Grad Student - ISSI

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-...

Everardo Reyes

Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley

Everardo “Ever” Reyes (Rarámuri descent and Chicanx) is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the intersections between music, social movements, and Indigenous self-determination. His dissertation focuses on the contemporary sonic and political influences of the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Island by the Indians of All Tribes on Indigenous social movements. Ever also works on Rarámuri and Nahuatl language revitalization through music technology and songwriting with the Indigenous Poetics Lab at the Arts Research...

Marlena Robbins

Public Health, UC Berkeley

Marlena Robbins is a Doctor of Public Health candidate at UC Berkeley. She specializes in Tribal governance, psilocybin policy, and public health. A member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation, her dissertation research focuses on state-level psilocybin legislation and its implications for tribal sovereignty in the Four Corners region—Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Marlena is conducting a policy analysis and interviews with tribal leaders, state officials, and urban Indian health organizations to examine how governance, healing, and community priorities intersect in...

juleon robinson

Geography, UC Berkeley

juleon robinson is an organizer, community educator, and PhD Student in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. His research analyzes the relationship between race and property in Bay Area housing geographies, with a specific focus on the persistence of Black housing geographies as sites of temporariness and dispossession. His current project examines the 2017 demolition of the Las Deltas public housing complex in North Richmond, California, to reckon with the role of public housing policy in the ongoing fragmentation of Black geographies in California’s East Bay....

Ángel Mendiola Ross

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Ángel Mendiola Ross (they/he) is a PhD candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley who conducts research at the intersection of (sub)urban sociology, race and inequality, policing, incarceration and housing. Their current project examines the relationship between prison proliferation and ethnoracial residential segregation in metropolitan U.S. during the post-civil rights period. His empirical work on racial and renter threat in California suburbs was recently published in Social Problems. Ángel’s work has received generous support from the Berkeley...

Irene Franco Rubio

Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Irene Franco Rubio is a scholar-activist, organizer, and first-generation Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and New Media. Her research examines intersectional coalition building and cross-cultural solidarity within multiracial social movements, focusing on how and why coalitions emerge and sustain themselves amid the challenges of movement siloing in the U.S. Southwest. Grounded in Comparative Ethnic Studies and Sociology, she employs a combination...

Kieren Ashley Rudge

Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, UC Berkeley

Kieren Ashley Rudge is a PhD candidate in the Society and Environment Division of the Environmental Science, Policy, & Management Department at UC Berkeley. Their work is grounded in critical race theory, political ecology, and critical Pacific islands studies. Their dissertation focuses on how racialized social-political structures differently impact Pacific communities facing climate injustice. This project uses a collective case study examining marginalization and coalitional climate activism in the state of California and the U.S. territory of Guåhan. This research examines how the...

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.

Henry Sales

School of Education, UC Berkeley

Henry Leonel Sales Hernández is an Indigenous Maya Mam educator, researcher, and doctoral student in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Born and raised in San Juan Atitán, Guatemala, and currently living in Oakland, California, his work is rooted in language justice, cultural affirmation, and educational equity. His research and work focuses on the revitalization of the Mam language through early childhood education, storytelling, and community-based practices. Drawing on ethnographic methods, Henry studies how Mam toddlers, youth, and their families in Oakland engage with books and...