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...

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...

Kendrick Manymules

Geography, UC Berkeley

Kendrick Manymules (Diné) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography. He is from Fort Defiance, AZ. Kendrick's research explores the history and contemporary configuration of questions around land, development, and sovereignty. He utilizes archival methods in order to understand how contemporary understandings of land are reworked through capitalist development that invariably have profound consequences for the practice of Diné sovereignty. Kendrick holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of City Planning degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mitzia Martinez

Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, UC Berkeley Law

Mitzia E. Martinez Castellanos is a doctoral candidate in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Berkeley Law. Her research explores the lingering effects of being undocumented and experiencing legal violence after an immigrant gains a legal status. She pays particular attention to how legal violence affects immigrant’s legal consciousness, identities, sense of community, and willingness to engage with the law. Before graduate school, Mitzia worked at an Oakland community-based research institute, conducting bi-national projects in collaboration with immigration...