Grad Student - ISSI

Jaclyn Zhou

Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley

Jaclyn Zhou is a PhD candidate in the department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and the Berkeley Center for New Media. Her research interests include fan studies, Asian and Asian American popular culture, digital technology and embodiment, tourism studies, and race and empire. Her dissertation explores the relationship between anime-inspired tourism and national and racial identity construction in the Japanese and global anime fandom. She is also a founding member of the Media Education Research Lab (MERL), a UC Berkeley-based lab developing methods for measuring and...

Raquel Zitani-Rios

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Raquel Zitani-Rios (she/they) is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines how housed residents make sense of and respond to homelessness, focusing on the cultural frames that shape perceptions, civic engagement, and everyday actions. Using a mixed qualitative approach that combines in-depth interviews with participant observation at city council and community meetings, Raquel explores how people's experiences, observations, and concerns influence their views and actions toward homelessness. Her work shows how residents’...