Grad Student - ISSI

Alan Yeh

French, UC Berkeley

Alan Yeh is a Ph.D. candidate in French at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies refugitude aesthetics, memory, care, and food in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature, especially of the Vietnamese diaspora. His research has appeared in L’Esprit Créateur and has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and Mellon Foundation as well as Berkeley’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His dissertation uncovers transdiasporic approaches to a politics of care in displacement narratives entangled in histories of colonialism...

Halle Young

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Halle Young is a PhD candidate in the Joint Medical Anthropology program at UCSF-UC Berkeley, where she researches the therapeutic milieu of vulvovaginal pain. Her project explores what practices and ideals of intimacy and gender inspire cisgender women to engage in interventions toward penetration, especially when pain is present.

Alexis Atsilvsgi Zaragoza

Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley

Alexis Atsilvsgi is a Cherokee and Chicana Master of Public Policy student at the Goldman School. She previously served on the California Community College’s Board of Governors and the University of California Board of Regents. Alexis works at the intersection of higher education, supply chain/logistics infrastructure, legal geographies, surveillance policy, and geopoetics to understand geographies of hope in capitalist-entrenched rural landscapes, as well as spatial-driven governance structures. Her past projects include hope-mapping carceral, logistics, and education pathways in rural...

Michelle Zaragoza

Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

Michelle Zaragoza (MSW, LCSW) is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Ph.D. Student in Social Welfare at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on using qualitative methodologies, including arts-based research, to explore the lived experiences of mental health and trauma among Latinx communities. Her work investigates the wide-ranging mental health disparities that impact Latinx immigrant communities. Drawing on her clinical experience as a mental health therapist, Michelle is dedicated to informing culturally relevant and trauma-informed social work practices and Behavioral Health policies.

Anna Zaret

Jurisprudence and Social Policy, UC Berkeley

Anna Zaret is a Ph.D. Candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. She has research interests in medical and scientific evidence, criminal procedure, and tort law, where she combines her expertise in political economy and political theory to approach contemporary problems related to police violence, health policy, and social inequality. She was previously a fellow at the UCSF – UC Law Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy and clerked for the Hon. Laurel Beeler in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and. She received her J.D. magna cum laude...

Tianyue Zhang

Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

Ashley Zhou

Berkeley School of Education, UC Berkeley

Ashley Zhou is a student of the Joint Doctoral program in special education with UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Her research focuses on structures of race, class, gender, and disability in special education through the role of the paraprofessional. Analyzing historical archives, she examines the labor formation of paraprofessionals and special education teachers in the aftermath of Brown. Her work also incorporates ethnography to examine the consequences of this labor formation for contemporary challenges in special education. Through this investigation of educational...

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 Xitlali Zitani-Rios (She/They) is a PhD student interested in how cultural frameworks shape identity, public perceptions, civic engagement, and responses to social inequality, with particular attention to urban space, power, and belonging. Using qualitative methods, Raquel's research examines how community dynamics and local governance mediate struggles over inclusion and exclusion in the Bay Area.