Grad Student - ISSI

Lisa Ng

Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Lisa Ng is a PhD candidate in the Ethnic Studies Department with a Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She interrogates the relationships between the racialized histories of waste and technology and their potential roles in social movements. Her current research examines how grassroots urban beautification projects in Asian (American) communities in Oakland, California, can represent new imaginations of relationality, resistance, and futurity. Beyond academia, she is an experienced multilingual community educator and...

Alejandro Nuñez

School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

Alejandro Nuñez is a doctoral student in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley whose research bridges education policy, youth mental health, and critical theory. His work examines Social Emotional Learning (SEL) through the lens of ideology and hegemony, exploring how SEL policy normalizes and standardizes particular conceptions of youth emotion and behavior. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, he examines how SEL policy and guidance define and constrain what counts as healthy youth emotion and development. Approaching youth well-being through a structural and materialist lens, his...

Coryna Ogunseitan

Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco

Coryna Ogunseitan (she/any) is a doctoral candidate in medical anthropology in the joint program between UCSF and UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on interventions to support people experiencing climate anxiety and climate grief. Working comparatively across EcoDharma spaces in Western convert Buddhism and the African-led, international climate grief support organization Sustaining All Life, this research asks how race and geography shape emotional responses to climate change, and inform conceptualizations of healing and psychological wellness within the context of...

Evelyn Ortiz Soto

Jurisprudence and Social Policy PhD, UC Berkeley Law, UC Berkeley

Evelyn Ortiz Soto is a graduate student in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy PhD program at UC Berkeley Law. Their work centers on law and society with special attention to legal mobilization and Queer identity politics informed by critical theory. Blending computational social science and qualitative methods, their research examines the implications of AI governance and far-right legal mobilization for queer youth and their digital identities. Utilizing an original dataset of federal bills extracted from the U.S. Government Publishing Office, they employ computational text-mining and...

Robert Ortiz Stahl

Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Robert “Bobby” Ortiz Stahl is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the David Minkus Memorial Graduate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. His dissertation examines how unhealthy housing becomes a governable problem through the intersecting practices of expert intervention, advocacy, and "policywork" in Oakland, California. Drawing on ethnographic research with policy and public health experts, housing advocates and affected tenants, Bobby traces how public policy solutions can both reflect and reshape the...

Anna Palmer

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Anna Palmer is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines the convergence of extractivism, (post)colonial development, and the climate crisis in the Caribbean through a qualitative and spatial lens. Her current project focuses on political decision-making and resistance to oil extraction in Guyana through content analysis and interview methods. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from Occidental College.

Joohyun Park

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Joohyun Park is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, she studies gender, medicine, law, and social movements. Her dissertation examines how the South Korean courts' interpretation of victims' medical records in sexual violence cases has evolved over time, analyzing the changing perceptions of victimhood through the lenses of agency and vulnerability.

Sarah Payne

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Lauren Pearson

Geography, UC Berkeley

Lauren R. Pearson is a PhD Candidate in the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her M.A. from the University College London and her B.A. from New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the phenomenon of illegally set wildfires in Sicily through an analysis of the history of social, political-economic, and environmental crisis in Sicily. Her research has been supported by the Trinity College’s Research Grant in Modern Italian History, The 'FLAS' Fellowship, The Berkeley-Naples Fellowship at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, and...

Clara Pérez Medina

Geography, UC Berkeley

Clara Pérez Medina (they/them) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. They are a geographic filmmaker, studying the relationship between race, place, and representation through the modalities of oral history, film, and photography. Currently they are working on a collaborative film project with Bay Area Black housing justice organizers considering the historical racial political economy of Oakland and the intergenerational lines of care that have sustained the city. They have an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California...