Grad Student - ISSI

AJ Kurdi

Ethnic Studies & Women’s and Gender Studies, UC Berkeley

AJ Kurdi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies, with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation research is a comparative study on different forms of ethnic minority queer organizing in various social contexts in Europe and North America, and how they shape the priorities and political orientations of mainstream LGBTQI movements, laws and public policies in Europe and North America. The project uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods including document analysis, correlational analysis,...

Josefina Valdes Lanas

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Josefina Valdes Lanas researches religious imagination and mystical practices in contemporary Catholicism in its relation to neo-liberal economics and secular citizenship. Using the methods of linguistic anthropology, she analyzes spiritual exercises deeply entrenched in Christian theology that are being transformed by the moral governance of liberal ideologies.

Andrea Lara-Garcia

Geography, UC Berkeley

I study the emergence of—and relationship between—propertied and territorial ways of relating to land, specifically in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I am particularly interested in how non-federal actors - including - state governors, migrants, and Indigenous communities - contesr federal hegemony and assert sovereignty over the space of the border through property frameworks.

My undergraduate research at the University of Arizona examined housing inequality in Tucson’s manufactured housing communities and historically Mexican neighborhoods, especially through the mechanism of the...

Zhuofan Li

Sociology, University of Arizona

Jin Hyung Lim

Jin Hyung is a PhD student in the School Psychology Program at the Berkeley School of Education. As an international student from South Korea, he is passionate about promoting the mental health of Asian American students, teachers, and families. Guided by the social-ecological framework and resilience theory, he studies how school and community resources can function as promotive and protective factors for the psychological well-being of Asian Americans.

Daniel Lobo

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Daniel Lobo is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, with specializations in political economy and the sociology of organizations and markets at the Haas School of Business. As a cultural and economic sociologist, he is interested in the fundamental question of, who gets what and why in our society? More specifically, he is interested in how individuals experience organizations intersubjectively and behaviorally. How is talent conceptualized, discovered, selected, evaluated, compensated, and promoted (or not) to positions of power? How, and by whom, are...

Arianna Lunow-Luke

Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Arianna Lunow-Luke (she/her) is a PhD student in the department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship. She is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Food Systems through the Berkeley Food Institute. Born and raised in Kailua, Oʻahu, Ari is a fourth generation Chinese settler of Kanaka Maoli lands in Hawaiʻi. She received her BA in Biology and Ethnic Studies from Brown University.

Ari’s research is centered on Asian settler colonialism and multiculturalism in Hawaiʻi. She is particularly...

Anna Macknick

Linguistics, UC Berkeley

Anna Macknick is a graduate student in Linguistics and the Designated Emphasis on Indigenous Language Revitalization. They collaborate with the Xaitsnoo (Southeastern Pomo) language community in creating curriculum, teaching language classes, and developing the language's first community-centered dictionary, with a focus on Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Anna's work seeks to support Indigenous language sovereignty by increasing community access to and autonomy over language materials held at UC archives. Anna is interested in connections between Universal Design for...

Sarah Manchanda

Education, UC Berkeley

Daryl Mangosing

Public Health, UC Berkeley

Daryl Mangosing (they/he/she) is a DrPH Candidate in Berkeley Public Health whose interests lie at the intersection of LGBTQ+ health disparities, community-engaged research, mixed-methods, and Critical Theory. For their dissertation, Daryl is studying sexualized drug use (i.e., recreational or illicit drug use to facilitate and enhance sexual activity), harm reduction practices and strategies, and health outcomes among sexual and gender diverse people in the context of HIV prevention and online dating applications. Previously, they served as a Research Communications Specialist at...