Current Graduate Students
Current Cluster Fellows and Research Fellows
The SHC program welcomes students through all the humanities and social science departments.
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Helen Tilley
chernohbah2022@u.northwestern.edu
Chernoh is a doctoral student in the Department of History. Educated at Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College, he holds a BA in history and sociology, and a diploma in African Studies. Before coming to Northwestern, he worked extensively in West Africa as a journalist, political activist, and writer.
Ana Diaz Barriga
Cluster Fellow - Theater and Drama, entered 2018
Advisors: Dassia Posner and Marcia Grabowecky
anadiazbarriga@u.northwestern.edu
Ana received a BA in Drama from the University of Glamorgan (UK) and an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK). She is the recipient of a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Science Studies. Her research is focused on the links between cognitive science and puppetry.
Raina Bhagat
Cluster Fellow - Comparative Literature Studies, entered 2019
Advisor: Evan Mwangi
RainaBhagat2024@u.northwestern.edu
Raina Bhagat has an MA in English Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and is interested in literatures about the future.
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2016
Advisor: Helen Tilley
ColinBos2022@u.northwestern.edu
Colin specializes in the history of medicine and West African intellectual history. He has received both a CLIR/Mellon Fellowship and an SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship to support his dissertation research on West African archeological sciences next year.
John Branch
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2020
Advisor: Keith Woodhouse
jbranch@u.northwestern.edu
John's research areas include the history of economic life, political history, and the history of science, with a focus on the nonprofit sector in the twentieth century. He has a B.A. in history from Bowdoin College.
Graduate Affiliate - English, Comparative Literature, entered 2020
Advisors: Jim Hodge and Patrick Noonan
josechavez2025@u.northwestern.edu
José Chavez is a PhD Student in Comparative Literature, specializing in Media Theory and Visual Culture. He is interested in intellectual histories of computation, information theory, and cybernetics, across the Americas and Asia. His work attempts to bridge these histories and genealogies with theories and works in visual culture.
Graduate Affiliate - Rhetoric and Public Culture, entered 2012
Advisors: Claudio Benzecry and Dilip Gaonkar
beatrice.choi@u.northwestern.edu
Beatrice completed an MA in Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU and BA in Communication and International Studies from UCSD. She focuses on technological conditions of knowledge production and narratives of innovation in the Global South.
Clay Davis
Cluster Fellow - Sociology, entered 2019
Advisor: Steve Epstein
Clay has a BA from Cornell's Science and Technology Studies Program. He is interested in the processes of medical testing in the U.S. in the context of gender and sexuality studies.
Graduate Affiliate, English, entered 2014
Advisor: Harris Feinsod
MariaDikcis2014@u.northwestern.edu
Maria's areas of intrestest are poetry and poetics; African American, Asian American, and Latinx literature and culture; critical race theory; media and technology studies; histories of the carceral state and prison abolition.
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Deborah Cohen
gilengelstein2020@u.northwestern.edu
Gil is a doctoral student studying twentieth-century European history. His interests are International and Global history, Oral History and the history of gender and sexuality. He earned his BA in history and literature (magna cum laude) at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Mariana Charry Esguerra
Research Fellow, History, entered 2022
Advisor: Paul Ramirez
maremoto@u.northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Mariana is a doctoral student in the History department. Her areas of interest include women, gender studies and family history. She explores how history, religion, medicine & science have defined and regulated women and children in Colonial Latin America.
Graduate Affiliate - Sociology, entered 2020
Advisor: Bruce Carruthers
ryanfajardo2025@u.northwestern.edu
Ryan Fajardo is a doctoral student in the Sociology department. His interests lie at the intersection of economics, technology, everyday life, labor, and consumption. He explores the attempted implementations of economic ideas through novel technologies, and focuses on the obscured or hidden labor that supports them.
Cluster Fellow - Sociology, entered 2015
Advisor: Steven Epstein
MalloryFallin2015@u.northwestern.edu
Mallory is interested in Science and technology, Race, Medical sociology, Sociology of Knowledge
Dexter Fergie
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Daniel Immerwahr
dexterfergie2023@u.northwestern.edu
Dexter has received a coveted 3-year SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian government to support his graduate training on post-WWII international platforms.
Matthew Foreman
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2016
Advisors: Peter J. Carroll and Melissa Macauley
MatthewForeman2021@u.northwestern.edu
Matthew received a BA in History and Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong and an MSt in Global and Imperial History from Oxford. His interests lie at the intersection of knowledge production, the human sciences and biopolitics.
Graduate Affiliate - Ph.D. Candidate, African American Studies, entered 2013
Advisor: Sylvester Johnson
claudiagarciarojas2018@u.northwestern.edu
Claudia is completing a dissertation titled "Blackness and the National Security Paradigm". Her research interests include Black social and political thought, security and surveillance studies, continental philosophy, and intellectual histories of race and science.
Graduate Affliate - Media, Technology & Society, entered 2022
Advisor: Pablo Boczkowski
fatima.gaw@u.northwestern.edu
Fatima's research centers on the mediation of digital platforms & algorithms in cultural production, politics, and public discourse in the Global South. She holds a master's degree in Digital Communication & Culture from the University of Sydney and bachelor's degree in Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines.
Gerpha Gerlin
Cluster Fellow - Anthropology, entered 2020
Advisor: Rebecca Seligman
gerphagerlin2025@u.northwestern.edu
Gerpha is a first year doctoral/MPH student & Science in Human Culture Cluster Fellow, working around issues related to psychiatric disease & disablement, knowledge-production economies, and implementation science. She received a BA from Wesleyan University and an MS from Boston University School of Medicine.
Prince Grace
Cluster Fellow - Sociology, entered 2018
Advisor: Steve Epstein
PhilipGrace2023@u.northwestern.edu
Prince is a doctoral student studying the role of knowledge and technology in conflict, crisis, and accountability processes. His current research focuses on efforts to investigate, document, and redress state abuses.
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2015
Advisor: Ken Alder
MelanieHall2012@u.northwestern.edu
Melanie has won one of the three available prizes for "Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher" awarded by the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences for 2019.
Austin Jenkins
Cluster Fellow - Sociology, entered 2016
Advisor: Carol Heimer
austinjenkins@u.northwestern.edu
Austin holds a B.S. in the sociology of law, criminology, and deviance from the University of Minnesota. He is interested in the development of disease notions of addiction in the American nineteenth century and their reconfiguration in contemporary forms of legally-coerced substance abuse treatment.
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Haydon Cherry
normanjoshua2015@u.northwestern.edu
Norman is a graduate student in Southeast Asian history and an Arryman Scholar at the Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. He specializes in Modern Southeast Asian history, Modern East Asian history, and Modern Indonesian history.
Graduate Affiliate, Theater and Drama, entered 2019
Advisor: Dassia Posner
ClaudiaKinahan2024@u.northwestern.edu
Claudia holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College-The University of Dublin, where she was awarded a gold medal upon graduation. Her doctoral research examines artificial intelligence through the lens of performance studies; particularly the performative aspects of artificially intelligent humanoids.
Elizabeth Koselka
Graduate Affiliate - Anthropology, entered 2019
Advisor: William Leonard
lkoselka@u.northwestern.edu
Elizabeth is a PhD candidate in Anthropology studying food systems, social inequality, and the health consequences of their intersection. She was awarded an NSF DDRIG and a Wenner-Gren Foundation dissertation grant to complete her project in Spain. She earned a BA from the University of Michigan.
Juan Fernando Léon
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2019
Advisor: Lydia Barnett
Juan Fernando Léon has an MA in History from Wheaton College. He is interested in the relations of early modern science and religtion in the Spanish and Atlantic empires.
Graduate Affiliate - Art History, Global Modern and Contemporary, entered 2012
Advisor: Stephen Eisenman
jacobleveton2017@u.northwestern.edu
Jacob studies global modern and contemporary art, literature, critical theory, and ecology from the 18th century through the present.
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Amy Stanley
youjiali2014@u.northwestern.edu
Youjia is a doctoral student interested in social, gender, and immigration history in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century Asia, specifically in Japan and China. She is curious about how common people contributed to the modern transformation in Asia through cultural and material exchanges and movements.
Meng-rung Lin
Graduate Affiliate - Anthropology, entered 2021
Advisor: Hirokazu Miyazaki
Meng-Rung Lin's research interests focus on the extraction of value and the accumulation of capital in renewable energy. She also examines the socio-political aspect of renewable energy, especially how these kinds of infrastructures introduced to Taiwan are related to the role of the country in geopolitics and the global market. She is especially interested in economic anthropology and political economy, in the topics of green capitalism, climate finance, and labor relations.
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2022
Advisor: Lydia Barnett
hughmilner2022@u.northwestern.edu
Hugh has an MA in Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University and a BA in Envir. Studies & Greek Lang & Lit from Oberlin College. He's interested in the construction of the medieval and early modern landscape, particularly with regard to land clearance, water management, and technological lock-in along the North Sea Coast.
Cluster Fellow, Sociology, entered 2022
Advisor: Steven Espstein
jorgeochoa2027@u.northwestern.edu
Jorge Ochoa's research interests are at the intersection of science, technology, and social inequality. Jorge received his BA from Columbia University and has previously worked in public health, bioethics, and science and technology policy roles.
Phoebe Pan
Cluster Fellow - English, entered 2021
Advisor: Laurie Shannon
phoebepan2027@u.northwestern.edu
Phoebe studies early modern literature with a focus on poetic and scientific texts relating to processes of metamorphosis and change. She is interested in modes of perception, shifting epistemologies, and speculative writing
Gabriel Restrepo Parrado
Cluster Fellow - Spanish & Portuguese, entered 2020
Advisor: Emily Maguire
GabrielRestrepoParrado2025@u.northwestern.edu
Gabriel is a PhD student. He obtained a double B.A in Philosophy & Literature from Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia, where he also received an M.A in Philosophy. He's interested in Latin American science fiction, ecocriticism, and the intersection between sciences & literature.
Cluster Fellow - Art History, entered 2014
Advisor: Claudia Swan
SandraRacek2014@u.northwestern.edu
Sandra received her MA from University College London in the History of Art and a BA from Fordham University. She is interested in medical imagery form the early modern period in Europe.
Kaelin Rapport
Graduate Affiliate - Cultural Anthropology, entered 2017
Advisor: Adia Benton
kaelinrapport2022@u.northwestern.edu
Kaelin has a Master of Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland. His areas of interest are: Critical Medical Anthropology, Public Health, Cancer, Population Studies, Disease Prevention and Research Implementation.
Benjamin Riggs
Cluster Fellow - Screen Cultures, entered 2016
Advisor: Jake Smith
BenjaminRiggs2020@u.northwestern.edu
Ben earned a BA in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico and an MA in Communication and Education from Columbia University. He is interested in playful experiences with science across different media, particularly narrative entertainment media, and the formation of youth science cultures.
Graduate Affiliate - Sociology, entered 2013
Advisor: Charles Camic
christopherrobertson2013@u.northwestern.edu
Christopher's areas of interest are: Theory, Sociology of Knowledge/Ideas, Political Sociology and Social Movements, Cultural Sociology and Qualitative Methods.
Arnaldo Rodríguez-Bagué
Graduate Affiliate - Performance Studies, entered 2018
Advisor: Ramón Rivera-Servera
arnaldorodriguez2022@u.northwestern.edu
Arnaldo Rodríguez-Bagué is a transdisciplinary artist and curator. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of Puerto Rico. His research practices are concerned with island geography from the intersections of Performance Studies, Environmental Humanities, Island Studies and Archipelagic American Studies.
Thomas Rousse
Cluster Fellow - MTS and Law School, entered 2013
Advisor: Aaron Shaw
t-rousse2019@nlaw.northwestern.edu
Thomas earned a MA in Media, Technology, and Games at the University of Copenhagen, and a BA from Northwestern University in American Studies. He is studying mass media network technology as refracted through the American legal system.
Graduate Affiliate - Art History, entered 2014
Advisor: Hannah Feldman
talia.shabtay@u.northwestern.edu
Talia specializes in modern and contemporary art of the United States and Europe. Her research interests include intersections in the histories of architecture, urbanism, and film; histories and theories of vision and modernity; and the body’s relation to technology and urban design.
Cluster Fellow - Art History, entered 2017
Advisor: Stephen Eisenman
McKenziestupica2023@u.northwestern.edu
McKenzie is a PhD student in modern and contemporary art. She received her BA in Art History and German Studies from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2014.
Graduate Affiliate - Media, Technology, Society, entered 2020
Advisor: Pablo J. Boczkowski
Facundo Suenzo is a Ph.D. student interested in urban sociology, technological infrastructures, and inequalitie. He received a BA in Communication (Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA), MA in Sociology (Universidad Nacional del General San Martín (IDAES/UNSAM), and a MA in Media, Technology, and Society (Northwestern University). He is affiliated with the Digital Apothecary Lab, led by Dr. Moya Bailey and coordinator for the Center for Latinx Digital Media.
Adam Syvertsen
Cluster Fellow - English, entered 2017
Advisor: Julia Stern
adamsyvertsen2025@u.northwestern.edu
Adam's interests are: 19th-century American Literature, New Materialisms, Post-humanisms and the History of Science.
Cluster Fellow - Sociology, entered 2015
Advisor: Wendy Espeland
OmriTubi2015@u.northwestern.edu
Omri's areas of interest are: Historical Sociology, Political Sociology and Science & Technology Studies.
Graduate Affiliate, Political Science, entered 2018
Advisor: Hendrik Spruyt
dinaraurazova2024@u.northwestern.edu
Dinara's research interests are regime transformation and change; informal institutions and their relationship to citizens' conceptions of justice.
Cluster Fellow - History, entered 2015
Advisor: Peter J. Carroll
RachelWallner2020@u.northwestern.edu
Rachel studies discourse on science and the formation of academic disciplines in twentieth-century China. Her research focuses on the politics of Chinese geographic knowledge production during the Second World War.
Graduate Affiliate - Sociology, entered 2017
Advisor: Carol Heimer
DevinWiggs2023@u.northwestern.edu
Devin's fields of interest are: Economic Sociology, Historical Sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Science & Technology Studies, Theory and Pragmatism.
Guangshuo Yang
Graduate Affiliate - History, entered 2017
Advisor: Peter J. Carroll
gy@u.northwestern.edu
Guangshuo is a Ph.D. student working on the modern history of East Asia. He received a grant from the NU-SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development to research the entangled history of human-animal relationship in China, exploring the changing conception of animals and its complex relationship with colonialism, nationalism, and modernity.
