Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
Franchesca Araújo is a Ph.D. student in African American & African Diaspora Studies. Rooted in Caribbean studies, she writes within political theory, disability studies, performance studies, aesthetics and anti colonial poetics and theory.
She is currently writing interdisciplinarily about how deficiency and excess are produced and ascribed onto black cultural productions and spaces as a central part of normative humanness, colonial world craft, state sovereignty/state formation, and resource deprivation---focusing on black dominicanidad...
Kate Altemus Cullen is a Ph.D. student in water governance and climate change adaptation in the Energy & Resources Group. Her dissertation looks at the relationship between drinking water access, political economy, and extreme drought in a changing climate through participatory and community-engaged research methods in the Maipo River Basin of Chile. Her collaborations and research in Chile have been gratefully supported by Fulbright 2018, Fulbright-Hays 2023, NSF IRES Pathways, and the Lau Climate Equity Grant. She holds an MSc in Water Science and Policy from the University of...
Justin Greene is a Ph.D. student in sociocultural anthropology pursuing a Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. His dissertation, titled "The Intervention Organ: An Ethnography of Leftist Publication in São Paulo," largely focuses on Revista Rosa (2020-present), a predominantly online magazine and self-described "intervention organ [órgão de intervenção] in the fight for democracy and social justice." Drawing upon almost three years of archival, literary, and ethnographic research, "The Intervention Organ"...
Flávia Leite is a housing and land policy researcher. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley and a fellow at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) in Brazil. Her Ph.D. research examines the roles of state and private actors in shaping the experiences of very low-income homeowners in Brazil. Using a multi-method approach that integrates quasi-experimental designs, in-depth interviews, and computational analyses, she explores the unintended consequences of formal homeownership provided by the Minha Casa Minha...
Bri Matusovsky is a Ph.D. student at the UCSF-UC Berkeley joint program in medical anthropology. Their dissertation considers what is known as "the monkey problem" of St. Kitts: the presence of invasive monkeys who make sustainable agriculture on St. Kitts near-impossible. St. Kitts and Nevis is a primarily Black Caribbean country with small minorities of wealthy white and East Indian residents who control a significant amount of its wealth and resources. Funded by the Wenner-Gren Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, Bri conducted ethnographic and archival research on St....
Juana G. Montoya Murillo is a Ph.D. student in Demography at UC Berkeley, where she also earned her Master’s degree in Demography. Her research focuses on reproductive health, migration, and social inequality in Latin America. Juana's interest in demographic research began with an investigation into Venezuelan migration to Colombia, where she analyzed morbidity profiles among migrants in comparison to other vulnerable populations.
She holds a B.Sc. in Statistics from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a B.Sc. in Economics from Pontificia...
Anna Feign is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her research examines the convergence of extractivism, temporality, (post)colonial development, and the climate crisis through a qualitative and spatial lens. She is a 2025-2026 Mentored Research Award Fellow and a Global Democracy Commons Fellow. She is a co-founder of theCaribbean Coalition at Berkeley and a member of the Anticolonial Lab. Anna holds a BA in...
Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
Pablo Paredes is a Ph.D. student in Theater Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. Born in the Bronx and raised between Puerto Rico, Ecuador, and New York, he is a Bomba practitioner, poet, and cultural worker grounded in Caribbean roots traditions. Following five years in the U.S. Navy, he became a conscientious objector and a community organizer, co-founding BAY-Peace and 67 Sueños...
Gisselle Perez-Leon is a Ph.D. student in History. She studies urbanization in twentieth-century Mexico. Her dissertation, "Border Civics: Urban Planning and Municipal Politics in Twentieth Century Ambos Nogales," is a historical case study of urban development in two cities divided by the international boundary, told from the point of view of Sonoran residents. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Center for Global, International & Area Studies, and the Center for Race and Gender.
The Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science
Johanna Reyes Ortega is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at UC Berkeley, with a focus on comparative politics, gender, and the political economy of development. She is also a Resident Research Associate at the Berkeley Center on the Politics of Development and a Graduate Affiliate at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Johanna’s research examines the long-term effects of conflict and social movements on gender dynamics in Latin America, with a focus on Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. In her dissertation, Johanna examines the determinants of gender inequality in post...
