My research interests are centered on indigeneity, social movements, development, and neoliberalism in Latin America with a particular focus on urban indigenous youth in Chile. My dissertation will investigate Mapuche indigenous university activism, brought to center stage after the 2011 Chilean university student movement, to understand how indigenous youth shape identity and meaning, transmit their narratives and knowledge, and exert social agency within and outside the indigenous communities of Chile. I am particularly interested in how indigenous activists view the Chilean nation-state, their community, and themselves both in their interactions with the broader non-indigenous nation and within dynamic and diverse indigenous populations. As a social movement, I am interested in understanding how through indigeneity their framework posits alternatives to Chilean nationalism, education, and developmental models, where they draw influences from, and what these alternatives look like.
Research Interests:
My research explores how sanitation work mobilizes caste in contemporary Bangalore, a city whose Information and Bio-Technology firms serve as critical signposts for modern India. Through an examination of municipal waste, I seek to understand how certain 'expectations of modernity' marshal historic caste relations to manage waste workers and obscure the problem of urban material overproduction. Via an ethnography of daily garbage hauls, street cleanups, petty recycling, and sewage maintenance, my project investigates how the city municipality provisions sanitation services through an intricate contract system. It argues that such a system engenders a regime of labor based on graded inequity that hinges upon trust and kin networks that not only traverse city and country, but also locate workers in active 'states of exception.' Moreover, my study examines how the municipal administration, by issuing private sanitation contracts to dominant caste communities, disavows two interrelated facets of solid waste management: 1) its dependence on the continuing degradation of Dalit labor; and 2) the social and ecological costs of managing accumulating material debris. Lastly, the project analyzes the crisis prone nature of Bangalore's solid waste system and discerns two countervailing tendencies-the urge to further monetize city waste and bring it under technological scrutiny; and the opening up of potent locations for the politicization of unencumbered growth and the persistence of caste in urban India.
I am broadly interested in the political ecology of environmental conservation, development, and “natural” resource usage on the Tibetan Plateau.
For my dissertation research, I aim to explore the conjunctures of Tibetan environmentalism and its interplay with state-initiated developmental and environmental initiatives. Locating my work in the pastoral areas of Kham and Amdo in Qinghai Province, western China, I take multisited ethnography as an approach to comprehend the ways space, personhood, nature-culture constructs, and livelihoods are (re)imagined and (re)produced when pastoral landscapes are transformed into nature reserves and national parks.
A large part of my academic career is concerned with making research “useful” for the communities I work with, I thus aspire to turn research into policy recommendations for the state policy makers and NGOs in Tibet. I hope that my work plays its small role in bridging dialogue and practical engagement between local communities and state institutions in terms of cultivating effective environmental and developmental programs.
Federica Signorini, PhD Student in Comparative Literature. Major Interests: Poetry and Poetics, Visual Art, Psychoanalysis, Political Philosophy and subject formation. I am interested in experimenting with forms of writing that are multi-media and that can be made accessible in their content and distribution to as wide an audience as possible, both an audience affiliated and not with academic institutions. I am interested in exploring events that bring together academic and public scholarship while maintaining the complexities of topics being addressed.
My research interests revolve around the intersections of culture, identity, and materiality in Afro-Cuban and Latinx religions with a focus on La Regla de Osha or Santería as it is more commonly known. Geographically, I situate Cuba as the point of religious orthodoxy for practitioners of La Regla de Osha in the United States. Specifically, my research examines the patakis (origin stories of the Orishas) as avenues through which larger questions of identity and phenomena are explained and justified by practitioners. Some of the questions that guide my research include: How do practitioners interpret these stories? How do these stories shape the understanding of Santería’s religious praxis for initiates and alejos (practicing non-initiates)? Does the transmission of origin stories account for certain culturally “acceptable” norms in Santería communities? Methodologically, I am interested in employing aspects of arts based research methods, such narrative inquiry and poetic coding. I hold a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Miami (2014), an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Denver (2017) and I am currently an Emory Graduate Diversity fellow.
My research examines how scientific facts about the global environment are made. I study how climate scientists create knowledge about the changing planet and the ways these processes of knowledge production are shaped by varying imaginations of the future. I pursue this line of inquiry through ethnographic research with American and Greenlandic scientists working in Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq Greenland. I examine how these scientists collect data on the Arctic environment, how they discuss climate change, and how they evaluate the effects that environmental change in Greenland will have on the world at large. From the politics of scientific collaboration to the material, financial, and historical infrastructures which impact how science in Greenland takes place, my work opens up larger questions about human relationships with landscape, temporality, and political economy. In my work at Emory, I am broadly interested in science and technology studies, futurities, and environmental anthropology.
Tala AlRaheb- Graduate student in Religious studies. My research interests are focused on Palestinian Christian women. I aim to explore the intersection of religion, culture, and law within Palestinian society and examine the influence of this intersection on the everyday lives of women. My research hopes to address questions of inequality, oppression, liberation, and how ethnography and other forms of narrative can help us better understand the experiences of Palestinian women today.
tiara [dot] raven [dot] marie [dot] jackson [at] email [dot] edu
Education: B.A. Psychology and Multicultural Trauma, Mills College '15
Major Interests: Psychoanalysis and Francophone African Diaspora Studies. Black Literary and Cultural Production as modes of resistance and explorations of the sacred.
Working Languages: French, Spanish
Daniela earned her B.A. in Hispanic Studies and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies from Dartmouth College in 2015 and her M.A. in Spanish Language, Literature and Culture from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2018. Her research applies gender and sexuality frameworks to the 20th and 21st century Latin American literary canon and the cultural studies field. Her most recent project, "La construcción de la identidad de género a través del género gramatical en Sirena Selena vestida de pena de Mayra Santos-Febres (2000)" explores how Latin American travestis utilize grammatical gender in order to construct and express their gender identity in both private and public spheres. At Emory, Daniela will continue pursuing research on topics relating to the construction of gender and sexuality in Latin/o America.
Bianca Patel received her BS in Public Health from The University of Texas at Austin. With a passion for science, Bianca embraced a systems approach to better understand poverty and development. She pursued diverse applied experiences in health and medicine, environment, education, and policy. Upon graduating, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia and a strategy consultant for global NGOs. Bianca’s interests culminate in her desire to advocate for and empower communities through asset-based development. She is currently a first-year Master’s in Development Practice student at Emory University and community engagement analyst at The Nature Conservancy.
Alexis Delahaut received a Bachelor’s in Modern Literature in 2015 with a concentration in post-colonial theory from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She served as a Community Resource Volunteer with the Peace Corps in South Africa from 2016 to 2018. During her tenure, Alexis implemented participatory with local actors in HIV/AIDS programming for adolescents and OVCs. Alexis is interested in furthering her research in cultural/historical memory and trauma in the context of global health epidemics. She is currently pursuing a Master's in Development Practice.
Maria Paz Almenara received her B.A. magna cum laude in Political Theory and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is now a first year PhD student in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University. Her research interests include the performance and conjuring of memory through photography, the hybrid indigenous and postcolonial imaginaries in modern Peru, the affective dimensions of migration, and the rhetoric and myths justifying gendered violence in Latin America. She is also an artist and filmmaker interested in the integration of audiovisual and new media work in academic practice.
Fiona Cooper is from Fife in Scotland. She graduated from the University of St Andrews and was selected as the Emory University Robert T Jones Fellow for 2018. While at St Andrews, she studied International Relations, with a particular interest in understanding the voices that are often silenced in academic discourse. Her interestes led her to focus on feminism, post-colonialism and the place of children in International Relations. She is an avid rugby player and noticed that the similar problems with inequality in academia were appearing at all levels of rugby. Since then, Fiona focused on volunteering/working in a variety of organisations with women and children to improve equality and empower those involved.
Abimbola Leslie is a Nigerian medical doctor and a Master of Public Health graduate of Walden University. Before joining the MDP program, she worked with the National Health Insurance Scheme Nigeria, a government organization committed to securing universal health coverage and providing access to adequate and affordable healthcare. She has also served in various capacities to improve maternal and child health, immunization, and nutrition, and as a volunteer in community health outreach efforts. Combining a desire to be an actor and a driver of the change process, Abimbola’s research interests focus on global health initiatives and governance to ensure health for all through the development of universal health coverage and sustainable health systems. When not working, Abimbola loves to travel, visit new places, learn new cultures and trying new food.