Graduate Students


Daniel Bessner db63@duke.edu	Daniel Bessner is a Ph.D. candidate in History. He studies the cultural, political, and international history of the twentieth-century. At the broadest level, his research asks how transnational ideas about expertise, democracy, and national security have shaped the culture, institutions, and processes that have characterized foreign policymaking since the early Cold War.
Eric Brandom ewb6@duke.edu.	Eric Brandom is a Ph.D. candidate in History. He studies modern European intellectual history, with a focus on 19th and 20th century France. His dissertation is titled “Georges Sorel, Autonomy and Violence in the Third Republic.”
Raphaël Charron-Chénier rc153@soc.duke.edu	Raphaël Charron-Chénier is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology department at Duke University. His research focuses on consumption and social stratification, with a focus on the contemporary United States. He is currently working on papers dealing with racial and ethnic differences in access to consumption in the US, and on the impact of the recent financial crisis on the material well-being of American families.
Mary-Beth Fallin Hunzaker mbf15@soc.duke.edu	Mary Beth Fallin Hunzaker is a second-year student in Sociology. Her research interests include culture, social psychology, and social movements. Her second year project is an experimental study entitled “Justice, Justification, and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes,” which examines the production of stereotype bias in communication.
Susanne Meyer susanne.meyer@duke.edu	Susanne Meyer is a graduate student in Philosophy.
Dimitri Putilin dimitri.putilin@duke.edu	Dimitri Putilin is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology and Neuroscience and the 2012-2013 Kenan Graduate Instructor in Ethics. His primary interest is in exploring the human potential for exceptional mental health, well-being, and life satisfaction, focusing on personality and lifestyle characteristics which serve to promote it. He is also interested in the predictors of healthy psychosocial development throughout childhood and adolescence.
Leslie Roth leslie.roth@duke.edu	Leslie Roth is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology. She examines the intersection of morality and risk, particularly as it pertains to the maintenance of racial and class boundaries. Prior to coming to the Institute in 2009, she was a research and teaching assistant in the Duke Sociology department
Yasmine Singh yasmine.singh@duke.edu	Yasmine Singh is a second year Ph.D. student in the department of Religion. She is interested in the ethnography of Hinduism in South Asia, particularly northwestern India. Her major research foci include goddess worship, pilgrimage, tourism, material culture, memory, gender, and performance, and the ways in which they reflect, influence, and negotiate everyday 'national' and 'local' politics and experiences.
Shana Starobin shana.starobin@duke.edu	Shana Starobin is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Science and Policy at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and was the 2011-2012 Kenan Graduate Instructor in Ethics. With academic and professional interests in institutional design and social innovation, her research focuses on the role of business, NGOs, and civil society in fostering alternative modes of governance and institutions for addressing complex socio-economic and ecological problems, such as the private regulation of the global food supply chain. She is professionally active as an educator and group leader for volunteer delegations to developing countries through American Jewish World Service. In the U.S., she serves as a senior adviser to the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) and as a member of the Board of Directors of AmpleHarvest.org, a national non-profit that enables gardeners to donate surplus produce to local food pantries.
William Wittels william.wittels@duke.edu	William Wittels is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science. His primary research interests include problems of political violence, Power, regime type, and political ethics. His dissertation examines Machiavelli's construal of the problem of political violence.