Grad Student - ISSI

Isaac Dalke

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Monica De La Cruz

Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

Monica De La Cruz is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare. Her broad research interests focus on reducing family poverty within communities of color, specifically through innovative approaches like guaranteed income. Her dissertation recognizes the impact of social context and cultural narratives on both the conditions of those experiencing poverty and the formation of related policies. Her research includes studies on poverty narratives and perceptions of deservingness in the U.S., examining their effects on public opinions regarding guaranteed income and on...

Laura Díaz

School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Laura Díaz is a Ph.D. student in Environmental Health Sciences at UC Berkeley where she studies how biomarkers of mitochondrial dysfunction can shed light on the underpinnings between exposure to social and environmental stressors on atopic disease among children in frontline environmental justice communities. Having grown up in a frontline environmental justice community in the San Francisco Bay Area, her work is centered on combating environmental injustice in partnership with members of her and other frontline communities. She co-founded Partners for Equity and Research at Sonoma State...

Quennie Dong

School of Education, UC Berkeley

Xavier Durham

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Xavier Durham (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley whose interests revolve around policing, surveillance, state violence, punishment, inequality, and urban sociology. His current project focuses on the precarious convergence between formerly-incarcerated people and neoliberal security practices in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, examining how the policed become the police as they navigate a constrained labor market. Previously, he has done extensive work on police use of force during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the constitutional...

Sierra Edd

Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley

Sierra Edd (Diné) is a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is Tł’ógi, born for the Kinłichii’nii people and grew up in Durango, Colorado / Four corners. Her research interests are in Indigenous gender and sexuality, culture, storytelling, futures/futurity, and digital media. She is also a 2020 recipient of the Ford Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and a coordinator for the Indigenous Sound Studies working group and Berkeley’s Center for New Media Indigenous Technologies Program.

Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Irene Farah

City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley

Irene Farah is a PhD candidate in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the political economy of street vending in Mexico City and San Francisco, with a focus on intra-urban inequalities. She received her BA in Political Science from ITAM in Mexico City and her MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Irene works closely with street vendors and street vending associations to understand their relationship with the state and the impact that regulations have on workers’ livelihoods. Her research aims to shed light on the complex relationships...

Akilah Favors

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Akilah Favors is an energetic free-spirited activist who loves to smile. She is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at UC Berkeley who researches race, class, social movements, gentrification, and the politics of inclusion. Her work investigates how Black middle-class organizers mobilize low-income renters against urban displacement rooted in neoliberalism and systemic racism in Atlanta, GA. She employs urban ethnography and in-depth interviews to analyze how both practices of division and solidarity influence the sustainability of Blackness in the city. Her work contributed to a national...

Fabián Fernández

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Fabián Fernández is a student in the joint UCSF-UCB M.D./Ph.D. program in Medical Anthropology. He researches issues of safety, workplace violence, and policing in U.S. Emergency Departments. In his time in the Bay Area, he has organized with healthcare workers from Do No Harm Coalition fighting against wage theft, evictions, and police sweeps. He has also worked to support individuals and families affected by police violence. He models his healing work from years of practice with Clínica Martín Baró, a student-run free clinic grounded in latin-american liberation psychology. He...