Cultural Anthropology
Clive Echague Alfaro
PhD Student
Advisor: Ulla D. Berg
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research interests: Race, racism, racialization; affection; frontiers; gender and sexuality; memory; Neoliberal Capitalism; governmentality; State; Human rights; immigrant activism; ethnography; Whiteness; police & State violence.
I'm a Chilean PhD student, I hold a bachelor's in psychology and a master’s degree in Social Psychology. My research focuses on the relationship between the rejection of immigrants and whiteness, state violence, processes of racialization, and frontiers in the north of Chile. Also, I have researched topics in gender and sexuality, and youth. In parallel, I became a historical memory activist belonging to the "agrupación Providencia", an organization that promoted the declaration of a former clandestine detention and torture center of the Chilean military dictatorship -still occupied by the police- as a site of memory, the organization nowadays is disputing the building with the Chilean police to convert it to an "alive" memory site.
Manohar Boda
PhD Student
Advisor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
Program: CITE
Research Interests: State, Labor, Political Economy, City, Informality, Nomadism, Indigeneity, Adivasis, Caste, Class, Gender, Social Movements, Inequality; South Asia.
I am a PhD student in the Cultural Anthropology (CITE) Program at Rutgers University. My doctoral research investigates how mobile indigenous/ nomadic communities are impacted by their interface with the state and their navigation of urban geographies post-sedentarization in contemporary India.
Prior to joining Rutgers, I completed my MPhil in Law and Governance from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. I have also worked as a Research Fellow at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi for a short period of time. Further, I possess an experience of working as a RA at Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies (CISLS), JNU. I have an MA in Development and Labour Studies from CISLS, JNU and BA in Economics from Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi, India.
Gabrielle Cabrera
PhD Student
Advisor: Ulla D. Berg
Program: CITE
Research Interests: migration & citizenship, gender, labor, kinship, diversity, space & place, time, United States.
Cabrera's dissertation project investigates 1). What kind of social selves can emerge in the context of increasingly public-private universities and diversity projects? 2). What kind of social selves emerge for these undocumented youth post-graduation as they live and work in the migrant city? 3). What processes shape experiences, belonging, and social selves for undocumented persons and how these experiences differ based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class? She is a contributing author to We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, National Science Foundation, and Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund.
Chang-hyun Choi
PhD Student
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interest: Masculinity; Postcolonial Cold War; Feminist Activism; Korea; Asian American; Ethnographic Filmmaking
*"Chang-hyun" is pronounced as "Chahng Heeun" in two syllables.
Chang-hyun Choi has cultivated a keen interest in minority rights, particularly those related to disabilities and mental health. He organized and managed the Mad Pride Seoul festival, which was the foundation for his master’s thesis in anthropology. As an activist with the Korean male feminist group “Feminism with Him,” Chang-hyun has engaged with numerous young males, collaborating with colleagues to provide gender education. Drawing from this rich background, he will begin his doctoral program in anthropology at Rutgers University in the fall of 2024, focusing on researching victimized masculinity and male feminist activism in Korea. Additionally, he participated in the Visual Anthropology program at Ethnofest Summer School in Athens, Greece, and directed/produced some documentaries, ethnographic films, short films, and commercials since 2017. His passion lies in expanding communication possibilities to create a more compassionate world.
He received his BA in Film, Television, and Multimedia from Sungkyunkwan University and his MA in Anthropology from Seoul National University in South Korea.
External Award - The Korean Government Scholarship Program for Study Overseas (KGSPSO) 2023
Gloria D'Alessio
PhD Student
Advisor: Ulla Berg
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: Transnational Migration; Darien Gap, Latin America, community based organizations
Gloria D'Alessio is an Argentinian Sociocultural Anthropologist. She received a BA in Anthropology from the National University of San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is currently a Fulbright Scholar at Rutgers University. Her research is based in the Golfo de Urabá region, in Colombia. She studies the transnational migration policies in the Americas, focusing on the Darien Gap mobilities. In addition, she focuses on the local communities and their reception and involvement in migration flows. Her interests also include audiovisual anthropology in South America. She is also engaged in projects regarding social science communication through art, as co-founder of the group "La Cocina de la Investigación."
Reecha Das
PhD Student
Advisor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: Law, kinship, gender, violence, religion, courtroom discourse, North India
My research is based in Uttar Pradesh, India where I study how exogamous romantic relationships, such as inter-religious or inter-caste relationships, are policed and criminalized despite there being no laws prohibiting such relationships.
I hold a degree in Law from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. Prior to joining the graduate program at Rutgers, I worked at the Right to Education Resource Centre at IIM-Ahmedabad and at the Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bangalore.
William Downey
PhD Student
Advisor: Omar Dewachi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: Cultures of Militarism and Militarization, Political Economy, Organizational Anthropology, Affect among agents of Empire, Mental Illness, the Violence (and magic) of everyday life.
William Downey is an anti-war veteran whose time in the Marine Corps led to a radical rethinking of the often unseen violence that keeps the cultural machinery of everyday life (dys)functioning. He's interested in the creation and circulation of affect and worldview among private military and security companies, and their role as intermediaries of global finance, nationalism(s), and its relevance to the changing nature of the nation-state.”
External Awards:
Award name: Wenner-Gren, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant; "Semper (In)Fidelis: Body, Memory and Personhood among Former Members of the Marine Corps";
Dates: Start: 1/1/2023 End: 6/1/2024
Andres M. Gonzalez-Saiz
PhD Student
Advisor: Ulla Berg
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
I am interested in the intersection between the state, violence and the body in the Colombian armed forces as they go through the implementation of a transitional justice process.
Karelle Hall
Karelle Hall
PhD Student
Advisor: Becky Schulthies
Program: CITE
Research Interests: Sovereignty, Indigenous language revitalization, language ideologies, semiotics, critical race theory
My research explores Lenape sovereignty and the revitalization of Lenapehoking (land of the Lenape) through communicative practices. This project asks how people in diaspora experience, negotiate and practice sovereignty across different political formations, types of colonial recognition, language varieties, and disparate material-semiotic aspects of Lenape identity; and create a distributed Lenape sovereignty grounded in embodied exchanges of words, gestures, artifacts, movements, and narratives.
I am actively engaged in language revitalization in my community, the Nanticoke Indian Tribe, where I am co-authoring a children's language book. My research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and American Ethnological Society.
Dalia Ibraheem
PhD student
Advisor: Zeynep Gürsel
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research interests: Anthropology of sports, leisure, pop culture; human rights
I hold an MA in Anthropology from the American University in Cairo AUC. My masters thesis “Ultras Ahlawy and the Spectacle: Subjects, Resistance and the Organized Football Fandom in Egypt” won Magda al-Nouwahi award in gender studies for best writing thesis in 2016. I am interested in anthropology of sports, leisure and pop culture.
For ten years, I worked as a human rights practitioner at The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). I am the author of the report “The Trap: Punishing Sexual Difference in Egypt”, which documents the state crackdown on the users of queer dating applications especially gay men and those who are perceived as gays.
Mary Elizabeth Knipper (Bird)
PhD student
Advisor: Omar Dewachi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: Global Health; Perinatal Care; Immunity; HIV/AIDS; Embodiment; Anthropology of the Everyday.
Mary Beth Knipper is currently pursuing a dual M.D. (Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School) and Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Rutgers University. She also holds an M.Sc. in Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2011). Mary Beth's research examines immunological concepts, meanings, and practices amongst Basotho mothers living in the eastern highlands of Lesotho (southern Africa). In particular, her research questions the way that "immunity" and risk unfold within the rhythms of everyday life, particularly mundane forms of perinatal care, while situating these practices in the "aftermath" of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and global health interventions in Lesotho.
Prior to joining the CITE graduate cohort at Rutgers University, Mary Beth worked in the international development sector in Lesotho (2012-2014). From 2015 to 2016, she spent nine months conducting anthropological fieldwork in eastern Lesotho, studying selective utilization of prenatal HIV testing at government health clinics in the region.
External Awards:
Award: 2024 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship
Project Title: "Protective Exposure: Immunity in the Afterlife of AIDS in Lesotho."
12 months of funding for doctoral fieldwork abroad.
Joyce Lu
PhD student
Advisor: Omar Dewachi
Program: CITE
Research interests: development, healthcare, infrastructure, political economy, governance, biopolitics, race, indigeneity, Latin America
I received a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and am currently in the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson-Princeton MD/PhD program. Prior to Rutgers, I started a mealworm farming project with communities in the western highlands of Guatemala while working at a primary care clinic. I then completed a fellowship in the NIH Academy health disparities program. I am broadly interested in the circulation, forms, and networks of therapy throughout rural, indigenous communities in Guatemala.
Timothy McGhee
PhD Student
Advisor: Christien Tompkins
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Timothy McGhee is an African American initiated priest in the Yoruba Ifa and Lukumi traditions. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York as a double major in Black Studies and Anthropology. Tim continued his studies to pursue a Master’s degree from Columbia University in Anthropology. Currently, Timothy is a 4th year PhD student at Rutgers University in the Anthropology department and a Mellon-Mays fellow. His background as a priest and scholar is evidence of his passion to serve humanity as a cultural custodian, and preserver of Afro-diasporic religious and cultural traditions.
Timothy’s dissertation work focuses on studying Afro-diasporic religious communities that consequently informed social justice movements, guided the formation of political and social systems of governance, and he continuously writes and works to provide African centered religious context to the many instantiations of revolutions in the Americas. He resides in the south Bronx and was born and raised in New Jersey. Because of his love and respect for his own community, Timothy has a deep-seated desire to work in impoverished communities and areas where minority populations are underserved. Timothy writes and teaches to contribute both to the Academy’s, and the community’s understanding of class, race, sexuality, indigeneity, spirituality, and religion.
Haya Mortada
PhD Student
Advisors: David Hughes, Omar Dewachi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research interests: Work, economic development, political economy, social change, urban anthropology, Lebanon, Middle East and North Africa
I am a PhD student in the Cultural Anthropology (CITE) Program at Rutgers University. My research focuses primarily on the value of work. For my MA thesis, entitled “Flexibility at Work: Values, Productivity, and Care in a Consulting Company in Beirut,” I studied work relations in a public policy consulting firm adopting a flexible mode of management. For my PhD dissertation, I plan to explore work as both a tool and an object of economic development programs promoting employability and entrepreneurship for young people in Lebanon.
Prior to joining Rutgers, I worked as a public policy, public management, and economic development consultant. I also hold an MA in Anthropology from the American University of Beirut, an MSc. in International Business Management from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and a BE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut.
Zainab Najeeb
PhD Student
Advisors: Parvis Ghassem Fachandi and Zeynep Gürsel
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
I am an incoming PhD candidate in the CITE program at the Rutgers Anthropology Department. I have been teaching courses on Gender Studies and Feminist Historiography at the Lahore University of Management and Sciences (LUMS) after completing an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalization from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an M.A in Gender Studies from the Central European University (CEU). I have also worked on gender equality initiatives primarily based in Pakistan. My research interests are gender, migration and displacement, governmentality, digital and social activism, and politics with a regional focus on South Asia. In the coming years as a PhD student, I am interested in exploring ways of decolonizing local knowledge production vis a vis the Global South through a focus on oral history, social movements and gendered accounts of displacement and belongingness especially in Northwest Pakistan.
Mahsun Oti
PhD Student
Advisors: David Hughes, Zeynep Devrim Gürsel
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: mobility and New Media, Food and identity, African Diaspora(s), digital infrastructures, border crossings, borderlands, Turkey, Iran.
I am a PhD student in the Cultural Anthropology (CITE) Program at Rutgers Anthropology. I received a BA in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey, and an MA in African Studies from the Center for the African Studies Basel (CASB), University of Basel, Switzerland.
In my current PhD project, focusing on the world-making practices in the border cities, I am particularly interested in the border crossings of migrants, particularly African migrants, on the Turkish-Iranian border. I explore how digital infrastructures, such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, YouTube, etc., empower mobility performances of migrants intending to pass the Turkish-Iranian Border.
Sreemoyee Paul
PhD Student
Advisor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
Program: CITE
Research interests: Medical and Political Anthropology; death; biopolitics; rituals; the body; abandonment; disappearance; grief; Anthropology of Religion and Secularism; South Asia
Burcu Pehlivan
PhD Student
Advisor: Omar Dewachi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
I received a BA in International Relations from Sabanci University and MA in Sociology from Koç University in Turkey. I am interested in medical anthropology, reproduction, medicalization of pregnancy and pregnancy loss experiences. My master’s research focused on the impacts of pronatalist policies and cultural context on reproductivity-related issues in Turkey. Through ethnographic research in a hospital, I investigated the medical authority over women’s reproductive health and the role of socio-economic differences in experiencing pregnancy loss. I also gained fieldwork experience at a non-governmental organization under UNHCR, which provides social and psychological support for Syrian refugees in Turkey. As a doctoral student in anthropology, I look forward to researching social and political contributions to healthcare systems, and reproductive health in Turkey.
Raul Rodriguez-Arancibia
PhD Student
Advisor: Ulla D. Berg
Program: CITE
Research Interests: Indigenous Entrepreneurship, Latin America, Indigeneity, Chinese Automotive Industry, Neoliberalism
I am a born and raised Bolivian Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology CITE. Prior to coming to Rutgers University, I trained as an anthropologist at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz, Bolivia. After finishing courses, I worked in several development institutions and the government on monitoring and project evaluations, mainly across the Andean plateau. I conducted one-year participatory action research with young people in El Alto. The PAR exercise looked at writing a first settlers’ city history from their point of view. In 2013, I became an immigrant in the US. The following year I enrolled in the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. In 2016 I obtained the degree of MA with a thesis focused on Chinese entrepreneurialism on Indigenous autonomous Miskito land in Nicaragua. The same year, I started the Ph.D. program in Anthropology. My research focused broadly on Andean Entrepreneurism and the Chinese automotive industry. My research entangles transatlantic formal and informal markets, indigenous people’s smuggling practices, the Chile-Bolivia relationship, and neoliberal economics. Currently, the Wenner-Gren Foundation funds my fieldwork.
Cierah Sargent
PhD Student
Advisors: Zeynep Gürsel and Omar Dewachi
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE
Research interests: caregiving, social justice movements, community, visual anthropology, aging, the American South, race, welfare retrenchment, medical anthropology, subjectivity, governmentality, disability, health, and care.
I am interested in unpaid care work in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Originally from Mississippi and South Carolina, I have resided in New York City for the past 9 years, where I earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology at Hunter College. Since graduating in 2016, I have conducted fieldwork and produced an ethnographic film on eldercare on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. I continue to be interested in exploring questions around care and subjectivity through the use of audiovisual media.
External Awards:
Bigel Grant summer 2022
Society of Visual Anthropology Lemelson Fellowship, 2022
Alexis Telyczka
Non-Matriculated Student
Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Research Interests: Urban Anthropology; Gender; Sexuality; Religion; Media; Law
I received a B.S. in Science, Technology, and Society and a B.A. in Theatre Arts and Technology from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I am interested in the creation and consumption of media and how media can reflect and shape communities.
