Saomai Phuong Nguyen (they/she) is a PhD student in the Department of History, focusing on Asian/American history. Their research examines refugee transits and passages after the war in Vietnam, particularly the in-waiting site of the refugee camp and how the children of refugees come to remember, understand, and embody their parents’ displacement and resettlement through memory work and cultural productions.

Or Aroch is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. His research focuses on education and childhood in the context of Israel/Palestine. He examines how educational processes and children’s experiences in conflict-ridden Israel transform amid war, political instability, and civic upheaval, with attention to processes of militarization and nationalization, negotiations over future visions and collective memory, and the role of democratic and peace education in these circumstances.

Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is a PhD student in the Department of Government. He studies comparative politics and international relations with a focus on political violence, insurgency, authoritarianism, and regime change, exploring dynamics of civil conflict and post-war transitions.

Cassidy Fowler is a PhD student in the Department of Government. Her research focuses on international security, with a particular interest in nuclear weapons strategy and operations, IR theory, and security studies.

Anurag Koyyada is a JD candidate at Cornell Law School. He enjoys interpreting rules and designing technologies in defense, national security, and space contexts. Anurag is interested in how law, society, and technology interact in military and surveillance contexts. His work, as it relates to conflict and security, examines how emerging technologies both mirror and mold societal power, both constraining and enabling peace.

Gorka Villar Vásquez (Puerto Varas, Chile) is a PhD student in History. Fulbright- ANID Chile Scholarship. Author of the books Compromiso militante y producción historiográfica. Hernán Ramírez Necochea y Julio César Jobet (1930-1973). Santiago.

Daniella Prieto is a PhD student of Spanish in the department of Romance Studies with a graduate minor in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research focuses on representations of violence against women in contexts of state violence in modern and contemporary Latin American literature. She is also interested in Gothic, Horror and Weird fiction. 

Javier Sánchez Mora. PhD student, Cornell University. His research has focused on the history of autonomous indigenous populations in southern Central America. He has published academic research on the history of the indigenous population of Talamanca, located on what is today the border between Costa Rica and Panama. He has been an editorial assistant for the journals Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Central America y el Caribbean (UCR) and the Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (UCR).

Emma MacCallum is a PhD student in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government. Her research interests include civil society organizations, political violence, and weak states. She is especially interested in studying the behavior and composition of civil society organizations amidst violence and state weakness in Central America. More broadly, she interrogates how service and goods provision by civil society organizations originates and impacts political identities. 

Sofía (they/she) is a PhD student in Africana Studies. Their research looks at the political discourses and practices of black Puerto Ricans as they participated in anti-colonial movements and struggles for Pan-Africanism during the 20th century. By focusing on the political activities of black people in the Spanish Caribbean, she utilizes literary and archival sources to frame how Puerto Rican thinkers conceptualize a black transnational future that is inspired by the legacies of 19th century revolutions.