Grad Student - BCSM

Bernardo Moreno Peniche

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Bernardo is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology. He studies the (dis)locations of tropicality in relation to the emergence of zoonoses and vector-borne diseases in the Global North. He focuses on Chagas, a parasitic disease transmitted by an insect vector, that has gained its epidemiological relevance in the US through its association with human migration from Latin America despite growing evidence of local transmission cycles that have continuously been part of US landscapes. He asks about the effects that framing Chagas disease as a foreign threat have on public health policy and clinical...

Bernardo Moreno

Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Robert Ortiz Stahl

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Robert “Bobby” Ortiz Stahl is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the David Minkus Memorial Graduate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. His dissertation examines how unhealthy housing becomes a governable problem through the intersecting practices of expert intervention, advocacy, and "policywork" in Oakland, California. Drawing on ethnographic research with policy and public health experts, housing advocates and affected tenants, Bobby traces how public policy solutions can both reflect and reshape the...

Joohyun Park

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Joohyun Park is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, she studies gender, medicine, law, and social movements. Her dissertation examines how the South Korean courts' interpretation of victims' medical records in sexual violence cases has evolved over time, analyzing the changing perceptions of victimhood through the lenses of agency and vulnerability.

Elena Peterman

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Elena Peterman is a PhD student in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She researches the political and affective dimensions of encounters with industrial toxicants (especially PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Her ethnographic work traces the ways so-called 'forever chemicals'— in their persistence and expansive proliferation— variously derange or reinforce racialized regimes of property and citizenship in a rapidly transforming corner of the U.S. South.

Kameswari (Kamu) Potharaju

UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program

Kamu is a medical and graduate student in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. Her research interests focus on the integration of social care into clinical care, with an emphasis on increasing basic needs access for historically underresourced communities.

Reiley Reed

School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

Reiley Reed (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. Her research interests include the historical and ongoing role of social work in perpetuating reproductive oppression, pregnancy criminalization and surveillance, and power dynamics in health care. Her mixed-methods dissertation research explores the role of social workers in reporting abortion and substance use in pregnancy to government authorities. Previously, she worked at the Person-Centered Reproductive Health Program at UC San Francisco where she managed research projects focused on patient-...

Marlena Robbins

Public Health, UC Berkeley

Marlena Robbins is a Doctor of Public Health candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Program Coordinator for the Collective Continuance: Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship, where her research utilizes implementation science, Indigenous methodologies, and public health prevention theory to develop a fellowship for early-career UC Berkeley PhD students interested in studying at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems and psychedelic science. The fellowship connects students with Indigenous-led organizations and advisors to help them craft their...

Julio Salas

Sociology, UC Berkeley

A second-generation Mexican and Colombian immigrant born and raised in Corona, Queens, New York City (NYC), Julio Salas is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Sociology PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. Centering immigrant families, his research interests and projects lie at the nexus of immigration, emotion, race & ethnicity, social stratification, and health. His current interview-based research project explores how Latinx immigrant families experience(d) grief during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC and how macro-level and meso-level forces shaped said experiences...

Meriam Salem

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Meriam Salem is a PhD student investigating the intersection of behavioral health and legal systems. Her research draws on the Duboisian question, "how does it feel to be a problem?" Currently, her work investigates how governments manage behavioral health and the encroachment of national security logics in healthcare systems. She was recently awarded the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars fellowship.