Grad Student - CER

David Joseph-Goteiner

Sociology, UC Berkeley

David Joseph-Goteiner is a digital ethnographer broadly studying the morals and politics that animate emerging technologies, and the consequences of digitalization for individuals and social institutions. David’s dissertation examines the meanings and motivations behind platform work, building on theoretical discussions of dependence, embeddedness, and fairness. David’s work has been published in Socius, Sociology of Religion, and Management and Organization Review

AJ Kurdi

Ethnic Studies & Women’s and Gender Studies, UC Berkeley

AJ Kurdi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies, with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation research is a comparative study on different forms of ethnic minority queer organizing in various social contexts in Europe and North America, and how they shape the priorities and political orientations of mainstream LGBTQI movements, laws and public policies in Europe and North America. The project uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods including document analysis, correlational analysis,...

Andrea Lara-Garcia

Geography, UC Berkeley

I study the emergence of—and relationship between—propertied and territorial ways of relating to land, specifically in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I am particularly interested in how non-federal actors - including - state governors, migrants, and Indigenous communities - contesr federal hegemony and assert sovereignty over the space of the border through property frameworks.

My undergraduate research at the University of Arizona examined housing inequality in Tucson’s manufactured housing communities and historically Mexican neighborhoods, especially through the mechanism of the...

Zhuofan Li

Sociology, University of Arizona

Jonathan Marty

City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley

Jonathan is a PhD student in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design with Designated Emphases in Global Metropolitan Studies and Political Economy. His current research examines the governance of urban public space in New York City, Oakland, and Paris, as well as international organizing and advocacy movements around social housing. A critical, interdisciplinary social scientist committed to the study of urban inequalities, statecraft, and the production of space, Jonathan has previously conducted work on the effects of gentrification in Chicago Public...

Bri Matusovsky

Medical Anthropology, UCSF-UC Berkeley

Bri Matusovsky's dissertation research follows green monkeys (Chlorocebus Sabaeus), invasive pests on the island of St. Kitts, a primarily Black Caribbean island with small minorities of wealthy white and East Indian residents who control a significant amount of its wealth and resources. Green monkeys were introduced as a by-product of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and are now differently valued in scientific research, tourism, and conservationism. The increasing frequency of encounters between humans and monkeys, and related food insecurity experienced by both humans and monkeys, is...

Farnam Mohebi

Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Farnam Mohebi is a PhD student at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. She has previously earned her MD and MPH degrees. Her research focuses on the intersection of professionals and emerging technologies, drawing from the fields of medical sociology, organizational theory, and science and technology studies. She is particularly fascinated by the evolving relationship between physicians and artificial intelligence, the phenomenon of physician influencers, and...

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...

Srihari Nageswaran

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Srihari Nageswaran is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. His prior research examined the relationship between India’s model of quasi-federalism and regionalist political mobilization in its southernmost state of Tamil Nadu. His tentative dissertation project leverages the tools of economic anthropology, critical geography, and South Asian studies to examine special economic zones in Chennai.

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...