Cultural Anthropology Graduate Students
Cultural Anthropology Graduate Students
Minny Lee
- Minny Lee
- PhD Student
- Advisor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
- Graduate Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Research Interests: ecology, environment, sustainability, traditional ecological knowledge, heritage, value, religion, spirituality, gender, media, technology, aesthetics, food, embodiment, affect, multimodal anthropology
Minny’s research explores human relationship to the environment by examining individuals’ engagements with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in response to the climate change and sustainability. Minny intends to explore various ways of approaching TEK, from indigenous farming methods to fermentation techniques to Buddhist worldview of interconnectedness and human-animal kinship. Minny is curious to learn how individuals create their own space and methods in the entanglement of postcolonial and postmodern space in South Korea, and how they navigate social, cultural, political, and historical conditions. While investigating political economy and cultural politics, Minny seeks to study how attunement to the environment and its sensory responses affects the mind-body relationship and worldmaking.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Minny researched Buddhist temple food and conducted fieldwork at South Korean Buddhist nunneries. Minny holds an MA in Anthropology from Columbia University, an MA in Art History from the City College of New York, and an MFA in Photography from ICP-Bard College. In addition to her scholarly work, Minny is a multimedia artist, working with photography, video, poetry, and sound. Her artist books, Encounters (Datz Press, 2015) and Million Years (Datz Press, 2018), are in the collections of the New York Public Library, Special Collections at Stanford University Library, Poetry Center at University of Arizona, Amon Carter Museum of American Art Library, International Center of Photography, and Getty Research Institute, among other venues.
Stassja Mrozinski
- Stassja Mrozinski
- PhD Student
- Advisor: Christien Philmarc Tompkins
- Graduate Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
Ankita Chanddranath
- Ankita Chanddranath
- PhD Candidate
- Advisor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
- Graduate Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
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Chang-Hyun Choi
- Chang-Hyun Choi
- PhD Student
- Advisor: Zeynep Devrim Gürsel
- Graduate Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Research Interests: 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
D'Alessio, Gloria
- Gloria D'Alessio
- PhD Student
- Advisor: Ulla D. Berg
- Graduate Program: Cultural Anthropology (CITE)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Research Interests: Transnational Migration; Darien Gap, Latin America, border studies
Gloria D’Alessio holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the National University of San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is currently a Fulbright Scholar and Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Her research investigates mobility and migration across the Darién borderland, with fieldwork in the Gulf of Urabá in Colombia and in Guna Indigenous towns in Panamá. She examines how transnational migration policies shape everyday life, and how local communities engage with, respond to, and are transformed by migration flows.
Gloria also works extensively with visual and audiovisual anthropology. She is the co-founder of La Cocina de la Investigación, a collective dedicated to making social science research accessible through creative and collaborative formats. Her short film Mujeres y Academia en Chile (2024), produced within La Cocina, received an Honorable Mention at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival.