My work broadly pertains to issues in political anthropology, and my work lies at the intersection of the anthropology of violence, state theory, and urban anthropology. My doctoral research project is based off ethnographic research conducted in Lyari Town, Karachi, Pakistan.
My doctoral research specifically seeks to understand how the township of Lyari appears to have transformed from a peaceful working-class neighborhood to an urban war-zone marked by ‘spectacular violence’ between gangs organized ostensibly along ethnic lines. I seek to understand how specific discursive formations around crises of the urban, such as those around urban violence, elide the materiality of urban life and mask everyday processes of political subjection.
Taryn D. Jordan is a PhD candidate in the Department Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research interests lie in black critical theory, black feminism, and affect theory. Her dissertation “A Peculiar Sense: A Feminist Genealogy of Black Soul” traces a genealogy of the decent, emergence, and use “soul” by black folks. She received her B.S. in Political Science from Northern Arizona University and M.A. in Women’s Studies from Georgia State University. Taryn has invested her life in social justice work. She blends her political work and academic interests into a productive relationship where struggle and theory mutually inform one another creating the conditions for an intellectual and political spiral.
Rebecca is from London and completed her undergraduate degree in history and French at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She is currently in her second year of the Master's in Development Practice. Her interests largely center on education and health policy. Last year she interned in the youth education department at the IRC doing grants writing and research with the Youth Futures team. This summer, she interned with Research Triangle Institute in Kenya, performing some monitoring and evaluation research about the functioning of a youth employment program. In the future, she would like to work in a thinktank or NGO doing research about evidence-based social policy as it relates to the international development sphere or government.
A second year Master's in Development Practice student at Emory University, Alyssa's academic interests broadly center around gender, health and justice and gender-inclusive programming that address social norms change. This summer, Alyssa was a member of an Emory Global Health Institute research team that conducted a qualitative study with the University of Chile’s Department of Midwifery and the Promotion of Health for Women and Newborns on the obstetric care and experiences of immigrant women in public hospitals in Santiago, Chile. Alyssa is an intern with CARE USA's Gender Justice Team as a Gender Program Learning and Evaluation Intern. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Alyssa holds a BA in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Dayton.
Marc Anthony Branch holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Richmond. While studying social movements and human rights in Argentina, he acquired an interest in international development, and from 2013 -2017 served in the Peace Corps in Peru. During his tenure as a health volunteer, Marc Anthony worked with families and youth teaching child, maternal, and sexual health and life skills. He is now a second year Master’s in Development Practice student where he is concentrating on human rights and gender issues. This summer he worked for the Council of Churches in Zambia, assisting their Emergency and Development Department to develop a proposal for a lead poisoning intervention in the city of Kabwe to remediate the effects of decades of environmental degradation on local residents.
Katherine Pons is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, where she studied psychology, sociology, and French. During her time at Vanderbilt, she discovered a love of international affairs, traveling during breaks from school. Additionally, she studied abroad for a year, spending one semester in South Africa, working in a prison to promote literacy development. Following graduation, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana. There she focused her efforts on nutrition promotion, as well as water and sanitation. Through the MDP program, Katherine is interested in learning more about the role of women in sustainable development. In her free time, she enjoys reading, going to trivia nights, binge watching Netflix documentaries, and drinking coffee.
Mallory St. Claire is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, and earned her bachelor’s degree in international business from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She was first introduced to economic and sustainable development through programs and internships at her business school, where she worked on microfinance projects in East Africa throughout her undergraduate career. In 2015, she was accepted into the IDEX Accelerator Fellowship, and worked in Bangalore, India with a nascent education-technology social enterprise. Before coming to Emory, she worked at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy as a research associate and managing editor of a major research publication. Mallory is interested in impact assessment and program design. Mallory loves travel, whitewater rafting, hiking, and trying new food.