joan Kelley Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in women’s history and/or feminist theory.
Laura Wexler
Professor of American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, Yale University
Laura Wexler is co-Principal Investigator of the Women, Religion and Globalization project. She is the author of Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U. S. Imperialism (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and Pregnant Pictures (Routledge, 2000), co-authored with Sandra Matthews. Tender Violence was awarded the 2001 annual Joan Kelley Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in women’s history and/or feminist theory. She also co-edited, along with Laura Frost, Amy Hungerford and John MacKay, the volume Interpretation and the Holocaust, a special issue of the Yale Journal of Criticism. Professor Wexler’s many other publications include a recent essay entitled “’Laughing Ben’” on ‘The Old Plantation’,” in Photography and Race Forum, edited by Elizabeth Abel and Leigh Raiford, in English Language Notes 44.2 (Fall/Winter 2006); and a recent chapter entitled “The Fair Ensemble: Kate Chopin in St. Louis in 1904,” in Haunted by Empire; Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, edited by Ann Laura Stoler (Duke University Press, 2006). Her current research centers on visual representations of the gendered politics of race in the United States and includes forthcoming studies of the writer Kate Chopin and the photographers Diane Arbus and Roman Vishniac. She co-founded, and for the past eight years has directed, the Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale. She has served on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, Genders, and the Yale Journal of Criticism. She is a member of the Steering Committee and of the Advisory Council of the Women Faculty Forum, and serves on the American Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, International Affairs, and Judaic Studies Councils.
Working Group Affiliations
Engendering the Archive, Project Director
Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project, Project Director
Sarah Wilcox
Fellow, Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Wilcox is Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College. She specializes in medical sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge, gender and sexuality, and the mass media. Her current research focuses on embodiment and biological knowledge, particularly how lay and expert knowledge intersect and when and how biological ideas become salient in embodied experience, personal identities, and popular culture.
Sarah Wilcox
Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Wilcox is Professor of Sociology, Sarah Lawrence College. She specializes in medical sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge, gender and sexuality, and the mass media. Her current research focuses on embodiment and biological knowledge, particularly how lay and expert knowledge intersect and when and how biological ideas become salient in embodied experience, personal identities, and popular culture. She teaches courses on embodiment, medical technologies, health policy and health activism, gender and mass media, and she is developing a new course in disability studies.
Working Group Affiliation
Deborah Willis
Fellow, Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Deb Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture.
Deborah Willis
University Professor and Chair of Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Deb Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture. Exhibitions of her work include: A Sense of Place, Frick, University of Pittsburgh, 2005; Regarding Beauty, University of Wisconsin, 2003; Embracing Eatonville, Light Works, Syracuse, NY, 2003-4; HairStories, Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ 2003-4; The Comforts of Home, Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1999; Re/Righting History: Counternarratives by Contemporary African-American Artists, Katonah Museum of Art, 1999; Memorable Histories and Historic Memories, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1998; Cultural Baggage, Rice University, Houston, TX, 1995. Her curated Exhibitions include: Engulfed by Katrina: Photographs before and After the Storm, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Imagining Families—Images and Voices and Reflections in Black. Other notable projects include The Black Female Body A Photographic History with Carla Williams (Temple University Press, Philadephia, 2002); A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. DuBois and the Photographs from the Paris Exposition (Amistad Press, 2003); Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers - 1840 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton); Visual Journal: Photography in Harlem and DC in the Thirties and Forties (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1996); Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (The New Press, New York, NY, 1994); and VANDERZEE: The Portraits of James VanDerZee (Harry Abrams Publishing, New York, NY, 1993). She was a MacArthur, Guggenheim, Richard D.Cohen, Hutchins Center and Harvard University Fellow. She is the author of Posing Beauty in African American Culture, among many other books.
Penny Wolfson
Fellow, Narrative Medicine Program, Columbia University
Penny Wolfson won a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing in 2001 for an essay in The Atlantic Monthly called “Moonrise,” which has since been anthologized in several collections, including Best American Essays. Her memoir, Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity and Muscular Dystrophy, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003.
Penny Wolfson
Sarah Lawrence College; Narrative Medicine Program, Columbia University
Penny Wolfson won a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing in 2001 for an essay in The Atlantic Monthly called “Moonrise,” which has since been anthologized in several collections, including Best American Essays. Her memoir, Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity and Muscular Dystrophy, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003. Her writing on disability has also appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Exceptional Parent, and other publications, and is included in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies. She has a BA and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she taught nonfiction writing from 2001 to 2010. She has also taught in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia, and is now working on a paper on the history of wheelchairs.
Autumn Womack
Fellow, English, University of Pittsburgh
Autumn Womack received her PhD from Columbia University where her research focused on 19th and early twentieth century African American literary culture. At Columbia she developed a rich interest in archival practices, visual studies, black print culture, and social science.
Autumn Womack
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh
Autumn Womack received her PhD from Columbia University where her research focused on 19th and early twentieth century African American literary culture. At Columbia she developed a rich interest in archival practices, visual studies, black print culture, and social science. As an Assistant Professor in The University of Pittsburgh's English Department, Autumn continues to explore these topics in her current book project, Social Document Fictions, which uncovers a small genre of literature published between 1890 and 1928, looking in particular at writers deployed formally experimental and generically hybrid texts to advance social scientific epistemologies that uncover archives and social bodies that remain opaque to normative visual techniques. Autumn has taught classes in 19th and 20th century African American literature, Post-bellum "experimental" fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, visual culture, as well as single author seminars on Toni Morrison (Spring 2014). She looks forward to developing courses in Black visual culture, African American Literary Theory, Social Science and Literature, antebellum performance culture, and African American periodicals.
Sophia Wong
Fellow, Philosophy, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus
Sophia Isako Wong is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University in New York, NY, USA. She has published on duties of justice to persons with intellectual disabilities, comparisons between sexism and discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities, and how the availability of PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) affects the reproductive autonomy of prospective parents. Her current research analyzes the work of children and adolescents who provide care to their siblings, parents and other family members.
Sophia Wong
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus
Sophia Isako Wong is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University in New York, NY, USA. She has published on duties of justice to persons with intellectual disabilities, comparisons between sexism and discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities, and how the availability of PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) affects the reproductive autonomy of prospective parents. Her current research analyzes the work of children and adolescents who provide care to their siblings, parents and other family members. She also enjoys writing short stories and making stained glass mosaics.
Merieme Yafout
Fellow, Political Science, Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco
Merieme Yafout is a professor and researcher in social sciences. She is the author of several articles on “Islamic feminism in Morocco”, “female ijtihad”, “the status of women in Moroccan political parties”, “Islamist movements in Morocco,” “elections in Morocco,” and “field research in Morocco.”
Merieme Yafout
Merieme Yafout is a professor and researcher in social sciences. She is the author of several articles on “Islamic feminism in Morocco”, “female ijtihad”, “the status of women in Moroccan political parties”, “Islamist movements in Morocco,” “elections in Morocco,” and “field research in Morocco.” She received her PhD in political science from the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences at Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco. Her thesis is on “The status of women within the Islamist movements in Morocco: between feminine exegesis and political participation.”
Hairong Yan
Fellow, Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yan Hairong is an anthropologist in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests are labour migration, rural-urban relations, and rural cooperatives in China, as well as Hong Konger/Mainlander relations and China/Africa links.
Hairong Yan
Anthropologist, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yan Hairong is an anthropologist in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests are labour migration, rural-urban relations, and rural cooperatives in China, as well as Hong Konger/Mainlander relations and China/Africa links. She is the author of New Masters/New Servants: Migration, Development and Women Workers in China (Duke University Press, 2008).
Hentyle Yapp
Fellow, Art & Public Policy, New York University
Hentyle Yapp is an assistant professor at New York University in the Department of Art & Public Policy. He is affiliated faculty with the Department of Performance Studies, Disability Council, and Asian/Pacific/American Institute. His research engages China, performance, disability, and queer theory.
Hentyle Yapp
Assistant Professor, Department of Art & Public Policy, New York University
Hentyle Yapp is an assistant professor at New York University in the Department of Art & Public Policy. He is affiliated faculty with the Department of Performance Studies, Disability Council, and Asian/Pacific/American Institute. His research engages China, performance, disability, and queer theory. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in GLQ, American Quarterly, Journal of Visual Culture, and Verge: Studies in Global Asias. He is also a member of the Social Text collective. He received his BA from Brown University, JD from UCLA School of Law with specializations in Critical Race Theory and Public Interest Law, and a PhD from UC Berkeley in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Working Group Affiliation
Melanie Yazzie
Fellow, Navajo and American Indian History , University of New Mexico
Melanie Yazzie (Diné) is an Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico. She has published widely in scholarly platforms, and engages in extensive public intellectual and activist work on Native women’s rights, LGBTQ2 rights, environmental justice, policing and incarceration, and Indigenous housing justice, urban issues, and international solidarity.
Melanie Yazzie
Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico
Melanie Yazzie (Diné) is an Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico. She has published widely in scholarly platforms, and engages in extensive public intellectual and activist work on Native women’s rights, LGBTQ2 rights, environmental justice, policing and incarceration, and Indigenous housing justice, urban issues, and international solidarity. She specializes in Navajo and American Indian history and her work examines (neo)liberalism, settler colonialism and decolonization, biopolitics and political ecology, theories of policing and the state, and Indigenous feminisms/queer studies/urban experience. She is bilagaana born for Ma’iideeshgiizhinii (Coyote Pass Clan).
Working Group Affiliation
Helen Yitah
Fellow, English, University of Ghana
Helen Yitah is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English, University of Ghana. She is also founding Director of the University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre, established through her initiative. She holds a BA and MPhil from the University of Ghana and a PhD from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She has taught various courses on literature and writing at both universities.
Helen Yitah
Associate Professor & Head, Department of English, University of Ghana
Helen Yitah is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English, University of Ghana. She is also founding Director of the University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre, established through her initiative. She holds a BA and MPhil from the University of Ghana and a PhD from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She has taught various courses on literature and writing at both universities. A literary scholar and cultural critic, she has published on gender identity in literature, particularly oral and written African literature, American literature and children’s literature in Ghana; and women’s cultural production in colonial and contemporary Africa. Her current work includes two edited books, Philosophical Foundations of the Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives (Brill/Rodopi, 2016) and After the Ceremonies, a collection of poems by Ama Ata Aidoo (African Poetry Book Fund). She has supported literary and cultural activity in various ways, including serving on judging panels for the Millennium Excellence Awards (literature category) and the “Love on the Road” short fiction contest; as facilitator for the African Poetry Library project; editor of the MBAASEM/Daily Graphic Writers Page; and presenter for “Read a Book a Week,” a book review program on Radio Universe, University of Ghana.
Working Group Affiliation
The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories
Gökçe Yurdakul
Fellow, Diversity and Social Conflict, Humboldt University, Berlin
Gökçe Yurdakul is Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict at the Humboldt University, Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences.
She studied Sociology at the Bogazici University and Gender & Women’s Studies at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey. She has her PhD. from the University of Toronto, Department of Sociology where she received the Connaught Fellowship.
Gökçe Yurdakul
Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict, Humboldt University, Berlin
Gökçe Yurdakul is Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict at the Humboldt University, Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences.
She studied Sociology at the Bogazici University and Gender & Women’s Studies at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey. She has her PhD. from the University of Toronto, Department of Sociology where she received the Connaught Fellowship.
Previously, she has taught courses on race, ethnicity, gender and immigration at the Trinity College Dublin and Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada. She was affiliated with the Free University, Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies as a post-doctoral fellow. She has published books and articles on immigrant integration, citizenship Islam in Europe and issues of Muslim women in Western Europe and North America. She has written articles for scholarly journals, such as Annual Review of Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and German Politics and Society. She has been working on policy reports for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
Sarover Zaidi
Fellow, Anthropology, Jindal School of Art & Architecture, Delhi.
Sarover Zaidi works at the intersections of critical theory, anthropology, art, architecture and material culture studies. She has extensively worked on religious architecture, and urbanism in the city of Bombay and currently co-runs a site on writing the city called Chiragh Dilli (https://chiraghdilli.wordpress.com).
Sarover Zaidi
Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Art & Architecture, Delhi
Sarover Zaidi works at the intersections of critical theory, anthropology, art, architecture and material culture studies. She has extensively worked on religious architecture, and urbanism in the city of Bombay and currently co-runs a site on writing the city called Chiragh Dilli (https://chiraghdilli.wordpress.com). Previously she worked on rural development, with a focus on health, education, and women's rights across India, and currently works on religious iconography & modernist architecture in south Asia. She has received the Max Planck fellowship, the INTACH fellowship, the IFA fellowship and the Khoj fellowship for her research interests. Besides this she also curates an interdisciplinary forum on art, architecture and anthropology, 'Elementary forms' and has previously taught at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. At JSAA she runs a studio course on 'Materials and making', and also teaches Modern South Asia, and Design Theories.
Working Group Affiliation
Rafia Zakaria
Fellow, Writer, Columbia University
Rafia Zakaria is an author, editor and attorney. She has been a weekly columnist for DAWN, Pakistan’s largest and oldest English language daily since 2009. Her column is syndicated in newspapers all over the world through the Inter Press Service and is regularly republished in the Deccan Chronicle, The Wire India, Kathmandu Post, Sri Lanka Guardian, Korea Herald, New Straits Times and The Internazionale among others. She writes the “Alienated” column for The Baffler and has previously been a regular columnist for Al Jazeera America. She also writes regularly for Guardian Books and is a CNN Opinion contributor. Her recent New York Times Op-Ed “The Myth of Women’s Empowerment” was shared over 30K times on Facebook.
Rafia Zakaria
Author, Editor and Attorney
Rafia Zakaria is an author, editor and attorney. She has been a weekly columnist for DAWN, Pakistan’s largest and oldest English language daily since 2009. Her column is syndicated in newspapers all over the world through the Inter Press Service and is regularly republished in the Deccan Chronicle, The Wire India, Kathmandu Post, Sri Lanka Guardian, Korea Herald, New Straits Times and The Internazionale among others. She writes the “Alienated” column for The Baffler and has previously been a regular columnist for Al Jazeera America. She also writes regularly for Guardian Books and is a CNN Opinion contributor. Her recent New York Times Op-Ed “The Myth of Women’s Empowerment” was shared over 30K times on Facebook.
From 2009-2015 Rafia served on Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and was the first Pakistani-American woman to do so. In Fall 2016 she was part of the “How Should Journalism Cover Terrorism” Project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. In Fall 2017 she along with political scientists Kate Cronin-Furman and Nimmi Gowrinathan published the “Emissaries of Empowerment” report for the Colin Powell Center for Civic and Public Leadership. The report (which calls out racism in women’s empowerment initiatives in international development) was featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian.
Rafia is the author of two books The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan which was selected one of the “Best Non-fiction Books of 2015” by Newsweek Magazine and Veil (2017). She is currently under contract for a third book A Different Life with Beacon Press.
Working Group Affiliation
Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence, Media Fellow
Dubravka Žarkov
Fellow, Social Studies, The Hague
Dubravka Žarkov is Associate Professor of Gender, Conflict and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Her fields of expertise are gender and its intersections with sexuality, ethnicity and religion; violent conflict, war and militarism, including gender based sexual violence and communalism, and visual and textual representations of war, violence, and soldiering. She also works on masculinity and sexual violence in wars against men. Among her publications are: Conflict, Peace, Security and Development: Theories and Methodologies (with Helen Hintjens, 2015); Narratives of Justice in and out of the Courtroom: Former Yugoslavia and Beyond (with Marlies Glasius, 2014); Gender, Violent Conflict, and Development (2008); The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity and Gender in the Break-up of Yugoslavia (2007); and The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping, (with Cynthia Cockburn, 2002). One of her most recent articles is on faith and feminism.
Dubravka Žarkov
Associate Professor of Gender, Conflict and Development, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
Dubravka Žarkov is Associate Professor Emerita of Gender, Conflict and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Her fields of expertise are gender and its intersections with sexuality, ethnicity and religion; violent conflict, war and militarism, including gender based sexual violence and communalism; and visual and textual representations of war, violence, and soldiering. She also works on masculinity and sexual violence in wars against men. Among her publications are: Conflict, Peace, Security and Development: Theories and Methodologies (with Helen Hintjens, 2015); Narratives of Justice in and out of the Courtroom: Former Yugoslavia and Beyond (with Marlies Glasius, 2014); Gender, Violent Conflict, and Development (2008); The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity and Gender in the Break-up of Yugoslavia (2007); and The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping (with Cynthia Cockburn, 2002). One of her most recent articles is on faith and feminism.
Working Group Affiliation