Grad Student - ISSI

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...

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...

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...