2021-2022 Religions and Public Life Graduate Fellows Announced
Religions and Public Life at the Kenan Institute for Ethics explores the role of religions in historical and cultural context as they influence the lives of their adherents, interact with each other across time and geography, and contribute to the formation of institutions that make up the public sphere. This year, ten Religions and Public Life Graduate Fellows have been selected from Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill to be a part of an interdisciplinary working group to engage questions regarding the place of religion in contemporary social and political life. Building upon last year’s theme, this year’s theme will be “Immigration and Religion.”
On the working group’s focus, Professor Malachi Hacohen notes, “At a time when borders are closing and walls are being erected, an interdisciplinary graduate student group is responding with a model of collaboration for our world. Bringing together students from Divinity and the Graduate School, and with campus wide support from the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Center for Jewish Studies, Duke Islamic Studies Center, and Duke University Middle East Studies Center, graduate students studying divergent regions of the globe will explore the relationship between immigration and religion, seeking religious paths to the reconstruction of human life.” Over the course of the academic year, the cohort will discuss and develop their respective projects, providing each other with mutual support and opportunities for collaboration. Their work will be shared on the Religions and Public Life website at the conclusion of the fellowship.
Previous years’ themes include “Immigration and Religion” (2020-21), “Church and State” (2019-20), “Pain and Joy: Polemics and Praise in Religious Communities” (2018-19), and “Minorities and Diasporas” (2017-18).
Meet the Fellows:
Archit Guha is a PhD student in the History Department at Duke University. His broad areas of interest span Modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, exploring how the environment, science, emotions, and migration intersect in the context of natural disasters and uncertainties around climate and weather. At Kenan, he plans to research how climate change shapes the environmental ethics of ethno-religious minorities in the Global South.
Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi is a Teaching Fellow and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. Holding graduate degrees in architecture and religion, his work examines the religiosity of non-religious architecture. He draws on urban projects recognized by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture to show how spatial practices function in the construction of religious subjectivities. Ehsan has received recognition from institutions such as the University of Miami, Dumbarton Oaks’s Mellon Initiative, and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. His work has been published in the American Academy of Religion’s Reading Religion, Iran Namag, Maydan, and WIT Press. Ehsan also serves as a Graduate Fellow at the Parr Center for Ethics.
Elliot Mamet is a PhD candidate in political science at Duke University. His dissertation research analyzes the long entanglement of incarceration and democracy. He is interested in how the prison bounds notions of citizenship and undercuts democratic equality.
Iris Gilad is a fourth-year Art History PhD student specializing in contemporary Middle-Eastern art. Her dissertation examines maps, mappings, and spatial subversions in the artworks of contemporary women Middle-Eastern artists. She is interested in exploring the intersections of gender, race, migration, and cartography.
Jacob Sims is a hybrid graduate student at Duke University and serves as Director of IJM Cambodia where he leads a team of investigators, lawyers, social workers, programmatic, and operational staff in the fight against labor exploitation. Jacob’s research looks at where and how well the assumptions of global humanitarianism align with the totalizing project of western late-modernity versus the radical project of the Church historic. Jacob previously directed international development policy research and taught courses at the College of William & Mary, led humanitarian programs in northern Myanmar, and co-founded a social justice organization in eastern Uganda.
Jingyi Liu is a second-year graduate student in Critical Asian Humanities at Duke University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and literature from Peking University. Her current research focuses on the literature and political history of modern China, with an emphasis on war reportage and female novels. Her areas of interest include diaspora studies, religious studies, and comparative literature.
Joseph Roso is a PhD candidate at Duke University in the Department of Sociology. He is primarily interested in the sociology of religion, with a specific focus on how religious beliefs and communal worship practices intersect. He is currently studying discourse around immigration issues among evangelical opinion leaders and how this discourse has changed over time.
Kenna McRae is an MA student in Bioethics and Science Policy at the Duke Initiative for Science and Society. She is studying how religious leaders and initiatives in resettled refugee communities affect health advocacy, policy, beliefs, practices, and outcomes in the United States. Kenna has a BS in Physics and a BA in Global Health from Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, and she will pursue graduate education in Bioengineering after her time at Duke. She hopes to unite bioengineering, bioethics, and science policy to improve health equity for vulnerable populations.
Nicholas Harrelson is a third year Master of Divinity student at Duke Divinity School. His research sits at the intersection of conflict, religion, and immigration policy. He specifically hopes to investigate the effect of conflict in the Middle East on immigration patterns of Christian and Muslim men and women to the United States, with a particular focus on former Coalition translators and allies. Nicholas attended Virginia Military Institute (VMI) for his undergraduate education and received a Master of Arts in Diplomacy with a concentration in International Conflict Resolution from Norwich University. He is a combat wounded veteran of the Iraq War and, prior to joining the Divinity School, he served as a Staff Assistant to United States Senator Mark R. Warner, focusing on Department of Veterans Affairs casework. He is a postulant for Holy Orders in the Anglican Catholic Church.
Qiu Lin is a PhD candidate at Duke Philosophy and a research associate of Duke’s Center for Comparative Philosophy. Her main research areas are early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of modern physics, and Chinese Islamic philosophy.