Grad Student - ISSI

Joanna Cardenas

African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, UC Berkeley

Joanna Cardenas is a doctoral candidate in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research explores the nexus of critical carceral studies, disability studies, and Black feminist thought, with an emphasis on the intersection of race, class, gender, and space. Through a close spatial analysis of California prisons, her work traces how the state’s histories of human experimentation, sexual violence, and other forms of disabling violence inform the racialized and gendered organization of confinement. She also studies how the carceral state of South...

Juan Carlos Bordes

School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Born in Ecuador, Juan Carlos Bordes has had a lengthy journey to become a doctoral candidate in Public Health at UC Berkeley. At age 16, he and his family immigrated from Ecuador to the US to start anew. This change included a new culture, language, and more. Although challenging, these experiences began a process of building resiliency in him.

Juan Carlos used resiliency to become the first in his family to obtain undergraduate and graduate education. Additionally, working in healthcare for the past ten years ignited his passion for creating inclusive workplace environments...

Dori-Taylor Carter

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Dori-Taylor Carter (she/her/hers) is a sociology PhD student, Chancellor's Fellow, and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She is interested in the construction of identity categories and populations, the political representation of identity groups, and the mobilization of shared identities and experiences toward collective liberation. Her previous work has examined how Asian American and Filipinx American community organizers mobilized the 2020 census in Chicago, and her master's project examines how political action committees construct identity representation in U.S. politics.

Julie Catel

French, UC Berkeley

Julie Catel is a PhD student in the Department of French. Her research focuses on the aesthetics and visual culture of contemporary French fiction and film, specifically examining how fringe political ideologies and identity movements are represented.

Ataya Cesspooch

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Lauren Chambers

School of Information, UC Berkeley

Lauren Chambers is a Ph.D. student at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Advised by technology law expert Prof. Deirdre Mulligan, she studies the intersection of data, technology, and sociopolitical advocacy. Her primary project is a mixed-methods qualitative study exploring the roles of 'public interest technologists' within civil society and advocacy organizations, as they are shaping policy, informing legal arguments, and transforming political campaigns.

Previously Lauren was the staff technologist at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where she explored government data in order to...

Julia Chang

Geography, UC Berkeley

Julia Chang's research focuses on socio-spatial configurations of capital, land, and labor, with a regional focus in the Asia Pacific and the United States. Their current dissertation project explores remittance flows, land speculation, and state capitalism in agrarian regions of the Philippines. As part of a team, Julia is also working on a project to map the composition of the AAPI working class in Northern California, particularly among low-income refugee and immigrant workers in the logistics sector. With abiding interests in Marxist political economy, labor geographies, and agrarian...

Tak-Huen Chau

Political Science, UC Berkeley

Tak-Huen Chau is a PhD candidate in political science and MA candidate in economics. He is interested in social identities and political behavior in general. Currently, he is working on projects that utilize formal theory and surveys to explain dominant group attitudes on national identity, assimilation, and bilingual education.

Lena Chen

Performance Studies, UC Berkeley

Lena Chen is an artist and Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. Her research examines the performance practices of Asian American/diasporic artists, sex workers, and community organizers in Los Angeles and New York City. A recipient of the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, she holds a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University and a M.F.A. in Fine Art from Carnegie Mellon University.

Her work has appeared in Amerasia Journal, PUBLIC...

Xinyi Chen

Psychology, UC Berkeley

Xinyi is a PhD student in Developmental Psychology with six years of experience working with children and families from underrepresented backgrounds in psychological research. Her research focuses on how socio-ecological factors (neighborhood, school, and family) shape the cognitive and socioemotional development of children from low-income and immigrant backgrounds. Her goal is to provide insights for policy and community programs supporting ethnic minority children and families.