Grad Student - CER

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...

Jasmine McAdams

Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley

Jasmine McAdams is a PhD student in the Energy & Resources Group, and a member of Dr. Maya Carrasquillo's Liberatory Infrastructures Lab. Jasmine’s research focuses on the infrastructures of and for imagination – the material, digital, and civic systems that shape how social and environmental futures are envisioned and made possible. Through analysis of the built environment, with a particular focus on data centers, energy systems, and carceral infrastructure, she examines how large-scale systems enable and constrain the capacity to imagine and enact alternative futures, and how power...

Leila Mire

Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley

Leila Mire (she/her/hers) is a PhD Candidate in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. Her research examines how dance and movement are co-opted, appropriated, and mobilized within state and anti-imperial contexts, with a particular focus on Palestine and its ongoing occupation. She is especially interested in how performance circulates through cultural diplomacy, soft power, and nationalist projects, and how these forces shape questions of representation, visibility, and erasure. Through both scholarly writing and choreographic practice, she explores how artists navigate displacement,...

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.

Jimena Perez

Geography, UC Berkeley

Jimena Perez is a community-engaged scholar, NSF GRFP Fellow, and Geography Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation explores the L.A. River—known to the Tongva as paayme paxaayt—as a site of memory, resistance, and repair. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles, she witnessed the River’s confinement in concrete, mirroring the struggles of nearby working-class communities. Rather than centering loss, her ethnographic research highlights the visions and practices of residents across L.A. County who challenge dominant planning narratives and reimagine infrastructure. Jimena’s...

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.

Janiya Peters

University of California, Berkeley

Janiya Peters is a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information advised by Deirdre Mulligan. Her work explores the ways in which generative text-to-image models compromise visual creators’ intellectual property rights, and how visual creators adopt resistance strategies to retain agency over their intellectual property, labor and compensation. She identifies sites of dispute between stakeholders, and discerns individual and collective action towards repossessing appropriated works. Her work proposes policy interventions at the intersection of copyright, data labor and creative...

Catalina Riveros-Gómez

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Catalina Riveros-Gómez is a PhD student whose work examines socio-environmental systems, biocultural conservation, and environmental justice in Latin America. Her research project, “Living in and with the Forests: Partnering with Campesino Communities to Protect the Colombian Amazon”, focuses on Colombia’s northwestern Amazon, a biodiverse, culturally rich, and contested territory. The project examines how campesino communities navigate the social, legal, and ecological pressures shaping Forest Reserves, including agricultural expansion, cattle ranching, land speculation, and conservation...