Graduate Student
Aura Gonzalez
Graduate Student
Degree: PhD, Government
Language: Hindi
Research Interests: climate change, development, electoral politics, identity, migration, political economy.
Additional Information
Jessie Hughes
Graduate Student
Degree: PHD, Natural Resources
Language: Nepali
Research interests: drivers of human migration, social-ecological systems, South Asia relations, natural resource management and climate change, urban development, bioculture, and 21st-century land ethics
Additional Information
Roderick Wijunamai
Graduate Student
Roderick Wijunamai is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. His PhD research focuses on forms of plantation, and its impact on Indigenous people in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands.
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2027
Committee Chair/Advisor: Sarah Besky
Discipline: Anthropology
Primary Language: Konyak, Nagamese
Research Countries: Myanmar
Additional Information
Joshua Umansky-Castro
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2025-26
Committee Chair/Advisor: Mason Peck
Discipline: Aerospace Engineering
Primary Language: English, Spanish
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Anke Wang
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2026
Committee Chair/Advisor: Mara Du
Discipline: History
Primary Language: Chinese, Vietnamese
Research Countries: Vietnam, Thailand
Additional Information
Song Han
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: Spring 2026
Committee Chair/Advisor: N/A
Discipline: Comparative Literature
Primary Language: Cantonese, Mandarin, Classical Chinese
Research Countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore
Research Interests: Maritime capitalism and Sinophone/Anglophone literature in Asia
Additional Information
Evelyn Fettes
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2025-26
Committee Chair/Advisor: Sarah Murray
Discipline: Linguistics
Primary Language: Standard Indonesian
Research Countries: Indonesia
Research Interests: Morphology, lexical semantics, historical linguistics, reduplication in Malayic dialects
Additional Information
The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program
Details
The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State that enables American students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities to intensively learn a language while experiencing cultural immersion. The program lasts from 8 to 10 weeks and includes intensive language instruction of one of 15 critical languages and cultural enrichment experiences aimed at promoting rapid language study. Participants are expected to continue learning a new language after the program finishes and apply newly gained language skills in their professional careers.
Eligibility
Must be a U.S. citizen or national and if undergraduate, complete at least one full year of study.
Additional Information
Avishai Melamed
Reppy Institute Director's Fellow 2023-24
Avishai Melamed is a PhD Student at Cornell University’s Department of Government in the International Relations subfield. He has published in the Journal of Space Safety Engineering and is a graduate fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. Avishai's research focuses on the long-term evolution of foreign policy strategies. He explores how emerging technologies interact with shifting domestic and international conditions to influence patterns of international cooperation and competition.
Additional Information
Yousuf Mahid
Graduate student
Yousuf's research agenda focuses broadly on climate change adaptation, forest resource management, conservation, and institutional mechanisms for climate policy formulation. His work investigates the synergies between ecosystem-based adaptation and sustainable development solutions for climate-vulnerable communities, particularly in South Asia. Before joining the program, he worked as a Program Coordinator in the International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) based in Bangladesh.