Who We are

Laura Asherman is a mixed media documentary artist from Cambridge, Massachusetts and is pursuing an MFA in Experimental Documentary Arts. Since 2008, she has lived and worked in the South, where she started the production company, Forage Films. Laura has worked as a cinematographer for VICE, HBO, and CNN, and directed the award-winning films American Hasi (2019), The Home Team (2019), and Power Lines (2018). Her practice stems from an endless curiosity about the human condition, guided by the principle that personal stories ignite social change. She is drawn to making character-driven films that examine topics ranging from environmental racism, addiction and recovery, and family legacy.

Suhyen Bae is a PhD student in Political Science at Duke studying political behavior and political communication. Her dissertation focuses on how social isolation and loneliness shape political attitudes and preferences, specifically examining internet and social media use as an underlying mechanism. She also works on projects involving legislators, Twitter networks and social media campaign advertisements, utilizing big data and machine learning methods. Suhyen received her BA and MA in Political Science and International Relations with honors and distinction from Seoul National University in South Korea.

Mary Dance Berry is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religion, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament track. Her research interests center on divine violence and divine judgment/justice as well as comparative hermeneutics, feminist criticism, and postcolonial criticism. More specifically, her work examines how different communities, from American Evangelical readers to African biblical interpreters, read and understand often troublesome biblical texts and the import of their understandings. Mary earned a B.A. in government and classical studies at Sweet Briar College and an M.Div. at Duke Divinity School.

Curtis is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Duke. He is writing about people's expectations for what candidates will do if elected, where those expectations come from, and their political consequences. Before coming to Duke, he completed an M.A. in International Relations at the University of Chicago and a B.A. at Tulane University.

Jessica Centers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in signal and information processing. She received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2018. At Duke, her research explores non-traditional uses for millimeter-wave radars such as a receiver in vehicle-to-anything communication systems. Jessica also has interests in the areas of engineering education, coding theory, physics motivated machine learning, and data science ethics.

Tyler Marquise Chisolm is from Henderson, NC, and is pursuing a Master of Science in Population Health Sciences in the School of Medicine. He has a B.A. in Psychology from Winston-Salem State University, a Historically Black University in Winston-Salem, NC, and had great opportunities to participate in research and internships both at WSSU and Wake Forest University. He is interested in using research methods to tackle the issue of social determinants in rural communities and underdeveloped countries, specifically food insecurity. He hopes to work for a federal health entity such as the CDC, NIH, or FDA, and to promote his business, The Life Shop, LLC, which will create pop-up shops in communities in need to address prevalent physical and mental health issues.

Madeline (Maddie) Clark is a Ph.D. candidate in the Neurobiology program here at Duke. She is interested in understanding how environmental experiences, such as stress or drugs of abuse, alter gene regulation and brain development. Originally from Minnesota, she completed her BS in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she spent three years as an undergraduate research assistant in a Neuroepigenetics and Genomics laboratory.  She recognizes the impact a well timed mentor or advisor can have on a young person'ss life, and as such feels passionately about teaching, mentorship, community, and making resources for student development accessible.

Meyra Çoban is a student in the Master of Bioethics and Science Policy program. She is interested in how race and disability influence patient experience. Originally from Munich in Germany, Meyra studied philosophy and political science at the University of Edinburgh. She is a Fulbright Scholar, fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, and a recipient of the Duke Science & Society Leadership Award.

Amal Dadi is a student in the Science Policy and Bioethics Master’s program. She grew up in North Potomac, Maryland and graduated from Grinnell College in 2017 with a Bachelor’s in Biology and French. Prior to joining Duke, she worked as a researcher in nephrology and neurobiology at universities across the U.S. Amal has a background as a racial justice activist and organizer. She is interested in a career focused on research implementation, with an eye towards equity and social justice.

Anna Dai is a Master of Interdisciplinary Data Science student. She has a background in Business Economics from UCLA and worked as a tax consultant in the Financial Services Office at Ernst & Young San Francisco for four years. Anna moved between China, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, Canada growing up and is fluent in English, Chinese, and French. Her goal is to bring positive changes to the workplace, whether it is introducing technology to traditional industries or advocating for racial and gender equality. Outside of work, Anna enjoys skiing/snowboarding, golf, photography, and traveling.

Aaron Ebert is a PhD. candidate in Duke's Graduate Program in Religion, focusing on Early Christianity. He studies and writes on various aspects of early Christian thought and practice, especially in its relation to ancient and modern philosophy. The questions that most exercise him are those related to philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics, and moral and intellectual formation. His dissertation explores envy, rivalry, and schadenfreude in the thought of Augustine. Most of his spare time is given to raising and keeping up with his four children, with whom he and his wife like to garden, eat ice cream, and explore the North Carolina outdoors. Aaron received a B.S. from the University of Montevallo and an M.T.S. from Duke Divinity.

Brooks Emanuel, an Atlanta native, is in the MFA program in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis. After dancing and choreographing for a decade in New York and Atlanta, he shifted to progressive policy work, including serving as Director of Legislative Services for the Georgia House Democratic Caucus under Leader Stacey Abrams. He then attended NYU School of Law, where he interned with NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, ACLU Capital Punishment Project, and NYCLU. Upon obtaining his J.D., he worked at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, representing people on death row, people sentenced to life without parole, and those suffering horrific prison conditions. His MFA research focuses on combining dance and racial justice work.

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.

Born and raised in Brasilia, Brazil, Marcelo is pursuing his Ph.D. in Public Policy. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Political Science from the University of Brasilia in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He has also received a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. Marcelo has served in various branches of the Brazilian government, including the Ministry of Labor and Employment, the Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil, the National Council for Food Security, and the Ministry of Human Rights (where he served as Joint-Secretary for Racial Equality). He plans to change careers from government affairs to applied research.

Michael D. Green (he/him) received his Bachelor of Arts with honors in Anthropology with a minor in Environmental Sciences from Dartmouth College in 2021. He is a Ph.D. student at the Duke Department of Population Health Sciences and has research interests in cardiovascular health disparities for Black Americans as well as social determinants of health which influence health inequity. He is interested in Population Health Sciences because of consistently seeing family members enduring adverse experience in the American medical system. Outside of healthcare, Michael is a freelance environmental portrait photographer. He also was a 4-year member of the Dartmouth heavyweight crew team, where he walked on his freshman year, and still enjoys rowing and running.

Hunter is a third-year Master of Divinity student at Duke Divinity School. He is pursuing the Certificate in Faith-based Organizing, Advocacy, and Social Transformation. He graduated in 2019 from Milligan College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Humanities. His interests include political theology, economic justice, community organizing, and legal advocacy.

Braulio Güémez is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology. He was born and raised in Merida, Mexico, and moved to Mexico City to pursue his undergraduate studies in Sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research interests are centered around racial stratification across the Americas using quantitative methods. He worked for three years as a Research Assistant in a research project at El Colegio de México that studies the large-scale tendencies and the mechanisms of racial and socioeconomic inequality in Mexico

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.

Rylee Hackley is a microbiologist and geneticist from northern California. She received a B.S. in Microbial Biology for the University of California in 2016 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the University Program in Genetics and Genomics. In her work, she studies carbon metabolism in microbes that live in extreme environments to better understand how genetic networks evolve.  She is a member of the Certificate in College Teaching program, a 2021 Preparing Future Faculty fellow, and recently received a 2022 Bass fellowship to teach an undergraduate seminar based on her dissertation research. Outside of Duke, she does science outreach at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, and tutors science at the Emily K. Center in Durham, NC.

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.

Sarah Janek, BSN, RN, ACRN, is pursuing her Ph.D. in Nursing through the Duke University School of Nursing. She graduated with honors from University of Michigan in 2020, where her involvement with the School of Nursing Honors Program and Center for Sexuality & Health Disparities introduced her to research. After graduation, she worked as an RN at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in her hometown of Chicago while becoming an HIV/AIDS Certified Registered Nurse. Her research interest is sexual health disparities that stem from race and sexuality, specifically working with Black and Hispanic/Latino men who have sex with men.

Melissa is a fourth year PhD candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke. She previously graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, and French. Her dissertation takes a comparative approach to memory studies, focusing on the ways that the wartime collaborator is represented, mythologized, and instrumentalized in French and Korean literary and memory cultures. She is particularly interested in postwar patterns of memory and forgetting that work to reify or hybridize ethnonational boundaries.

Dillon King is a Ph.D. candidate in the Integrated Environmental Health and Toxicology Program. She graduated from Coastal Carolina University in 2017, with a B.S. in Marine Science and a B.S. in Biochemistry. Her research focuses on sex differences in mitochondrial function, mechanisms of chemical-induced toxicity, and the inclusion of sex and gender in toxicological research.

Sinja Küppers is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Classical Studies at Duke University. In her dissertation, she investigates The Social History of Higher Education in the Late Roman Empire. She is particularly interested in how language and institutions reflect social norms and questions of class, diversity and equity. For her presentation on “Studying ‘Abroad’ in Antiquity: Student Movement and Educational Policy” Sinja received the 2021 Presidential Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper by The Classical Association of the Middle West and South. At Duke, she co-founded the first-generation graduate student organization Duke F1RSTS. Before coming to Duke, Sinja received a MSt from the University of Oxford and a B.A. from the University of Cologne.

Warren Lattimore is a Th.D. student at Duke Divinity School. A product of the South Side of Chicago, he serves as the chairman of Camp Restore and president of the Black Clergy Caucus of the Lutheran Church. His academic interests include the history of Black Lutheranism, particularly Dr. Rosa J. Young, and the intersection of racial justice and environmental ethics.

Youran Lee is Ph.D. student in Nursing from South Korea. She received her M.S. and B.S. in Nursing in South Korea and worked as a nurse for three years. She is passionate about developing care systems to decrease health disparities. She has volunteered in many developing countries, including Malaysia, Cambodia, and Tanzania, sensing a global need for nursing care. She was also invited as a young nurse leader to be the Korean representative at the Pre-World Health Assembly (WHA) workshop. For her, the meaning of nursing is providing a helping hand to provide comfort to those in need.

Jane Leer (she/her) is a doctoral student in Duke University’s Joint Program in Public Policy and Psychology, where her work focuses on social inequality, policy, and human development with the goal of informing the design and delivery of culturally responsive social and education policies. Her dissertation is examining (1) how the types of diversity-related values that schools communicate relate to racial and socioeconomic disparities in adolescent social belonging, mental health, and academic engagement, and (2) how growing up in a gentrifying neighborhood relates to academic engagement among adolescents experiencing poverty. In a second line of work, she examines the causal effect of policies and interventions designed to strengthen family, school, and community learning environments. This includes projects evaluating the impact of home visit parenting programs on early childhood development in Latin America and social norms interventions on adolescent gender attitudes in West Africa, as well as current work exploring how structural racism may impact Black families’ engagement in nurse home visit services in North Carolina.

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.

Jing Hao Liong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. He is broadly interested in sexual and ethnic politics in contemporary Malaysia, as well as queer cultures and movements in the larger Southeast Asian region. Originally from Malaysia, he is excited for the opportunity to learn more about racial justice efforts in the U.S. and identify points of solidarity that connect racial justice work in the U.S. and his home country. Jing Hao holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Economics-Political Science from Columbia University and an M.A. in Literature and Culture from the Yenching Academy of Peking University

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.

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.

Mahgul Mansoor is a 2nd year MSc candidate at the Duke Global Health Institute, mentored by Dr. Eve Puffer. Her research interests are primarily in global mental health and implementation science. Additionally, Mahgul’s professional goals are to improve mental health access in low resource settings both within the United States and her home country, Pakistan. Her current project focuses on delivering mental health care in a pandemic within North Carolina

Tony is a second-year Master of Divinity student at Duke Divinity School where he is a Thriving Communities Fellow studying theology and ministry. He holds a dual degree in Philosophy and Communications and a Master of Business Administration from Spring Arbor University. His current research interests lie at the intersection of theological ethics and community organizing. Prior to joining Duke Divinity School, Tony was a college admissions officer.

Kara McCormack is a PhD student in the Biostatistics department. She has a background in mathematics, and spent time as an adjunct instructor teaching Calculus at community college. In her research, she investigates the synergistic effects of air pollution, the built environment, and structural racism on health outcomes such as breast cancer mortality. Her goal is to share the leading best practices in teaching pedagogy to encourage young women and BIPOC to pursue STEM education. Outside of work, she enjoys teaching yoga, creating mixed-media art, filmmaking, and meditation.

Stephen McKean is a PhD student in mathematics. He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and lived in northern Germany for two years as a missionary. He graduated from the University of Utah in 2017 with a BS in mathematics, after which he began his doctoral studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He came to Duke in 2020 to complete his PhD. In his research, Stephen uses algebra to understand the quantitative and qualitative nature of shapes. He is passionate about interactive teaching, course development, and education as a catalyst for personal growth.

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.

Betta is a third year PhD student from Italy in the Marine Science and Conservation at the Duke Marine Lab. Her dissertation is focused on the conservation of deep-sea environment in international jurisdiction within the context of deep seabed mining. The aim of her research is to inform ocean international policy and decision-making processes with the best available science and best practices in ocean conservation. She is studying the use of Area Based Management Tools to protect and manage deep hydrothermal vents. She holds two master's degrees (Marine Biology and Maritime Spatial Planning) obtained in her home country and through international programs in Europe. She recently worked in the context of public participation, and she has experience in maritime geopolitics, marine spatial planning, and invertebrates' biology and phylogenetic.

Originally from North Carolina, Monroe is a graduate student in the Neurobiology PhD program. They completed a joint bachelor’s degree at UNC Chapel Hill and the National University of Singapore, studying biology and graduating with highest honors. They currently research how our lungs respond to environmental challenges, such as viral infection or air pollution, to impact brain function. Monroe has long been interested in citizen science and public engagement and intends on continuing work making science more accessible to broad audiences. Alongside creating and translating research, Monroe is an active advocate in LGBTQ communities with a particular focus on improving opportunity for queer people in North Carolina.

Joseph Mulligan is a PhD candidate in Romance Studies and scholar of 19th- and 20th-century literatures and cultures of Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and the sociology of cultural forms, his research interrogates the claims of national culture, theories of popular assembly, education reform in theory and practice, and the role of public intellectuals in the marketplace of ideas. His dissertation, Poetics of Revelation: Communities of the Literary Oracular in Transatlantic Modernism, examines the role of poets who radicalized politically in their youth only to retreat from politics after the Second World War and seek the imagined experience of unity in visionary poetry following the failure of radical forms of communitarian thought.

Judith Mwobobia is a global health graduate student from Nairobi in Kenya. Her formal education background is in microbiology but worked as a journalist for 10 years. Her interests are in health journalism and policymaking; two diverse fields but ones she believes will ultimately improve health and health equity in marginalized regions of the world.

Son Nguyen (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics at Duke. His research focuses on studying the interactions between nucleons, which lead to the formation of atomic nuclei using modern theoretical tools such as effective field theories and lattice field theory. He is passionate about teaching and working with students. In Fall 2021, he was awarded the Bass Instructor of Record Fellowship to teach a physics course on Modern Physics for undergraduate students. Son was born and raised in Vietnam. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Nagoya University, Japan.

Jessica Paek is a Ph.D. candidate in the Management & Organizations department at the Fuqua School of Business. Her research examines prosocial behaviors and goal pursuit in organizations. Specifically, she investigates how leaders can offer different types of help to their employees and how receiving help can impact the goal pursuer’s future motivation. She is also interested in people’s perception of steady versus unsteady goal progress. Jessica received her B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University.

Kira is a third-year medical student at the Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to enrolling in medical school, she received her Bachelor of Science degree at Duke University, where she studied Neuroscience and French & Francophone Studies. She then completed a year of service with AmeriCorps, serving as a medical caseworker for refugees in Pittsburgh, PA. Kira is thrilled to be able to continue her work with Carolina Outreach’s Assertive Community Treatment Team, partnering with individuals with severe and persistent mental illness in Durham to work toward their health goals.

SaeHim PARK (she/her) is a fourth year PhD candidate in Art, Art History and Visual Studies. Park's dissertation, "Image Politics of Representing Sexual Violence in the Asia-Pacific," examines how images shape affects, values, and judgments associated with rape, sex-trafficking, sexual slavery, and prostitution.

As a dirt road academic, artist, and historian, Kamau is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at Duke. Their research uses historical narratives and oral histories in the U.S. South to explore Black, queer, and trans resistance and resiliency. Kamau is also interested in the history of the environment and unpacking its relationship to capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Originally from Aiken, South Carolina, Kamau was awarded Charleston’s 50^th Most Progressive list in 2015 and the Community Activism Award in 2016. Along with their scholarly pursuits, Kamau holds many political homes and non-profits close to their heart. These organizations are Southerners on New Ground (SONG), Tiger’s Eye Collective, Carolina Youth Action Project, and the Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN).

Joseph Quinn is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology. His research explores how social contexts shape can people’s beliefs about different identity groups and affect broader patterns of inequality. Prior to his time at Duke, he worked as a physics teacher at a public high school in D.C., and spent several years evaluating the impacts of educational programs and social policies as a researcher at MDRC. Joe will continue his academic career as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina.

Kristen M. Renberg, Ph.D., is a J.D. candidate at Duke University School of Law. She studies judicial behavior and access to justice in courtrooms across the United States. Her dissertation explores the ways in which courts strategically organize themselves to encourage or evade appellate review. She received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Merced. Kristen completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in 2020.

Justine Robinson is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. Her research interests include conflict resolution, humanitarian intervention, international relations, and U.S. civil-military relations. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has also lived in Pennsylvania and Maryland. She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Bryn Mawr College in 2017. She then worked at the National Audubon Society at their Washington D.C. location as a Program Associate in the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion department. She later earned her master's degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University in 2021. Through this fellowship, she hopes to learn more about the political issues and structure of Durham, North Carolina.

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.

Minato Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, and improviser from Osaka. Ranging from classical concert music to electronic music with heavy uses of computational technologies, his compositions practice the unserious seriously, fuse spontaneous and organic qualities, and demonstrate a clear connection to the past. His works have been featured across the United States, East Asia, and Europe in both traditional concert settings and internationally acclaimed conferences. Minato is currently studying towards his Ph.D. in composition at Duke University. For more info, please visit minatosakamoto.com.

Maeve Salm (she/hers) is a MSc student in Global Health student from Wisconsin. She recently completed her B.S. in Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University and aspires to work toward global health equity through both medical and global health disciplines. In the future, she hopes to support communities in their efforts to improve maternal and child health outcomes as well as refugee and indigenous population health outcomes. While she is particularly passionate about these specific topics, she hopes to learn from and partner with individuals from a variety of disciplines, believing that every field has an imperative role to play in the health of our communities.

Laavanya is a Ph.D. candidate in the Genetics and Genomics program. Her research interests include understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation, population genetics and biology education. For her thesis she is researching the role of non-coding variants in the pathophysiology of polycystic ovarian syndrome. She is passionate about teaching and mentoring undergraduates, often incorporating themes of health disparities and ancestry, given the need for a broader understanding of biological concepts. Laavanya is from Chennai, Tamil Nadu where she graduated with B.S. Biotechnology Engineering from Anna University and earned her Master’s in Biotechnology from University of Pennsylvania in 2015.

Ben is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Duke University. He works on topics in end-of-life ethics, including what it means to "die well," palliative care ethics, and the moral psychology of grief, aging, and dying. While focusing on philosophical and policy questions, he also has interests in medical humanities and what memoirs of dying can tell us about the dying process. Ben received his J.D. from Duke in 2017, specializing in health law and policy, and was recently a Visting Scholar at the Hastings Center.

Wan Ning Seah is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Duke University. She studies the history of political thought and is interested in the role of religion in political life, how toleration is sustained in pluralistic societies, and the relationship between theory and practice. Her recent work examines the concept of civil religion in Rousseau’s Social Contract and its normative implications for our understanding of toleration in democratic societies. Prior to Duke, she worked as a Foreign Service Officer at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Wan Ning received her B.A. from Middlebury College.

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.

Kelly Shi is a PhD student in Philosophy at Duke. She studies the relationship between systemic oppression and the moral development, moral challenges, and moral opportunities of oppressed individuals. She received her BA in Philosophy from Santa Clara University.

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.

Jordan Sjol is a cinema and media studies scholar and a PhD candidate in the Program in Literature. His research is broadly focused on media technologies and global power regimes. His dissertation, Cash Flows, tracks the rise of financial engineering in the US from 1958 to the market crash of 1987. He began teaching in 2012 at an experimental middle and high school, and he’s been thinking about pedagogy ever since, including as a member of the Certificate in College Teaching, a Preparing Future Faculty fellow, a fellow of the PhD lab in Digital Knowledge, and a Bass Digital Education Fellow. He also maintains a para-academic practice in the film industry as a producer and writer.

Adam Soliman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics. He is broadly interested in how we shape and are shaped by our environment, with specific research interests in the economics of crime and education. Adam holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Health Science from Boston University, an M.S. in Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics from Michigan State University, and an M.A. in Economics from UC San Diego. Before starting graduate school, he taught math and economics in Dubai and took a year off to travel.

My name is Joshua Strayhorn. I am a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University. My research interests include 19th century African American history, specifically Emancipation, Reconstruction, and migration. My dissertation examines race, religion, and migration in post-emancipation North Carolina. I ask what were the political, economic, social, religious factors that contributed to black desires to migrate. I utilize a religious lens to analyze how faith and spirituality shaped people's politics and freedom dreams.

Kevin Sun is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science. He grew up in New Jersey and majored in mathematics and computer science at Rutgers University. His research focuses on combining theoretical computer science with modern advances in machine learning. He is also interested in education; he has written a mini textbook on undergraduate algorithms and has served as an instructor for the same topic. Outside of work, he enjoys writing and tinkering with his website, kevinsun.org.

Becky Tang is a Ph.D. student in Statistical Science. She grew up in Columbus, Ohio and received her B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Swarthmore College in 2018. Her research involves developing statistical models for ecological problems, such as understanding the interactions that exist in animal communities. Becky is a proponent of interdisciplinary education, and works as a project manager on a Bass Connections project at Duke to understand relationships between mental health and recidivism. She is passionate about undergraduate STEM education and, in particular, supporting women and students from minority backgrounds in pursuing their academic goals. She is also an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Andrew Wrench is a Ph.D. student in environmental toxicology. He graduated from Howard University in 2021, with a B.S. in Psychology. His research interests include understanding how pollutants lead to diseases like cancer. Eventually, he'd like to work in academia as a professor and conduct research, but also teach and engage others in the field, as he highly values new perspectives and diversity in toxicology, so a clearer picture of the consequences of pollution can be shown. Outside of research and coursework, he loves cars!

Eric is a Sloan Scholar and third-year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests involve clarifying the concepts learned by machine learning (ML) and making ML more reliable for safety-critical applications. He is from Gainesville, Florida and graduated with a B.E. in Computer Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2019. Eric is partnering with Durham Public Schools (DPS) to provide a free afterschool robotics club for local middle schools that need more STEM-based afterschool opportunities. The initiative aims to promote student interest in engineering disciplines through fun, interactive robotics challenges – students will work in teams to program robots to navigate obstacle courses, understand voice commands, and interact with other robots through Internet of Things (IoT) communication.

Soohyun Yoon (She, her, hers) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. Her research interests are centered around religious art and women agencies of pre-modern East Asia. While writing her dissertation on Buddhist paintings by women artists of 16^th-and 17^th-century China, she plans to broaden her research to the fields of Japanese and Korean art, incorporating more diverse religions. She is passionate about teaching and believes that university education should help students to connect to the artworks of the world. Before coming to Duke, Soohyun graduated from Seoul National University, South Korea, with an M.A. in Art History.