Matthew Argame
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.
Matthew Argame
Graduate 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. While completing his undergraduate degree at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), Matthew founded the first TEDx program at his university, with the vision of bringing various voices to a globally recognized stage. He also worked for Counseling and Psychological Services as a Peer Educator on Mental Health topics, conducted research through a National Institutes of Health funded program called BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), and was recognized nationally as the Jed Foundation’s Student Voice of Mental Health Honoree. 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.
Working Group Affiliation
Linda Aristondo
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.
Linda Aristondo
Master of Divinity student, 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. Linda was among the first-generation of students of color from extremely poor communities admitted to the most selective colleges, and subsequently to law school. Linda was in the forefront of the generation of women of color educated to lead their communities into the national consciousness as equal members of the professional class. Linda, a Harvard educated attorney, was an Encore Public Service Fellow; CORO Foundation’s Hispanic Women Leadership Fellow and garnered an ABA CLEO Fellowship. She is currently a Master of Divinity student at Union Theological Seminary.
Working Group Affiliations
Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project
Amin Younes Aoussar
Amin Younes Aoussar is a social and political anthropologist and with a special interest in migration and North African and West Asian studies. He finished his BA and MA in anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and has since worked on trafficking in persons issues at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and as a research assistant at the Centre for Global Criminology at the University of Copenhagen before starting his PhD project at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
His PhD project, titled ‘Peripatetic Precarity,’ investigates how unaccompanied migrant children in Morocco move from rural households to urban centres and into the EU, and how they survive. The project delivers a novel ethnographic analysis of the relation between possibility and exploitation for vulnerable migrant children and sheds light on the social and political dynamics and implications of irregular migration.
Working Group:
Urooj Arshad
Fellow, Human Rights, International Youth Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth
Urooj Arshad is the Associate director of International Youth Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth. She manages a project of the International Division that builds the capacity of youth-driven organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to empower young people.
Urooj Arshad
Associate director, International Youth Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth
Urooj Arshad is the Associate director of International Youth Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth. She manages a project of the International Division that builds the capacity of youth-driven organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to empower young people as strong advocates within their own countries and at international forums on reproductive and sexual health and rights of youth, especially young women and LGBTQ youth. She has also designed a project that seeks to address the reproductive and sexual health needs of Muslim-identified youth. Previously, Urooj provided capacity-building services to community-based organizations working with youth of color around reproductive and sexual health. She has sixteen years of experience organizing within LGBTQ communities of color, especially addressing issues of Islamophobia, violence, sexism, transphobia, and ageism. Urooj is a steering committee member of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) which seeks to address the intersectional impact of Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia. She has been a member of the Center for American Progress’ Women’s Health Leadership Network and its Faith and Reproductive Justice Institute. Urooj has been a fellow with the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and a current member of the Kalamazoo College Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Global Advisory Board. She is the recipient of several awards including the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance’s 2012 NQAPIA Community Catalyst Award and the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition’s We Speak award. Urooj was selected to serve on the U.S delegation to the 59th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Working Group Affiliation
Adrienne Asch
Fellow, Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Dr. Adrienne Asch is the Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University, as well as Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Asch provides overall leadership to the Center for Ethics. In addition, she teaches courses throughout the university on bioethics and professional ethics. She publishes widely in books and peer-reviewed journals and presents at conferences throughout the world on issues related to her teaching and research.
Adrienne Asch
Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics, Yeshiva University; Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Dr. Adrienne Asch is the Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University, as well as Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Asch provides overall leadership to the Center for Ethics. In addition, she teaches courses throughout the university on bioethics and professional ethics. She publishes widely in books and peer-reviewed journals and presents at conferences throughout the world on issues related to her teaching and research. Her scholarly work has focused on ethical issues in reproduction, death and dying, and justice for disadvantaged minorities in American society. She is editor with Erik Parens of Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, published in 2000 by Georgetown University Press and a co-editor of The Double-Edged Helix: Social Implications of Genetics in a Diverse Society, published in 2002 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Asch is a past board member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, past president and board member of the Society of Disability Studies, a fellow of the Hastings center, and a member of the NY State Task Force on Life and the Law.
Anca D. Askanase
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Dr. Askanase completed her fellowship in Rheumatology at New York University School of Medicine/NYU Hospital for Joint Disease and continued there as an investigator where she participated in multiple NIH and industry sponsored clinical trials, and gained extensive experience with SLE patients. She is currently the Director of the Lupus Center and Director of Rheumatology Clinical Trials at Columbia University Medical Center.
Anca D. Askanase, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Dr. Askanase completed her fellowship in Rheumatology at New York University School of Medicine/NYU Hospital for Joint Disease and continued there as an investigator where she participated in multiple NIH and industry sponsored clinical trials, and gained extensive experience with SLE patients. She is currently the Director of the Lupus Center and Director of Rheumatology Clinical Trials at Columbia University Medical Center and is involved in investigator-initiated studies in SLE, including potential use of several serum markers to diagnose disease flares and identify SLE-specific atherosclerosis risk factors. She has had a long-standing interest in the cardiac and vascular manifestations of lupus and in improving current CVD risk stratification with the potential to prevent the excess morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular outcomes in lupus.
Working Group Affiliation
Women’s Heart Disease Awareness: Digital Intervention, Creating Change
Athena Athanasiou
Fellow, Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences,
Athena Athanasiou teaches at the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, in Athens, Greece. She has studied history, archaeology and philosophy at the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece. She has received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the New School for Social Research, in New York, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, at Brown University, USA (2001-2002).
Athena Athanasiou
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece
Athena Athanasiou teaches at the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, in Athens, Greece. She has studied history, archaeology and philosophy at the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece. She has received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the New School for Social Research, in New York, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, at Brown University, USA (2001-2002). Her publications include: Life at the Limit: Essays on Gender, Body and Biopolitics (in Greek, Ekkremes, 2007); Judith Butler – Conversations with Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Polity Press, 2012); Feminist Theory and Cultural Critique (ed., in Greek, Nissos, 2006); Rewriting Difference: Luce Irigaray and ‘the Greeks’ (co-ed. with Elena Tzelepis, SUNY Press, 2010); Biosocialities: Perspectives on Medical Anthropology (ed., in Greek, Nissos, 2011). She has been research supervisor in the FP6 European consortium “Values, Equality and Difference in Liberal Democracies: Debates about Female Muslim Headscarves in Europe” (2006-09). Her research interests include gender, feminist and queer theory, biopolitics, technologies of the body, antimilitarist movements, affect, nationalism, and memory.
Larry Au
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.
Larry Au
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.
Working Group Affiliation
George Aumoithe
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.
George Aumoithe
PhD Student, Columbia University
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. His work examines the politics of patient advocacy, lay expertise, and clinical medicine as it pertains to HIV and AIDS.
In his spare time, George volunteers for Columbia Health's Gay Health Advocacy Project and sings Bass 1 as part of the New York City Master Chorale.
Working Group Affiliation
Michael Awad
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.
Michael Awad
PhD Student, Teacher's College, 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. He currently works as a school counselor at Prep for Prep, New York City’s oldest leadership and academic development program for students of color. Michael has done extensive advocacy work at the national level related to behavioral health equity as a two-time public policy fellow of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. His doctoral research focuses on cultural issues in psychology. Specific projects include validating culturally-sensitive assessment tools for understanding masculinity in multicultural populations, developing a strategic framework for disarming microaggressions as lab leader to Dr. Derald Wing Sue’s research team, and conducting participatory action evaluations with under-resourced community agencies employing effective behavioral health interventions not specified in the literature. He is currently developing and piloting a peer health program through the Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem at two secondary schools.
Working Group Affiliation
Carlos Gutierrez Aza
Carlos Gutierrez Aza is a second-year Film and Media Studies MA international student at Columbia, originally from Venezuela but having lived all around Latin America. His research and thesis focuses on the hypervisibility of identity in the new digital era of the 21st century, exploring the feedback loops that social and new media create to understand and scrutinize questions of identity, representation, and diversity towards a commodified formation of culture. This focus further marries his undergraduate studies in Business Administration and Film Studies at Emory University.
Hadeel Aziz
Fellow, Executive Director, Justice Center for Legal Aid in Jordan
Hadeel Aziz is the Executive Director of the Justice Center for Legal Aid in Jordan. In 2008, Hadeel pioneered free legal assistance in Jordan when she left a multi-million dollar USAID project on the rule of law to co-found the Justice Center for Legal Aid (JCLA).
Hadeel Aziz
Hadeel Aziz is the Executive Director of the Justice Center for Legal Aid in Jordan. In 2008, Hadeel pioneered free legal assistance in Jordan when she left a multi-million dollar USAID project on the rule of law to co-found the Justice Center for Legal Aid (JCLA). Her organization provides legal services to the poor, underprivileged and vulnerable, a service previously available only to those who could afford it. JCLA is now the largest legal aid provider in the country. In her role, Hadeel is responsible for setting and monitoring strategy, overseeing advocacy and ensuring sustainability of the center. Hadeel is currently establishing a comprehensive country- wide pro bono attorney program and expects to partner with the Jordanian Bar association and the Ministry of Justice to spur a significant culture change. She has investigated public justice in the U.S., including advocacy, and women and children’s issues.
Working Group Affiliation
Delali Margaret Badasu
Fellow, Geography, University of Ghana
Delali Margaret Badasu is a Senior Research Fellow at the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana. She specializes in demography, geography, and medical geography.
Delali Margaret Badasu
Delali Margaret Badasu is Senior Research Fellow, Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana. She holds a Ph.D in Geography and Resource Development, an M.A in Population Studies and a B.A. in Economics/Geography from the University of Ghana. She also holds an M.A. in Geography from the University of Alberta, Canada. She specializes in demography, geography, and medical geography. She has researched and published a number of works on population and development and health-related issues. Her current research focuses on socio-cultural dimensions of health, using mainly qualitative research methods. Her major works in this regard are on Ghana’s health policy and tertiary health care for children. She has just completed a study on care for children with chronic diseases at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. She has published on population and health related issues in the African Studies Research Review, Bulletin of the Ghana Geographical Association, Health Transition Review, and African Population Studies. She is a member of the Union for African Population Studies and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP).
Working Group Affiliation
The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories
Kamal Badhey
Fellow, Urban Studies, University of London
Kamal Badhey (she/her) is a photographer, artist-educator and independent curriculum designer of South Asian ancestry with an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. She is a member of the Urban Photographers Association and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective. Her work intersects with diaspora, using photography, oral storytelling, and family history to stitch together stories. It follows the Telugu saying, ’Katha kanchiki, manam intiki’, ‘The story goes far far away, and now we are back in our homes’. Her project Portals and Passageways, exhibited internationally traces her jeweler ancestor and great great grandfather Annam Rathnaiah from unknown origins to a former British colonial bazaar in Secunderabad, India. Kamal brings two decades of experience collaborating with youth and adults in public schools, transitional housing, community centers, civic engagement, and universities. She was a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow and a Claremont Documentary Fellow.
Kamal Badhey
Kamal Badhey (she/her) is a photographer, artist-educator and independent curriculum designer of South Asian ancestry with an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. She is a member of the Urban Photographers Association and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective. Her work intersects with diaspora, using photography, oral storytelling, and family history to stitch together stories. It follows the Telugu saying, ’Katha kanchiki, manam intiki’, ‘The story goes far far away, and now we are back in our homes’. Her project Portals and Passageways, exhibited internationally traces her jeweler ancestor and great great grandfather Annam Rathnaiah from unknown origins to a former British colonial bazaar in Secunderabad, India. Kamal brings two decades of experience collaborating with youth and adults in public schools, transitional housing, community centers, civic engagement, and universities. She was a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow and a Claremont Documentary Fellow.
Working Group Affiliations
Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair, Social Engagement Project
Benjamin Conisbee Baer
Fellow, Comparative Literature, Princeton University
Benjamin Conisbee Baer is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. His research interests include: Marxism, deconstruction, postcolonial literature and theory, translation problems, and subaltern predicaments.
Benjamin Conisbee Baer
Benjamin Conisbee Baer's research interests include: Marxism, deconstruction, postcolonial literature and theory, translation problems, subaltern predicaments. His teaching, research, and writing focus on problems of representation, language, idiom, and translation; the politics of culture and cultural politics; historical and contemporary modes and situations of subalternity; differentiated patterns of modern imperialism and colonialism; Marxism in an international framework. The parts of the world he works on are generally pockets of South Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa; mainly focusing on modern and contemporary conjunctures. He also teaches Marxist theory, deconstruction, and postcolonial theory. Baer's current book is a series of overlapping case studies that takes on board the complex cultural politics of indigeneity and vanguardism in the interwar period. It examines literary and political problems in instances as diverse as the Harlem Renaissance, the Mexican Revolution, the Gandhian uprisings in India, the fringes of fascism in Europe, and the colonial French Caribbean. New research is on the history of the working class Internationals and efforts toward epistemic change outside Europe. Ongoing group interdisciplinary projects include: Radiating Globality (prehistories of so-called globalization in Senegambia and French India); Rethinking South Asian Studies/Himalayan Regionalism (Kolkata-Kathmandu-Kunming); academic consultancy on Documenting the Mother Tongues of Africa (large consortial multimedia/digital project).
Working Group Affiliation
The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories
Faime Alpagu
Faime Alpagu is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the MAX KADE Foundation in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Vienna. Her dissertation project entitled Migration Narratives Juxtaposed: A Sociological Analysis of Biographies, Photos and (Audio) Letters of “Guest Workers” from Turkey living in Austria was funded by a doctoral scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Faime Alpagu received several awards such as the Research Award for Research on Migration and Integration 2021 by the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF) and the Dissertation Award for Research on Migration from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research has been further supported by the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna (IWM), the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften Wien and vorarlberg museum.
Her current research focuses on the intersections between migration/refugee studies, audio-visual studies, biographical research, and memory, applying an interpretative social research approach. Her current research focuses on the intersections between migration/refugee studies, audio-visual studies, archive studies, biographical research, and memory, applying an interpretative social research approach.
Olivia Balderes
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.
Olivia Balderes
Graduate Student, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, 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 a Washington Heights native, and received her BA from Barnard College in Creative Writing and Biological Sciences. Olivia currently works in the laboratory of Dr. Krzysztof Kiryluk as both a Clinical Research Coordinator on a number of large national precision medicine initiatives, and as the lab’s manager. 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.
Working Group Affiliation
A. George Bajalia
A. George Bajalia is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University. His work is concerned with borderlands, primarily in the Western Mediterranean region.
A. George Bajalia
A. George Bajalia is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University. His work is concerned with borderlands, primarily in the Western Mediterranean region. His current book project, Waiting at the Border: Language, Labor, and Infrastructure in the Strait of Gibraltar, dwells on the political, social, and cultural forms that emerge during time spent waiting among cross-border workers and West and Central African immigrants living and working around the Moroccan-Spanish borderlands.
His work argues that lives lived while waiting, whether in the city of Tangier among im/migrants or in the commodity warehouses that abut the land border between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and the Moroccan coast, form consequential habits that sediment into social life and become fields for potential political claims grounded in communal sentiments. As both an intellectual and political project, he is interested in exploring the consequences of these communal sentiments across the many borders of the Strait of Gibraltar and how these sentiments cannot be solely contained within the categories typically associated with border-crossing, categories such as “migrant,” “refugee,” and “asylum-seeker.”
Bajalia has held research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation-CAORC, Fulbright-Hays, Fulbright-IIE, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Youmein Festival, an annual 48-hour contemporary art and performance festival and residency in Tangier, Morocco. Bajalia received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University.
Working Group: Refugee Cities
Michael J. Balick
Michael J. Balick (New York Botanical Garden and Columbia University) Vice President for Botanical Science, Director and Philecology Senior Curator Institute of Economic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden. For more than four decades, Dr. Balick has studied the relationship between plants and people, working with traditional cultures in tropical, subtropical, and desert environments. He is a specialist in the field known as ethnobotany, working with indigenous cultures in many parts of the world to document their plant knowledge, understand the environmental effects of their traditional management systems, and develop sustainable utilization systems-while ensuring that the benefits of such work are always shared with local communities. Dr. Balick has also conducted research in New York City, studying traditional healing practices in ethnic communities of the urban environment. He is the author or editor of 30 books and monographs.
Michelle Ballan
Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, Columbia University
Dr. Ballan's research, teaching and service is dedicated to individuals with disabilities. Her research focuses on prevention and treatment interventions for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2010 Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award. She has received the Texas Excellence Teaching Award, the Services for Students with Disabilities Faculty Award and twice, Columbia students bestowed her with the excellence in teaching award.
Michelle Ballan
Assistant Professor of Social Work, Columbia University
Dr. Ballan's research, teaching and service is dedicated to individuals with disabilities. Her research focuses on prevention and treatment interventions for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2010 Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award. She has received the Texas Excellence Teaching Award, the Services for Students with Disabilities Faculty Award and twice, Columbia students bestowed her with the excellence in teaching award. Dr. Ballan is a mentor for international human rights disability advocates affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She convenes the Columbia University Seminar on Disability Studies and is the Faculty Advisor for the Disability Caucus. Dr. Ballan is the recipient of the 2010 Association on Higher Education and Disability Recognition Award for her outstanding contributions to campus programs for students with disabilities. She is the 2011 recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Dr. Ballan serves on the editorial board of Social Work and is an ad-hoc reviewer for journals in the fields of disability studies and sexuality. She is a board member for Services for the Underserved and has held positions on the Council on Disability and Persons with Disabilities through the Council of Social Work Education. Dr. Ballan has worked as a practitioner and educator in various community settings with individuals with disabilities including the New Jersey Brain Injury Association, Women Helping Women, Safeplace and schools.
