Aya Ouais

Aya Ouais

Aya Ouais is an abolitionist organizer and recent graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in History, born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco. As a student, she specialized in the histories of anti-racist social movements in the United States. Her experience in New York City organizing has allowed her to learn the possibilities of using research to collaborate with and uplift the voices of working class organizers. Currently, Aya is a Research Assistant at the Racial Capitalism Working Group.

Rupal Oza

Rupal Oza 

Associate Professor, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Hunter College, CUNY.

Rupal Oza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. Her work focuses on political economic transformations in the global south, the geography of the right-wing politics, and the conjuncture between development and security. Her first book, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization was published in 2006 by Routledge, New York and by Women Unlimited, India. She has several articles in peer-reviewed journals. She has written on special economic zones, the discourse of security, and Hindutva politics India. Her current project examines the relationship between sexual assault, caste, and land in Haryana, India. She is also working on a collaborative project that examines foreclosures and gentrification in New York City.

Working Group Affiliation

Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence

Ana Gisele Ozaki

Ana Gisele Ozaki

Ph.D. Candidate, Architecture and Urban Development, Cornell University

Ana G. Ozaki is a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University, with specializations in Africana and Latin American studies. Her dissertation investigates the complex ways colonial ideologies of race have interfered with modern architectural understandings of climate in Brazil and its connections with Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique. Through feminist and postcolonial theory, her research investigates how domestic architecture has worked to accommodate white settlers and tame local "climates" in its environmental and socio-political conceptions while elucidating the cross-cultural and South-to-South exchanges between tropicalized sites, subjects, and practices. She has worked as a writer, researcher, architect, and public educator.

Working Group Affiliation

Insurgent Domesticities, Co-Director

Giovanni Pagán Vélez

Giovanni Pagán Vélez

MPA Candidate, 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. Giovanni also completed a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science at Columbia College in 2018. 

Working Group Affiliation

Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy

Ayse Parla

Ayse Parla

Sabanci University (Turkey)

Ayse Parla is on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Sabanci University (Turkey).  She is the recipient of a TUBITAK research grant for a collaborative project on "Forms of organization among new migrants: A comparative analysis of Bulgarian Turks, Iraqi Turkmens and Moldavians in Turkey." (with Mine Eder and Didem Danis). Her recent publications include: "Irregular Workers or Ethnic Kin? Post nineties labor migration from Bulgaria to Turkey." International Migration 45(3), 2007; “Longing, Belonging and Locations of Homeland among Turkish Immigrants from Bulgaria.” Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 6(4): 543-557, 2006; and "Marking Time along the Bulgarian-Turkish Border." Ethnography 4(4), 2003.

Amanda Parmer

Amanda Parmer

Ph.D. student, Media, Culture and Communications, New York University

Amanda Parmer is a doctoral student in Media, Culture and Communications at New York University and an alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 2014 she inaugurated parmer — a space for exhibitions, programming and writing that focuses on queer, feminist strategies and post-colonial analysis. From 2018-2019 she worked as the Director of Programs at Independent Curators International and previously served as the inaugural Curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. 

She has presented exhibitions, programs, and events for e-flux; the New School; the New Museum; The New York Armory and Volta Shows; The Kitchen; as well as Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn and Berlin. She has held residencies with the Danish Arts Council International Research Programme in Copenhagen and Møn, the Abrons Art Center in New York as well as the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Høvikodden, Norway. 

She is a contributing writer for Art in America, art&education, Artforum and BOMB. She has also taught as a lecturer at The New School and Rhode Island School of Design.

Working Group Affiliations

Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project

Ming Pei

Ming Pei

Postbac Premed, School of General Studies, 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.

Working Group Affiliation

On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics

Alex Pekov

Alex Pekov

Graduate Assistant

ap3543@columbia.edu

Alex is a 6th-year PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature at Columbia. He holds a BA (diploma with distinction) in Philosophy from Moscow State University Lomonosov and an MA in Slavic and Jewish Studies from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He is also a recipient of Graduate Certificate in Feminist Scholarship at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. His dissertation Toward a Transmediterranean Genealogy: Matrilineal Legacies in Sephardi Women Writers from the Former Yugoslavia and the Maghreb, focuses on the contemporary autofictional family novels, crafted in French and Serbian by the women writers of Jewish Sephardi origin, born in the French-ruled Maghreb and ex-Yugoslavia, respectively. Alex’s broader research interests include ex-Yugoslav literatures, Francophone belles lettres, Jewish lifeworlds & Jewish difference, the Shoah & pornotroping, multilingualism & decolonization, autofiction & life-writing, genocide & gynocide, postmemory, colonial regimes of desire, colonial photography, gay male physique photography, visual representations of gay masculinities, queer diasporic communities. In the academic year 2021-2022, Alex also serves as a Teaching Observation Fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning and teaches Second-Year (Intermediate) Russian in the Department of Slavic Languages.

Alex assists the CSSD with social media and weekly digest updates.

Anita Patil-Deshmukh

Anita Patil-Deshmukh

Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

After a long and distinguished career as a faculty pediatrician/neonatologist in Chicago, and her time at HSPH, Dr. Anita Patil Deshmukh returned to her native India with a vision. The government of the state of Maharashtra had supported her education and, along with HPSH, given her the tools to become who she is today – medical doctor, advocate for populations without a voice, passionate believer in human dignity and the right to health – and Anita knew she wanted to give back to her country and community, and give others the opportunity to flourish.

In 2009, she joined Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research (PUKAR), an independent research collective started by Professor Arjun Appadurai that conducts multi-sectoral, cross disciplinary research on issues related to Urban poor. PUKAR has focused on Kaula Bandar, a slum community of more than 10,000 people who, despite being located in India’s financial epicenter, have health outcomes as poor as those in the country’s rural and tribal districts. In collaboration with HSPH and New York University, Dr. Patil Deshmukh and the PUKAR team have developed a unique and highly innovative community-based participatory research (CBPR) model, in which youth from slum communities, called “barefoot researchers,” serve critical roles in informing study design, and even doing data collection. She accompanies the barefoot researchers as a mentor and as a student, teaching and modeling research methods while gaining insights that help inform a relevant and meaningful research agenda. This and other PUKAR projects have democratized the research process, one of the core objectives of the collective, and she and the PUKAR team have used the data collected to bring direct health interventions to Kaula Bandar. Their advocacy has resulted in the establishment of regular government health camps there, and the placement of a new municipal water supply to the community, the first time the slum will have legal water access in its 50 years of existence.

Dr. Patil Deshmukh’s deep and abiding care and respect for those who have not yet been afforded the opportunity to achieve their dreams, whether it be clean water for their children to drink, a better understanding of their community and the world around them or a chance to work for an organization that respects and even integrates their unique experiences and vision in its mission.

Throughout her twenty years of work with marginalized families on the south side of Chicago as a neonatologist, and as director of PUKAR in Mumbai, Dr. Patil Deshmukh connects with patients and community members with humility and respect while simultaneously recognizing broad patterns in the creation and persistence of poverty, and her emotional, financial and intellectual investment into PUKAR staff and researchers as well as the Mumbai community in which they work is truly inspiring.

Barbara Penner

Barbara Penner

Professor, Architecture, University College London

Barbara Penner is a Professor at the University College, London. She is author of Bathroom (2013) and Newlyweds on Tour: Honeymooning in Nineteenth-Century America (2009), and co-editor of Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience, Politics, Transgression (2017), Forty Ways to Think about Architecture (2014), Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009), and Gender Space Architecture (2000). Her work explores commercial architecture (hotels/department stores), tourist destinations (honeymoon resorts), and domestic spaces, technologies, and infrastructure (bathrooms/kitchens). Informed by interdisciplinary feminist theory, she investigates how everyday spaces enable the formation of social and cultural identities and promote social inclusion or its opposite.

Working Group Affiliation

Insurgent Domesticities, Co-Director

Lois Perelson-Gross

Lois Perelson-Gross

New York

Lois Perelson-Gross is pursuing a second career in Humanistic Medicine and holds a Doctor of Ministry (D. Min) from Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion and a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University and has completed coursework at the Clinical Pastoral Education program of the HealthCare Chaplaincy of New York. She has served as a Chaplain Intern in the Palliative Care Unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital where she is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute. She has been an instructor in Narrative Medicine at HUC/JIR and a Fellow in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. In her first career she was a vice president in the Municipal Finance Department of Goldman, Sachs & Co. Lois received an undergraduate degree Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with highest honors in history from Smith College, and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. She and her husband have three adult children and reside in New York City.

Julie Stone Peters

Julie Stone Peters teaches and writes primarily on law and humanities and the history and theory of audiovisual media (cinema, theatre, and other performance and media cultures).

Her books include Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe (Oxford Univ. Press 2022), Theatre of the Book: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe 1480-1880 (Oxford Univ. Press 2000), and Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (co-edited, 1995).

She has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the Metropolitan Detention Center (Brooklyn), and was Founding Director of the Columbia College Human Rights Program. She is currently working on a book on the ethics and politics of law as media spectacle (policing, trials, and punishment).

Shilpa Phadke

Shilpa Phadke

Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Affiliation: Centre for the Study of Contemporary Culture, School of Media and Cultural Studies, Urban Aspirations Project: TISS PUKAR Max Plank Institute Initiative

Qualification: M.A. (SNDT), M.Phil. (Cambridge, U.K.), Ph.D. (TISS)

Areas of Interest: Gender and the politics of space, the middle classes, sexuality and the body, feminist politics among young women, reproductive subjectivities and pedagogic practices

Teaching: Centre for Media and Cultural Studies: Cultural Studies: An Introduction, Basic Course, Semester I, 3 credits.

Gender, Media and Culture, Optional Course, Semester III, 2 credits.

Gender, Space and Culture, Optional Course, Semester IV, 2 credits.

Vidyadhar K. Phatak

Vidyadhar K. Phatak

Vidyadhar K. Phatak, after 37 years of experience in various sub-fields of urban planning and development in government agencies in Mumbai,retired from the service of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority as its Principal Chief, Town and Country Planning Division on February 29, 2004. His interests include - Urban and Shelter Sector Studies, City Development Strategy, Preparation and appraisal of projects for the Development Banks and Financing local governments and Structuring projects for Public-Private-Partnership.

He was associated with various sub-project specific EA studies of MUTP, “PM10 Reduction Strategy for Mumbai” and developing computer based project accounting system. During the last two years of this period he has also been on the Board of Directors of the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) as Director (Infrastructure and Commercial Development). In that capacity he has initiated a study of development of air rights on the suburban railway stations in Mumbai.

Margaret Loma Phiri

Margaret Loma Phiri

Nursing and Midwifery Advisor, Seed Global Health/ Malawi

Margaret Loma Phiri is a nurse and midwife with a Masters in Nursing Education and Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia Universityx. She also holds a post – graduate diploma in Community Health from Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA) South Africa.  She has held a number of leadership positions including: Regional Advisor for Nursing &Midwifery for WHO- African Region; HRH Advisor, WHO- Swaziland Country Office; Regional Capacity Building Coordinator for East- Central & Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA- Health Community) & ECSACON for SADC Region; Quality Assurance Director and Senior Lecturer in Education and Leadership for University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing – Malawi; and Maternal and Child Health Advisor WHO/ Sierra Leone during the Ebola Recovery and Transition period.

Ms. Phiri has worked directly and collaboratively with key stakeholders to strengthen and improve the quality of nursing and midwifery education, practice, regulation, leadership and research for improved health care outcomes. Examples of her work include the development and facilitation of regional Professional Regulatory Frameworks; Competency – Based Nursing and Midwifery Regional Prototype Curriculum models; AFRO Nursing and Midwifery Strategic Direction; ICN/ECSA Health Community Leadership for Change Program; Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice WHO Collaborating Centre at Kamuzu College of Nursing; and nursing and midwifery policies and plans and promoting priority interventions in improving maternal health including EmONC interventions.

Currently Ms Phiri is working for Seed Global Health/Malawi as Nursing and Midwifery Advisor. In her work, she has provided key leadership for the development of effective, responsive and contextually relevant activities in close collaboration with Seed and academic and clinical partners in Malawi. With her deep ties to Malawi stakeholders, and breadth of experience as a leader, has helped advise and support the integration of US educators (nurses, midwives and physicians) into the academic and clinical environments in her native country to ensure success.

Ms. Phiri has taken a leadership role in supporting the 2020 Year of the Nurse and Midwife activities. As a member of the QUAD, (collaboration between regulatory, policy, education, and clinical leaders), she has been leading the development of the Nightingale Challenge to ensure young nurses and midwives mentorship in Leadership Development in these four areas.

She is also currently collaborating with a team for Africa and Center for the Study of Social Difference of Columbia University, New York, NY Nurse Leaders for an initiative “On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics: The Ebola experience.

Adrienne Pichon

Adrienne Pichon

Biomedical Informatics Research Coordinator, 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. The Citizen Endo project and Phendo app harness the power of citizen science to better understand and manage endometriosis.

Working Group Affiliation

Menstrual Health and Gender Justice

Suren Pillay

Suren Pillay

 Professor of Sociology, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center 

Associate Professor Suren Pillay is a Senior Researcher and Acting Director at the Center for Humanities Research. He holds a Phd (with Distinction) in Anthropology from Columbia University, and an MA (cum laude) in Development Studies from the University of the Western Cape. Between 2007 -2010 Suren was seconded to the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa where he led research on the effects of violence and crime on citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa, and conducted research on migration and xenophobia. Prior to that he was a Senior Lecturer in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape. His current research focuses on the constitution and reconstitution of the ‘Political’ and Justice in Africa; and the politics of knowledge production in postcolonial societies. His most recent publications include the co-edited volume with Chandra Sriram , Peace vs Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (James Currey/UKZN: 2010), which was recognized by the American publishing association with an award for “Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010”. His most recent journal article “Crime Community and the Governance of Violence in post-Apartheid South Africa”, Politikon, 2009, was highlighted by the African Studies Association (USA) as one of the ‘ten most downloaded articles in African Studies’ in 2009-2010. He is currently working on a book manuscript provisionally titled The Partisan’s Violence. Suren is also an editor of Social Dynamics, and a frequent contributor to the press.

Filippo Piscopo

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

Professor of Sociology, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center

Victoria Pitts-Taylor is Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. At the Graduate Center, she is also Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society and Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Doctoral Certificate Program. She is author of two books, In the Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification and Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture, as well as Editor of The Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body. She is currently the Chair of the Section on the Body and Embodiment of the American Sociological Association. Her current projects include a book for the Routledge Series Intergrating Science and Culture, on brain science in everyday life.

Frances Fox Piven

Frances Fox Piven

Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center

 Before coming to the Graduate Center, Prof. Piven taught at Boston University, Columbia University, New York University Law School, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Bologna. She is past Vice-President of the American Political Science Association,  has served as program co-chair of the annual political science meetings, and is a past president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.  She is currently President of the American Sociological Association. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the President's Award of the American Public Health Association, and the American Sociological Association's Career Award for the Practice of Sociology, as well as their award for the Public Understanding of Sociology. Her books deal with the development of the welfare state, political movements, urban political, and electoral politics.  Among them are REGULATING THE POOR (winner of the C. Wright Mills Award in 1972, and updated in 1993); POOR PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS (1977); THE NEW CLASS WAR (1982; UPDATED 1985); WHY AMERICANS DON'T VOTE (1988); THE MEAN SEASON (1987); LABOR PARTIES IN POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES (1992); THE BREAKING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIAL COMPACT (1997); WHY AMERICANS STILL DON'T VOTE (2000); and THE WAR AT HOME (2004); Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006). 

Working Group Affiliation

Social Justice After the Welfare State