Fellows

Danielle Dean

Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts

My project stems from a short film I made in the town I grew up in the U.K, called Hemel Hempstead, or Hemel for short. The short film titled Hemel brings to focus how vestiges of colonialism are still ever-present in a modern context, how people’s fears towards workers migrating are rooted in the town’s creation. The film looks at these fears through the archive, such as a sci-fi film called Quatermass 2 that was shot in Hemel in the 1950s.

Sara Kozameh

Assistant Professor, Department of History

Sara Kozameh is an assistant professor in the Department of History working on a book about agrarian reform during the Cuban Revolution.

Sara Sparks

Ethnic Studies, PhD Student

Sara Sparks (she/her) is a 3rd-year doctoral student in the department of Ethnic Studies. Her research interests include Black and Indigenous relationships to food, land, and agriculture, the emotional and spiritual life of Black women, pedagogies of embodiment, and more.

Tye Rush

Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles

I am a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (PPFP) in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. My research addresses questions in race and ethnic politics, voting rights, elections, and state politics. My current work focuses on the politics of voting laws.

My book project, The Majority Rules: The Politics of Voter Identification Laws, examines the origins of restrictive voter identification laws and what influences political elites to advance voter identification legislation. In this project, I use a unique dataset of state legislator behavior, including roll call votes and bill sponsorship, to challenge prevailing theories on why elites support restrictive voting laws. Evidence indicates that demographic threat plays a more important role in legislators’ strategic calculus than previously stated. (To learn more about Tye's work, please visit tyerush.com)

Danielle Campbell

School of Public Health, PhD Candidate

Using a theory guided approach, my research will examine the effect of structural inequities and syndemics on willingness to participate in HIV research among Black women.

Kerry Keith

Department of Communication, PhD candidate

Kerry Keith is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, and an affiliate in the Critical Gender Studies program. Her research looks into infrapolitics in California.

Shanelle Watkins

Department of Education Studies, EdD candidate

My dissertation research utilizes qualitative methodologies to investigate the unique experiences of Black women undergraduate student leaders at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), focusing on how race and gender impact leadership development and opportunities.