Grad Student - CRWS

Adriana Michelle Acosta Garcia

Berkeley Public Policy, Center for Effective Global Action, UC Berkeley

Adriana Michelle Acosta García is a public policy researcher from Mexico who is interested in institutions, development, and political behavior, with a particular interest in right-wing politics. Her research interests are shaped by experience in governance, social policy, financial inclusion, disability rights, and public-sector data analysis. She has worked on policy and research projects at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, fintech startup Stori, and the Ministry of Equality and Inclusion of Nuevo León in Mexico. She is also a fellow of The Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy...

Elena Amaya

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Anonymous

This graduate student's research focuses on contemporary French far-right fiction and the cultural imaginaries it produces. Their work examines the role of literature in the metapolitical project of the French far right, exploring how fiction helps circulate ideological narratives and shape collective understandings of nation, identity, and belonging. They are particularly interested in literary representations of demographic decline, racial dispossession, and civilizational crisis, specifically analyzing how narratives aligned with Grand Remplacement (Great Replacement) rhetoric construct...

Tak-Huen Chau

Political Science, UC Berkeley

Tak-Huen Chau is a PhD candidate in political science and MA candidate in economics. He is interested in social identities and political behavior in general. Currently, he is working on projects that utilize formal theory and surveys to explain dominant group attitudes on national identity, assimilation, and bilingual education.

Anirvan Chowdhury

Political Science, UC Berkeley

Annika Cobb

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Annika Cobb is a PhD student in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management program. Her research focuses on energy policies and developments in the Rocky Mountain region and how rural, resource-dependent communities experience the socioeconomic shifts associated with energy transition. She is particularly interested in how these changes intersect with political discourse, cultural identity, and partisan divisions. Her work combines qualitative methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and discourse analysis of media and political materials. Her research also examines...

J. Lee Crandall

Geography, UC Berkeley

Lee Crandall is currently pursuing a PhD in Geography at UC Berkeley, broadly researching the effects of blockchain/cryptocurrencies and digital technologies on infrastructures, lands, and lives. Their dissertation research traces the intersection of venture capitalism, far-right extremism, and techno-authoritarianism as connected to cryptocurrency and plots for new tech-cities around the globe. Building on work in the Frankfurt School, they engage critical theory to better understand the dialectic of technology’s dominating tendencies and its democratizing powers. As a...

Rumur Dowling

English, UC Berkeley

Rumur Dowling is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley English Department, where his teaching and dissertation research have focused on Marxist studies, Asian American studies, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics between 1800 and the present.

Grant Durow

Political Science, UC Berkeley

Grant Durow is a PhD student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on conservative and far-right politics, political parties, activist networks, and the intersection of religion and politics with a regional focus on Western Europe. His work examines both how party leader rhetoric and identity contribute to the normalization of far-right parties in Europe and how conservative parties and their activist bases have responded to secularization and changing partisan cleavages around multiculturalism and national identity. Grant primarily uses...

Jillian J. Foster

Political Science, Yale