Graduate Students


	Asya Anderson asyaa@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2004. Asya's PhD research focuses on emergent questions of socially responsible global governance through corporate practice. After conducting fieldwork among managerial consultants and other expatriates in Singapore and within the office of the United Nations Global Compact initiative at the UN headquarters in New York, she is currently writing her dissertation. Asya’s dissertation, “Ethical Capitalism: Global Citizens, Corporate Bodies, and the Cosmopolitics of Self-Regulation” examines popular notions of “global citizenship” at multiple scales, including the individual and the corporate bodies. She argues for the emergence of an “ethical cosmopolitanism” among expatriates in Singapore and within the various actors of UN Global Compact networks. She examines articulations of expertise and how knowledge and value are co-produced in the field of responsible corporate governance and management strategy. Asya holds a Bachelors degree in Anthropology from Vassar College and a Masters degree from UCI.
	Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes Social Anthropology, Post-Socialism, Urbanism, Placemaking, Recognition, Migration, Skill, Los Angeles, Ulaanbaatar, transnational Mongolians canyadik@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Chima has Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Cambridge. His masters thesis investigated the growth in popularity of Hip Hop in Mongolia and its role in conveying nationalist sentiment. His current research interests centre on Mongolian migrants in the United States and includes the legality of migration, financial remittances, social network formation and identity creation.
	Cristina Teresa Bejarano cbejaran@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Cristina completed her MA in applied anthropology with an emphasis in medical anthropology in 2007. She is interested in the areas of social and cultural studies of science, medical anthropology, history, and Latin American studies.
	Michael Anthony Briante Biotechnology, regenerative medicine, cell therapy, stem cells and finance, capitalism, patent law, speculation, post-colonialism, STS, medical anthropology mbriante@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Michael Briante received his BA from UC Davis where he studied sociocultural anthropology and minored in science and technology studies and Spanish. His senior thesis was an ethnography of a volunteer community clinic in Sacramento where he focused on ontological and epistemological politics in biomedicine. During his fieldwork he became interested in ways the body can be understood as a semi-permeable entity made up of social, biological, and environmental factors to better understand the lived experience of disease. Broadly speaking, his research interests are informed by medical anthropology and science and technology studies. He is currently concerned with how emergent developments in the life/health sciences, specifically regenerative medical technologies, alter representations of human and animal bodies and incite new forms of medical practice, self-care, social planning, and financial and legal regulation.
	Emily Brooks medical anthropology, STS, exploration and extreme environments, risk and survival, embodiment, knowledge production, materialism and ontology, United States ebrooks1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2011. Emily received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Reed College in 2008. Before coming to UCI, she worked in biobehavioral and clinical research support with the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her graduate research merges medical and environmental anthropology through the study of risk and survival at remote, high altitude mountain sites in the United States. Her current interests include: applied biomedical technologies, risk management in extreme environments, embodied knowledge practices, the potentiality of human bodies, and the cultural history of exploration and adventure.
	Colin William Cahill anthropologies of medicine, science and technology; Indonesia; colonial hygiene programs; embodiment; ontology; animal studies; naturecultures; labor studies cwcahill@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Colin received his B.A. in Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies from Haverford College, and his M.A. in Anthropology from UC Irvine. He has been working in Indonesia since 2004 on projects related to subjectivity, identity politics, representation, marginality, street art, art collectives, and public space, and his projects have been supported by the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (2004, 2005), the Freeman Foundation/ASIANetwork (2006), and the Fulbright Program (2009-2010). Colin’s current research is based on Indonesian civet farms, and looks at human-animal interactions, health-making practices, public health initiatives, and Islamic conceptions of purity and cleanliness. His project brings together analyses of colonial health regimes and agricultural and labor politics, placing them in conversation with the contributions of animal studies and the ontological turn in anthropology to contemporary understandings of the nature-culture binary.
	Luzilda Carrillo science and technology studies, medical anthropology, legitimacy, knowledge and value production, social movements, Latin America lucy.carrillo@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Aleksandra Maria Chmielewski Collaborations, Museums, Nontransparency, Public and private resources, Design, Fakes and copies, Professionals, Anthropology of history, China achmiele@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2009. Leksa holds a BA from Duke University. Her dissertation project examines how museum designers, academics, local government officials and building contractors in and around Shanghai collaborate and compete to create new museums. As Chinese state and local government money has begun pouring into the emerging field of museum production, the roles of the actors involved are no sooner defined than they are redefined. The project investigates how actors’ understandings of themselves as public or private entities are realigned through their collaborations and production activities, and also how different types of collaborations result in different narratives of history in exhibitions. This is not a story of propaganda, but of iterations of everyday creativity, copies, fakes, artistic avant-garde production and general workaday slogging. The project studies the relationship between form and content through visual analysis of museums, newly-constructed “old towns,” city planning exhibition centers and history-themed tourist destinations. Through participant observation of museum design and government meetings, it examines the relationship between collaborations, material design, the retelling of history and the changing public and private roles of officials and professionals in China. This research is supported by the Fulbright Program, 2012-2013. Currently in field.
	Joshua Clark law, rights, United Nations, the state, Latin America, difference and discrimination, epistemology, ethnography clarkj1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Advanced to candidacy June 2012. Josh holds a B.A. in Political Science from Butler University and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His studies at UT focused on nationalism, multiculturalism, international human rights law, and the politics of indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent. He conducted thesis fieldwork in El Salvador, and also participated in a research delegation to Colombia to investigate the implementation of laws designed to provide Afro-Colombian communities with collective lands. Josh’s current research uses ethnographic methods to examine the UN human rights treaty system, its oversight mechanisms, and their effects on state practices. Conceptual issues explored include jurisdiction, responsibility, interpretation, verification, expert knowledge and judgment, evidence and belief, dialogue and voice, commensurability, and the formation of individual and collective subjects. Field sites: United Nations (OHCHR), Central America
	Nathan Coben ncoben@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Nathan studies property in the context of the real estate bubble and subsequent austerity in Ireland.
	Benjamin Cox bcox1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Ben holds an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Religious Studies, with concentrations in African Religions and Islam, from the University of Virginia. His research interests include sovereignty, the African postcolony, law and disorder, informal economies, youth cultures, maritime regulatory regimes, violence, the state, and, more broadly, how these ideas relate to certain national, diasporic, and global discourses of morality. He hopes to continue research into the nature and form of political consciousness surrounding the phenomenon of maritime piracy in Somalia.
	Marc B. Dacosta mdacosta@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Ann Elizabeth DeLuca aedeluca@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Nathan Dobson ndobson@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Garrison Lee Doreck law, media, politics, citizenship, civic engagement, security, social movements, Islam, southern California gdoreck@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Garrison has a MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School, with a focus on Islamic social movements, and a BA from Northern Arizona University in Religious Studies. His current research examines citizenship formation, civic engagement, media production and consumption, political and legal advocacy, and security and surveillance policy among Muslims in southern California.
	Mark Durocher mduroche@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008, Mark received his BA in History from Princeton University and his MA in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU. His work at NYU that inspired his pursuit of anthropology at Irvine was on the convergence and tension of liberal political discourses and Islamist ethical and political projects such as Hezbollah's in Lebanon. Subsequently, he has turned the gaze back and reactivated a long-time interest in American Studies to examine how practices of consumerism serve as major engines of self and social formation in contemporary America. His own research focuses on the new web, social and mobile analytics that are introducing new research forms and models of the social into marketing practice. He is conducting his research in New York City.
	Caitlin E. Fouratt transnational families; migration; gender; Central America; immigration law; kinship cfouratt@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Caitlin completed her BA in Spanish language and literature and Honors at Villanova University in 2004. From 2004-2005, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica, where she studied Nicaraguan migration and xenophobia in the country. In 2006, she completed her MPhil in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University (U.K.). Her masters thesis focused on the experiences of Nicaraguan women living in squatter settlements in San Jose, Costa Rica. After completing her degree, Caitlin returned to Costa Rica to work at the International Center for Sustainable Human Development (now International Center for Development Studies) a research consultant, study abroad program coordinator, and professor. Caitlin's doctoral research examines the ways in which what it means to be "family" shift and are reconfigured within Nicaraguan transnational families. Her research has been supported by the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies at UCI. Her 18 months of dissertation research have been sponsored by a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and an IIE Graduate Fellowship for International Study.
	Ruwani Gajaweera rgajawee@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2006. Nalika received her B.A in Anthropology and the Visual Arts from Occidental College in 2004. She received a Richter International Fellowship in 2003 to conduct fieldwork in London to study the British-Asian Underground music subculture in London. In 2005, Nalika was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in India studying the socio-cultural issues surrounding the outsourcing of call center work to India and its effects upon the lives of young Indian workers. During this year, Nalika became interested in how this virtual work enables young Indian workers to cultivate certain kinds of global cosmopolitan identities and middle-class consumer desires. Since joining UCI, Nalika has also done pre-dissertation research in Sri Lanka studying the adoption of information and communication technology by its rural communities. Her current dissertation research in Sri Lanka examines how Buddhist conceptions of "doing good" influence philanthropy and social work in the island. She is especially interested in how Buddhist philanthropists become involved through their social work in the project of nation making in the aftermath of disaster and crisis.
	Melissa Lauren Gang anthropology of medicine, feminist anthropology, medical humanitarianism, international conflict, indigenous justice mechanisms, post-colonial societies mgang@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Padma Govindan ethics, subject formation, development, entrepreneurship, anti-trafficking, India, affect theory, phenomenology, social movements govindan@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2010. Padma received her B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Middlebury College in 2005 and her M.A. in anthropology from Columbia University in 2010. She spent four years in Chennai, India where she founded a non-profit organization, The Shakti Center for Gender and Sexuality Advocacy, for which she remains on the board in an advisory capacity. Padma works in the fields of gender studies, the anthropology of affect, and the study of social movements. Her current research interests center on American organizations that intervene into poverty and marginalization in India through a variety of approaches--anti-trafficking, development, and public health, among them. More particularly, in her research she focuses on emotion work and affect as significant factors shaping the trajectory and politics of various social movements and development projects to end poverty and violence in the global South, as well as the importance of ethical subject formation in drawing young Americans to social justice work abroad.
	Mariel Edith Gruszko mgruszko@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Georgia Hartman ghartman@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Georgia received her B.A. in Anthropology from Pitzer College in 2003. Following graduation she received a Fulbright Fellowship to Turkey where she researched Turkish university student's perceptions of foreigners. Upon her return to the U.S., her interests shifted to the subject of migration and human rights in the United States. In 2010 she received an M.A. in Latin American Studies with a concentration in International Migration from the University of California, San Diego. Her thesis research focused on the effect of the economic crisis on migration and settlement decisions of migrants and non-migrants from Yucatan, Mexico. Her current interests focus on the intersection of migration and development in the Yucatan.
	Michael Hurley hurleym@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Michael completed his BA in Anthropology at UC Davis in 2007. His research interests include: Indonesia, Jakarta, urbanization, the phenomenology of space, informal settlement, and the history of urban planning.
	Eun Hae Jeong ehjeong@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. She is currently studying reproductive technologies in South Korea. She is specifically interested in the production and use of genetic knowledge in reproductive technologies, as well in the field of adoption. Her broader interests include the development of genetic science and bioethics in South Korea.
	Robert Kett science and technology studies, material culture, historical anthropology, anthropology of Latin America, pre-Columbian art, archives rkett@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2009. BM in Music and International Studies from Northwestern University. Robert's work engages science and technology studies, the anthropology of art and material culture, historical anthropology, and the anthropology of Latin America. It centers on archaeological, industrial and natural scientific extraction in southern Mexico in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, examining how these projects generate resources and scientific objects and dramatically alter the region in the process.
	Alexander Knoepflmacher aknoepfl@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Jordan Kraemer digital and social media, science and technology studies, cultural geography, Europe jkraemer@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2006. My research looks at digital and social media practices in Berlin, in terms of the relationship between new communication technologies and geographic scale. In my dissertation, I examine how spatial scales such as the local, regional, or national are changing in New Europe, particularly in relation to the translocal and transnational circulation of media. In this sense, the national in Europe is not disappearing online, but is shifting and being reconfigured as a form of territorial organization. My dissertation fieldwork was supported by a DAAD scholarship (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the German Academic Exchange Service). I have received additional support from the Institute for European Studies at the University of California, Intel's PAPR@UCI initiative, the School of Social Sciences, and the Department of Anthropology. I have also received the UCI Public Impact Fellowship and the Associate Dean's Fellowship for dissertation writing.
	Matthew Riley Lane mattlane@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Matt most recently finished the Master of Arts Program in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago in the anthropology cohort. His field research and thesis focused on explorations of the scrap metal economy in Chicago's alleyways. Prior to this research, he taught for six years in rural southwestern Virginia in the public and private school settings. Matt's teaching centered upon literature, creative writing and cultural anthropology courses. This teaching experience arose out of the M.Ed degree that he completed at the University of Florida in Secondary English. Matt's undergraduate work at the University of Florida focused on a double major in anthropology and in English. His scholarship as an undergraduate focused largely upon feminist approaches to literature and culture culminating in an anthropology thesis addressing gender discrimination in public schools and an English thesis exploring how Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner depicted space, place and gender in their representations of the South. Matt's current work is a continued interest in the domestic and international scrap metal economies. He is interested in questions relating to value (both personal and financial), global capitalism, money, phenomenology, recycling, labor, space, place, and materiality. Topical interests include the United States, India, and Kenya.
	Janny Li anthropology of religion, 19th century religion-science debates, history of experiments, pragmatism, phenomenology, and science and technology studies jli18@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2008. Anthropology (Asian Humanities Minor), B.A. 2006 UCLA. From 2003-2006, she conducted fieldwork in Los Angeles, London, Taiwan, and Hong Kong resulting in an undergraduate thesis exploring the religious conversion and missionary practices of Buddhist nuns at the Fo Guang Shan monastery. Currently, her dissertation project “Spectral Science: Into the Experimental World of Ghost Hunters” explores how ghost hunters, past and present, design experiments or “ghost hunts” in order to transform invisible and ephemeral ghosts into empirical objects of inquiry. More specifically, she examine how ghost hunters conceive of and do the work of paranormal research, often engaging with gut feelings, learned gestures, trained perception, and re-purposed scientific instruments (e.g., geophones, thermal imaging cameras), to create research protocols, standards of evidence, and communities of practice.
	Alexandra Sharp Lippman law, sound studies, intellectual property, digital and social media, Latin America lippmana@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Alexandra received her B.A. in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 2005. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Rio de Janeiro (2008-2011), Alexandra traces how state-backed aims of open source IP practices and models to “democratize” access often overlooked existing innovative local practices of media production and exchange. Her dissertation "Piracy, Publics, and Payola: Contested Soundscapes in Brazil" explores how globalizing alternative intellectual property (IP) practices impact creativity, access to knowledge, media, and music. Her interest in sound, space, and experimental methodology led to her forming the research collaboration Sound Ethnography Project. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and Law and Social Sciences programs, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, Intel's PAPR@UCI initiative, the Department of Anthropology and the School of Social Sciences. Alexandra also received the Associate Dean's Fellowship and the Intel PhD Fellowship for dissertation writing.
	Adonia Elena Lugo bicycling, sustainability, urban space, activism, policy, culture change, infrastructure, experimental methods lugoa@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2007. Adonia's research focuses on how cultural beliefs shape what people think is appropriate in urban space. As grassroots activists and policy-oriented advocates seek to redesign urban neighborhoods in the United States, how do they negotiate existing infrastructure, both physical and human? Using the embodied practice of bicycling as a locus, Adonia studies everyday life in the street and in community-based movements to shed light on policy development. She writes about her research on her website, Urban Adonia.
	Sean Mallin law and property, value, personhood, cities, swamps, New Orleans smallin@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Sean received his BA in Economics and Policy Studies from the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation research follows a number of debates that have emerged around the use and meaning of vacant or abandoned properties in New Orleans. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences programs, as well as the Center in Law, Society, and Culture and the School of Social Sciences at UCI.
	Eudelio Martinez eudeliom@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2006, Eudelio grew up in a small farming community in Central Washington State. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from Eastern Washington University. His present research focuses on the consumption of instant ramen in Mexico. Eudelio is particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the liberalization of the Mexican economy, a process that culminated in 2007 with the full implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the increased consumption of processed foods-including instant ramen-by both rural and urban Mexicans. Some theoretical issues that he addresses in his project include: the role that cultural context plays in the localization strategies employed by food-related transnational corporations in their operations abroad, and the relationship between macrolevel shifts in trade and governance-like NAFTA-and the emergence of new landscapes of food accessibility and scarcity.
	Kimberley Danielle Mckinson kmckinso@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Elham Mireshghi emireshg@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Elham received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley where she also completed a minor in Anthropology. She also has experience working in the intellectual property arena and is a licensed patent agent. Her interests are currently quite varied and range from globalization, mass media, visual anthropology and popular culture to technology, intellectual property, and medical anthropology. She hopes to conduct her research in the Middle East (particularly Iran).
	Alberto Eduardo Morales aemorale@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Erin Joy Moran emoran@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2005, Erin Moran received her M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and her B.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz. During that time, she focused on the relationship between the discursive construction of immigrant women in California and their subjective experiences of migration to the US. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, Erin volunteered for the US Peace Corps in Ukraine, and worked in the U.S. at a NGO serving African refugees. Her research interests include migration, citizenship, gender, human rights, and nationalisms. Her current research examines the relationship between legal discourse and refugee and asylum seeking women's political subjectivity in Ireland. In particular, she is interested in understanding how refugee and asylum seeking women are experiencing the impact of the 27th Amendment to Constitution of Ireland (which abolished birthright citizenship) in their daily lives, and how they are negotiating or resisting its effects.
	Taylor Campbell Nelms money, value, markets, debt, property, cities, kinship, animals, dollarization, Quito, Ecuador, the Andes, law, political economy, alternative economies tnelms@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008, Taylor completed an MPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a BA in Anthropology and Comparative Cultural Studies at The Ohio State University. His dissertation research focuses on dollarization and the so-called “economía popular y solidaria” (popular and solidarity economy) in Quito, Ecuador. He explores the intersections of these dual projects of state transformation through fieldwork with merchants in a retail market in downtown Quito, members of neighborhood- and family-based savings and credit associations, and the government actors charged with making these economic organizational forms visible to the state. He has also written on zombie banks and the recent financial crisis, mobile money, and Bitcoin, and he maintains interests in what it means to be middle-class and mestizo in the Andes; changing patterns of consumption, credit, and monetary practice in Quito; transnational networks of expertise and knowledge production about "alternative economies;" the economic ecologies of bureaucracy; vernacular institution-building; animals; cities; and histories of capitalism.
	Natalie Nancy Newton nnewton@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Lee Ngo lee.ngo@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Lee received his BA in Sociology with Film Studies from Yale University in 2005. Lee wrote his undergraduate thesis on the sociological effects of the implementation of digital technology in the American film industry. After several years of working in television in Portland, Oregon, Lee is currently studying transnational film and television production processes among the ethnic Vietnamese diaspora, focusing on the current debate over authentic representations of Vietnam among and between its domestic and overseas constituents. His preliminary fieldwork, funded by the School of Social Sciences, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Asian American Studies, and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, has thus far been conducted in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Sydney, and Orange County. During the summer of 2009, Lee participated in the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute (VASI), an intensive language program funded by the US Departmant of Education Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program. Lee is also an active member of the Vietnamese International Film Festival (VIFF) and the Vietnam Arts and Letters Association (VAALA). He is also a freelance consultant specializing in film distribution and production in Little Saigon.
	Joanne Randa Nucho jnucho@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Joanne earned a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where she studied film and television production, and interned with documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles. She was one of two students nationwide selected to receive a scholarship from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to support her undergraduate studies. She has screened her films in various festivals, including the London International Documentary Film Festival in 2008. She holds a Master's degree from UCLA's Islamic Studies Inter-disciplinary Program and attended the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt. Joanne's broader research interests include urban space, subjectivity, and modernity, particularly in the Middle East. Her dissertation research in Lebanon was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award. She has also received support for her research from the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Citizen Peace-building at UC Irvine.
	Justin Dieter Andres Perez justindp@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Justin received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame in 2010. As the recipient of a Boren Undergraduate Scholarship in 2008, he studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, earning a Certificate in Peruvian Studies. His present interests include sport, gender, and sexuality.
	Jaeson Plon jplon@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Simone Alexandria Popperl spopperl@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Stephen Campbell Rea embodiment, human-computer interaction, labor, South Korea srea@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Stephen holds an AM in Social Sciences from The University of Chicago (2005) and a BA in Cross-Cultural Relations from Simon's Rock College of Bard (2003). Stephen's current research interests focus on institutional disciplining of embodied behavior among online computer gamers in South Korea.
	Elizabeth Anne Reddy seismic science, geophysics, structural engineering, public policy, Mexico, expertise, land and landscape, sensory technology, research paradigms ereddy@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Elizabeth holds an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, where she studied Mexican public policy, and a B.A. in Anthropology from Reed College, where she studied independent publishing communities and sculpture. She has done research on the health care and self-care systems of kidney patients and their families at Northwestern University's Institute for Healthcare Studies. Interested in regimes of knowledge and expertise, she is currently focusing on questions surrounding seismic science and public policy in Mexico City.
	Morgan Lynn Romine mromine@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Morgan Romine is a third year PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. She received her BA in cultural anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2003. Before beginning her graduate studies at UCI, she spent four years with video game publisher Ubisoft in San Francisco, CA doing community management and online marketing while also managing an all-female team of professional video gamers sponsored by Ubisoft. Morganâ€™s current research interests include sociality in online video game communities, collaborative and competitive gaming practices, social networking and communications technology, constructions of gender in gamer culture, and design practices within game development studios. Her dissertation research aims to look at how social phenomena like deviance (ie. griefing), addiction, and complex collaborative efforts (ie. dungeon raids) are produced by how players and makers jointly imagine and interact with their online game world. She has received funding for her research from the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Intel/UCI People and Practices Research initiative for which she is currently doing a study of Xbox Live gamers. She is a graduate research assistant for the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion.
	Daina Sanchez dainas@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Nick Seaver algorithmic filtering, quantification, automaticity, sound studies, media studies, science and technology studies nseaver@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2010. Nick holds an SM in Comparative Media Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BA in Literature from Yale University. He has written on the history of the player piano and the connection between definitions of "noise" and the history of sound reproduction technology. Nick's current research investigates the design of algorithmic music recommendation, exploring how engineers develop cultural theories about taste and music through the production of software systems. His research interests include sound studies, classification, automaticity, algorithms, and the history of quantitative anthropological methods.
	Mindy Wynn Tauberg Youth identity formation, Muslim Americans, transnational and interfaith families, immigration, diaspora, online communities mtauberg@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2012. Mindy graduated from Oberlin College in 2008 with a BA in Anthropology and East Asian Studies. In her undergraduate thesis she investigated identity formation among students who were children of interfaith couples. Mindy went on to obtain an MA in Elementary Education from Teachers College in 2010 and taught in New York City public schools.
	Michael Villar Tecson mtecson@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Heather Thomas autism spectrum disorders, diagnosis and identity formation, social media, narrative thomash@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Natali Theresa Valdez nvvaldez@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009
	Catherine Grace Whelan conflict, identity, space, memory, anthropology of law, northern ireland cgwhelan@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Josef N. Wieland Brazil, mining, semiprecious gemstones, commodity chains, crystal healing, Social Studies of science and medicine, Economic Anthropology jwieland@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Lydia Catherine Zacher medical anthropology, anthropology of science and technology, midwifery, Mexico, women\'s health lzacher@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Lydia received her BA in Gender Studies and Latin American Studies in 2002 from the University of Chicago. She spent four years traveling between Mexico and the US before graduate school working with midwives and women's health organizations. Her research has focused on the institutionalization of midwifery and midwifery education in Mexico. She is interested in the ways in which international development frames and impacts women's bodies, and how processes of standardization force differentiations between local models of health care. Her work draws from the fields of Medical Anthropology, the Anthropology of Science and Technology, and Global Health.
	Sana Zaidi szaidi1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008.
	Leah Brooke Zani prosthetics, maiming, embodiment, Southeast Asia, Buddhism, animism, STS, medical anthropology lzani@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Leah received her BA from Lewis & Clark College in 2008, where she majored in Sociology and Anthropology, with honors, and minored in Religious Studies. Leah is exploring the different ways that we animate matter, paying particular attention to how embodiment is mediated by religion and nonhuman agency. In her thesis research, she explored how tumors and anti-cancer drugs acquire agency through religion, producing different kinds of science for differently religious people. In her current work, Leah is examining the embodiment of prosthetics in Laos within that region’s legacy of wartime violence and continuing maiming due to landmines. Through this research, she will inquire into the intimate politics of how people conceive of new types of bodies: bodies with augmented limbs, or no limbs at all. Located at the intersection of embodiment and nationalism, this research aims to explain how Theravada Buddhism has come to shape a specifically Lao form of embodied politics that links individual loss of limb with collective loss.
	Shaozeng Zhang zhangs@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Shaozeng received a B.A. in sociology and a M.A. in anthropology from Peking University, China. He is currently working on his dissertation project about the ongoing process of making carbon credit payment policy in the Brazilian Amazon based on the new CO2 emission reduction scheme of REDD (Reduced Emission through Deforesation and Degradation), (to be) approved by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2009. Shaozeng's research looks at the coproduction of expert knowledge and politics in Brazil's REDD policymaking in the shifting context of global climate change politics.
	Ather Zia atherz@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Ather Zia is from Kashmir. Her research interests lie in the issues of conflict, media, gender and human rights. She wants to explore the critical and cultural theories of communication, feminism, human rights, and nationalism in conjunction with postcolonial theory in order to yield a broader understanding of womenâ€™s agency and contextualized narratives. She has two Masters Degrees, one in Mass Communication and Journalism from Kashmir University and another in Communication from Cal State University Fullerton. Before coming to U.S. on a Fellowship she has had varied experiences as a journalist with BBC, administrator with Kashmir Government, writer, activist, and a teacher. Ather has several publications to her credit including a book on poetry. She continues to be a part of social justice projects and is editing an e-zine titled Kashmir Lit.

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	Asya Anderson asyaa@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2004. Asya's PhD research focuses on emergent questions of socially responsible global governance through corporate practice. After conducting fieldwork among managerial consultants and other expatriates in Singapore and within the office of the United Nations Global Compact initiative at the UN headquarters in New York, she is currently writing her dissertation. Asya’s dissertation, “Ethical Capitalism: Global Citizens, Corporate Bodies, and the Cosmopolitics of Self-Regulation” examines popular notions of “global citizenship” at multiple scales, including the individual and the corporate bodies. She argues for the emergence of an “ethical cosmopolitanism” among expatriates in Singapore and within the various actors of UN Global Compact networks. She examines articulations of expertise and how knowledge and value are co-produced in the field of responsible corporate governance and management strategy. Asya holds a Bachelors degree in Anthropology from Vassar College and a Masters degree from UCI.
	Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes Social Anthropology, Post-Socialism, Urbanism, Placemaking, Recognition, Migration, Skill, Los Angeles, Ulaanbaatar, transnational Mongolians canyadik@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Chima has Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Cambridge. His masters thesis investigated the growth in popularity of Hip Hop in Mongolia and its role in conveying nationalist sentiment. His current research interests centre on Mongolian migrants in the United States and includes the legality of migration, financial remittances, social network formation and identity creation.
	Cristina Teresa Bejarano cbejaran@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Cristina completed her MA in applied anthropology with an emphasis in medical anthropology in 2007. She is interested in the areas of social and cultural studies of science, medical anthropology, history, and Latin American studies.
	Michael Anthony Briante Biotechnology, regenerative medicine, cell therapy, stem cells and finance, capitalism, patent law, speculation, post-colonialism, STS, medical anthropology mbriante@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Michael Briante received his BA from UC Davis where he studied sociocultural anthropology and minored in science and technology studies and Spanish. His senior thesis was an ethnography of a volunteer community clinic in Sacramento where he focused on ontological and epistemological politics in biomedicine. During his fieldwork he became interested in ways the body can be understood as a semi-permeable entity made up of social, biological, and environmental factors to better understand the lived experience of disease. Broadly speaking, his research interests are informed by medical anthropology and science and technology studies. He is currently concerned with how emergent developments in the life/health sciences, specifically regenerative medical technologies, alter representations of human and animal bodies and incite new forms of medical practice, self-care, social planning, and financial and legal regulation.
	Emily Brooks medical anthropology, STS, exploration and extreme environments, risk and survival, embodiment, knowledge production, materialism and ontology, United States ebrooks1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2011. Emily received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Reed College in 2008. Before coming to UCI, she worked in biobehavioral and clinical research support with the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her graduate research merges medical and environmental anthropology through the study of risk and survival at remote, high altitude mountain sites in the United States. Her current interests include: applied biomedical technologies, risk management in extreme environments, embodied knowledge practices, the potentiality of human bodies, and the cultural history of exploration and adventure.
	Colin William Cahill anthropologies of medicine, science and technology; Indonesia; colonial hygiene programs; embodiment; ontology; animal studies; naturecultures; labor studies cwcahill@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Colin received his B.A. in Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies from Haverford College, and his M.A. in Anthropology from UC Irvine. He has been working in Indonesia since 2004 on projects related to subjectivity, identity politics, representation, marginality, street art, art collectives, and public space, and his projects have been supported by the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (2004, 2005), the Freeman Foundation/ASIANetwork (2006), and the Fulbright Program (2009-2010). Colin’s current research is based on Indonesian civet farms, and looks at human-animal interactions, health-making practices, public health initiatives, and Islamic conceptions of purity and cleanliness. His project brings together analyses of colonial health regimes and agricultural and labor politics, placing them in conversation with the contributions of animal studies and the ontological turn in anthropology to contemporary understandings of the nature-culture binary.
	Luzilda Carrillo science and technology studies, medical anthropology, legitimacy, knowledge and value production, social movements, Latin America lucy.carrillo@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Aleksandra Maria Chmielewski Collaborations, Museums, Nontransparency, Public and private resources, Design, Fakes and copies, Professionals, Anthropology of history, China achmiele@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2009. Leksa holds a BA from Duke University. Her dissertation project examines how museum designers, academics, local government officials and building contractors in and around Shanghai collaborate and compete to create new museums. As Chinese state and local government money has begun pouring into the emerging field of museum production, the roles of the actors involved are no sooner defined than they are redefined. The project investigates how actors’ understandings of themselves as public or private entities are realigned through their collaborations and production activities, and also how different types of collaborations result in different narratives of history in exhibitions. This is not a story of propaganda, but of iterations of everyday creativity, copies, fakes, artistic avant-garde production and general workaday slogging. The project studies the relationship between form and content through visual analysis of museums, newly-constructed “old towns,” city planning exhibition centers and history-themed tourist destinations. Through participant observation of museum design and government meetings, it examines the relationship between collaborations, material design, the retelling of history and the changing public and private roles of officials and professionals in China. This research is supported by the Fulbright Program, 2012-2013. Currently in field.
	Joshua Clark law, rights, United Nations, the state, Latin America, difference and discrimination, epistemology, ethnography clarkj1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Advanced to candidacy June 2012. Josh holds a B.A. in Political Science from Butler University and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His studies at UT focused on nationalism, multiculturalism, international human rights law, and the politics of indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent. He conducted thesis fieldwork in El Salvador, and also participated in a research delegation to Colombia to investigate the implementation of laws designed to provide Afro-Colombian communities with collective lands. Josh’s current research uses ethnographic methods to examine the UN human rights treaty system, its oversight mechanisms, and their effects on state practices. Conceptual issues explored include jurisdiction, responsibility, interpretation, verification, expert knowledge and judgment, evidence and belief, dialogue and voice, commensurability, and the formation of individual and collective subjects. Field sites: United Nations (OHCHR), Central America
	Nathan Coben ncoben@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Nathan studies property in the context of the real estate bubble and subsequent austerity in Ireland.
	Benjamin Cox bcox1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Ben holds an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Religious Studies, with concentrations in African Religions and Islam, from the University of Virginia. His research interests include sovereignty, the African postcolony, law and disorder, informal economies, youth cultures, maritime regulatory regimes, violence, the state, and, more broadly, how these ideas relate to certain national, diasporic, and global discourses of morality. He hopes to continue research into the nature and form of political consciousness surrounding the phenomenon of maritime piracy in Somalia.
	Marc B. Dacosta mdacosta@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Ann Elizabeth DeLuca aedeluca@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Nathan Dobson ndobson@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Garrison Lee Doreck law, media, politics, citizenship, civic engagement, security, social movements, Islam, southern California gdoreck@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Garrison has a MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School, with a focus on Islamic social movements, and a BA from Northern Arizona University in Religious Studies. His current research examines citizenship formation, civic engagement, media production and consumption, political and legal advocacy, and security and surveillance policy among Muslims in southern California.
	Mark Durocher mduroche@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008, Mark received his BA in History from Princeton University and his MA in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU. His work at NYU that inspired his pursuit of anthropology at Irvine was on the convergence and tension of liberal political discourses and Islamist ethical and political projects such as Hezbollah's in Lebanon. Subsequently, he has turned the gaze back and reactivated a long-time interest in American Studies to examine how practices of consumerism serve as major engines of self and social formation in contemporary America. His own research focuses on the new web, social and mobile analytics that are introducing new research forms and models of the social into marketing practice. He is conducting his research in New York City.
	Caitlin E. Fouratt transnational families; migration; gender; Central America; immigration law; kinship cfouratt@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Caitlin completed her BA in Spanish language and literature and Honors at Villanova University in 2004. From 2004-2005, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica, where she studied Nicaraguan migration and xenophobia in the country. In 2006, she completed her MPhil in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University (U.K.). Her masters thesis focused on the experiences of Nicaraguan women living in squatter settlements in San Jose, Costa Rica. After completing her degree, Caitlin returned to Costa Rica to work at the International Center for Sustainable Human Development (now International Center for Development Studies) a research consultant, study abroad program coordinator, and professor. Caitlin's doctoral research examines the ways in which what it means to be "family" shift and are reconfigured within Nicaraguan transnational families. Her research has been supported by the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies at UCI. Her 18 months of dissertation research have been sponsored by a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and an IIE Graduate Fellowship for International Study.
	Ruwani Gajaweera rgajawee@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2006. Nalika received her B.A in Anthropology and the Visual Arts from Occidental College in 2004. She received a Richter International Fellowship in 2003 to conduct fieldwork in London to study the British-Asian Underground music subculture in London. In 2005, Nalika was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in India studying the socio-cultural issues surrounding the outsourcing of call center work to India and its effects upon the lives of young Indian workers. During this year, Nalika became interested in how this virtual work enables young Indian workers to cultivate certain kinds of global cosmopolitan identities and middle-class consumer desires. Since joining UCI, Nalika has also done pre-dissertation research in Sri Lanka studying the adoption of information and communication technology by its rural communities. Her current dissertation research in Sri Lanka examines how Buddhist conceptions of "doing good" influence philanthropy and social work in the island. She is especially interested in how Buddhist philanthropists become involved through their social work in the project of nation making in the aftermath of disaster and crisis.
	Melissa Lauren Gang anthropology of medicine, feminist anthropology, medical humanitarianism, international conflict, indigenous justice mechanisms, post-colonial societies mgang@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Padma Govindan ethics, subject formation, development, entrepreneurship, anti-trafficking, India, affect theory, phenomenology, social movements govindan@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2010. Padma received her B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Middlebury College in 2005 and her M.A. in anthropology from Columbia University in 2010. She spent four years in Chennai, India where she founded a non-profit organization, The Shakti Center for Gender and Sexuality Advocacy, for which she remains on the board in an advisory capacity. Padma works in the fields of gender studies, the anthropology of affect, and the study of social movements. Her current research interests center on American organizations that intervene into poverty and marginalization in India through a variety of approaches--anti-trafficking, development, and public health, among them. More particularly, in her research she focuses on emotion work and affect as significant factors shaping the trajectory and politics of various social movements and development projects to end poverty and violence in the global South, as well as the importance of ethical subject formation in drawing young Americans to social justice work abroad.
	Mariel Edith Gruszko mgruszko@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Georgia Hartman ghartman@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Georgia received her B.A. in Anthropology from Pitzer College in 2003. Following graduation she received a Fulbright Fellowship to Turkey where she researched Turkish university student's perceptions of foreigners. Upon her return to the U.S., her interests shifted to the subject of migration and human rights in the United States. In 2010 she received an M.A. in Latin American Studies with a concentration in International Migration from the University of California, San Diego. Her thesis research focused on the effect of the economic crisis on migration and settlement decisions of migrants and non-migrants from Yucatan, Mexico. Her current interests focus on the intersection of migration and development in the Yucatan.
	Michael Hurley hurleym@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Michael completed his BA in Anthropology at UC Davis in 2007. His research interests include: Indonesia, Jakarta, urbanization, the phenomenology of space, informal settlement, and the history of urban planning.
	Eun Hae Jeong ehjeong@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. She is currently studying reproductive technologies in South Korea. She is specifically interested in the production and use of genetic knowledge in reproductive technologies, as well in the field of adoption. Her broader interests include the development of genetic science and bioethics in South Korea.
	Robert Kett science and technology studies, material culture, historical anthropology, anthropology of Latin America, pre-Columbian art, archives rkett@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2009. BM in Music and International Studies from Northwestern University. Robert's work engages science and technology studies, the anthropology of art and material culture, historical anthropology, and the anthropology of Latin America. It centers on archaeological, industrial and natural scientific extraction in southern Mexico in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, examining how these projects generate resources and scientific objects and dramatically alter the region in the process.
	Alexander Knoepflmacher aknoepfl@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Jordan Kraemer digital and social media, science and technology studies, cultural geography, Europe jkraemer@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2006. My research looks at digital and social media practices in Berlin, in terms of the relationship between new communication technologies and geographic scale. In my dissertation, I examine how spatial scales such as the local, regional, or national are changing in New Europe, particularly in relation to the translocal and transnational circulation of media. In this sense, the national in Europe is not disappearing online, but is shifting and being reconfigured as a form of territorial organization. My dissertation fieldwork was supported by a DAAD scholarship (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the German Academic Exchange Service). I have received additional support from the Institute for European Studies at the University of California, Intel's PAPR@UCI initiative, the School of Social Sciences, and the Department of Anthropology. I have also received the UCI Public Impact Fellowship and the Associate Dean's Fellowship for dissertation writing.
	Matthew Riley Lane mattlane@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Matt most recently finished the Master of Arts Program in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago in the anthropology cohort. His field research and thesis focused on explorations of the scrap metal economy in Chicago's alleyways. Prior to this research, he taught for six years in rural southwestern Virginia in the public and private school settings. Matt's teaching centered upon literature, creative writing and cultural anthropology courses. This teaching experience arose out of the M.Ed degree that he completed at the University of Florida in Secondary English. Matt's undergraduate work at the University of Florida focused on a double major in anthropology and in English. His scholarship as an undergraduate focused largely upon feminist approaches to literature and culture culminating in an anthropology thesis addressing gender discrimination in public schools and an English thesis exploring how Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner depicted space, place and gender in their representations of the South. Matt's current work is a continued interest in the domestic and international scrap metal economies. He is interested in questions relating to value (both personal and financial), global capitalism, money, phenomenology, recycling, labor, space, place, and materiality. Topical interests include the United States, India, and Kenya.
	Janny Li anthropology of religion, 19th century religion-science debates, history of experiments, pragmatism, phenomenology, and science and technology studies jli18@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2008. Anthropology (Asian Humanities Minor), B.A. 2006 UCLA. From 2003-2006, she conducted fieldwork in Los Angeles, London, Taiwan, and Hong Kong resulting in an undergraduate thesis exploring the religious conversion and missionary practices of Buddhist nuns at the Fo Guang Shan monastery. Currently, her dissertation project “Spectral Science: Into the Experimental World of Ghost Hunters” explores how ghost hunters, past and present, design experiments or “ghost hunts” in order to transform invisible and ephemeral ghosts into empirical objects of inquiry. More specifically, she examine how ghost hunters conceive of and do the work of paranormal research, often engaging with gut feelings, learned gestures, trained perception, and re-purposed scientific instruments (e.g., geophones, thermal imaging cameras), to create research protocols, standards of evidence, and communities of practice.
	Alexandra Sharp Lippman law, sound studies, intellectual property, digital and social media, Latin America lippmana@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Alexandra received her B.A. in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 2005. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Rio de Janeiro (2008-2011), Alexandra traces how state-backed aims of open source IP practices and models to “democratize” access often overlooked existing innovative local practices of media production and exchange. Her dissertation "Piracy, Publics, and Payola: Contested Soundscapes in Brazil" explores how globalizing alternative intellectual property (IP) practices impact creativity, access to knowledge, media, and music. Her interest in sound, space, and experimental methodology led to her forming the research collaboration Sound Ethnography Project. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and Law and Social Sciences programs, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, Intel's PAPR@UCI initiative, the Department of Anthropology and the School of Social Sciences. Alexandra also received the Associate Dean's Fellowship and the Intel PhD Fellowship for dissertation writing.
	Adonia Elena Lugo bicycling, sustainability, urban space, activism, policy, culture change, infrastructure, experimental methods lugoa@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted 2007. Adonia's research focuses on how cultural beliefs shape what people think is appropriate in urban space. As grassroots activists and policy-oriented advocates seek to redesign urban neighborhoods in the United States, how do they negotiate existing infrastructure, both physical and human? Using the embodied practice of bicycling as a locus, Adonia studies everyday life in the street and in community-based movements to shed light on policy development. She writes about her research on her website, Urban Adonia.
	Sean Mallin law and property, value, personhood, cities, swamps, New Orleans smallin@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009. Sean received his BA in Economics and Policy Studies from the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation research follows a number of debates that have emerged around the use and meaning of vacant or abandoned properties in New Orleans. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences programs, as well as the Center in Law, Society, and Culture and the School of Social Sciences at UCI.
	Eudelio Martinez eudeliom@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2006, Eudelio grew up in a small farming community in Central Washington State. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from Eastern Washington University. His present research focuses on the consumption of instant ramen in Mexico. Eudelio is particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the liberalization of the Mexican economy, a process that culminated in 2007 with the full implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the increased consumption of processed foods-including instant ramen-by both rural and urban Mexicans. Some theoretical issues that he addresses in his project include: the role that cultural context plays in the localization strategies employed by food-related transnational corporations in their operations abroad, and the relationship between macrolevel shifts in trade and governance-like NAFTA-and the emergence of new landscapes of food accessibility and scarcity.
	Kimberley Danielle Mckinson kmckinso@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Elham Mireshghi emireshg@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Elham received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley where she also completed a minor in Anthropology. She also has experience working in the intellectual property arena and is a licensed patent agent. Her interests are currently quite varied and range from globalization, mass media, visual anthropology and popular culture to technology, intellectual property, and medical anthropology. She hopes to conduct her research in the Middle East (particularly Iran).
	Alberto Eduardo Morales aemorale@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Erin Joy Moran emoran@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2005, Erin Moran received her M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and her B.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz. During that time, she focused on the relationship between the discursive construction of immigrant women in California and their subjective experiences of migration to the US. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, Erin volunteered for the US Peace Corps in Ukraine, and worked in the U.S. at a NGO serving African refugees. Her research interests include migration, citizenship, gender, human rights, and nationalisms. Her current research examines the relationship between legal discourse and refugee and asylum seeking women's political subjectivity in Ireland. In particular, she is interested in understanding how refugee and asylum seeking women are experiencing the impact of the 27th Amendment to Constitution of Ireland (which abolished birthright citizenship) in their daily lives, and how they are negotiating or resisting its effects.
	Taylor Campbell Nelms money, value, markets, debt, property, cities, kinship, animals, dollarization, Quito, Ecuador, the Andes, law, political economy, alternative economies tnelms@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008, Taylor completed an MPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a BA in Anthropology and Comparative Cultural Studies at The Ohio State University. His dissertation research focuses on dollarization and the so-called “economía popular y solidaria” (popular and solidarity economy) in Quito, Ecuador. He explores the intersections of these dual projects of state transformation through fieldwork with merchants in a retail market in downtown Quito, members of neighborhood- and family-based savings and credit associations, and the government actors charged with making these economic organizational forms visible to the state. He has also written on zombie banks and the recent financial crisis, mobile money, and Bitcoin, and he maintains interests in what it means to be middle-class and mestizo in the Andes; changing patterns of consumption, credit, and monetary practice in Quito; transnational networks of expertise and knowledge production about "alternative economies;" the economic ecologies of bureaucracy; vernacular institution-building; animals; cities; and histories of capitalism.
	Natalie Nancy Newton nnewton@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Lee Ngo lee.ngo@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Lee received his BA in Sociology with Film Studies from Yale University in 2005. Lee wrote his undergraduate thesis on the sociological effects of the implementation of digital technology in the American film industry. After several years of working in television in Portland, Oregon, Lee is currently studying transnational film and television production processes among the ethnic Vietnamese diaspora, focusing on the current debate over authentic representations of Vietnam among and between its domestic and overseas constituents. His preliminary fieldwork, funded by the School of Social Sciences, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Asian American Studies, and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, has thus far been conducted in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Sydney, and Orange County. During the summer of 2009, Lee participated in the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute (VASI), an intensive language program funded by the US Departmant of Education Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program. Lee is also an active member of the Vietnamese International Film Festival (VIFF) and the Vietnam Arts and Letters Association (VAALA). He is also a freelance consultant specializing in film distribution and production in Little Saigon.
	Joanne Randa Nucho jnucho@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Joanne earned a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where she studied film and television production, and interned with documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles. She was one of two students nationwide selected to receive a scholarship from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to support her undergraduate studies. She has screened her films in various festivals, including the London International Documentary Film Festival in 2008. She holds a Master's degree from UCLA's Islamic Studies Inter-disciplinary Program and attended the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt. Joanne's broader research interests include urban space, subjectivity, and modernity, particularly in the Middle East. Her dissertation research in Lebanon was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award. She has also received support for her research from the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Citizen Peace-building at UC Irvine.
	Justin Dieter Andres Perez justindp@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Justin received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame in 2010. As the recipient of a Boren Undergraduate Scholarship in 2008, he studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, earning a Certificate in Peruvian Studies. His present interests include sport, gender, and sexuality.
	Jaeson Plon jplon@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Simone Alexandria Popperl spopperl@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Stephen Campbell Rea embodiment, human-computer interaction, labor, South Korea srea@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Stephen holds an AM in Social Sciences from The University of Chicago (2005) and a BA in Cross-Cultural Relations from Simon's Rock College of Bard (2003). Stephen's current research interests focus on institutional disciplining of embodied behavior among online computer gamers in South Korea.
	Elizabeth Anne Reddy seismic science, geophysics, structural engineering, public policy, Mexico, expertise, land and landscape, sensory technology, research paradigms ereddy@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2010. Elizabeth holds an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, where she studied Mexican public policy, and a B.A. in Anthropology from Reed College, where she studied independent publishing communities and sculpture. She has done research on the health care and self-care systems of kidney patients and their families at Northwestern University's Institute for Healthcare Studies. Interested in regimes of knowledge and expertise, she is currently focusing on questions surrounding seismic science and public policy in Mexico City.
	Morgan Lynn Romine mromine@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Morgan Romine is a third year PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. She received her BA in cultural anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2003. Before beginning her graduate studies at UCI, she spent four years with video game publisher Ubisoft in San Francisco, CA doing community management and online marketing while also managing an all-female team of professional video gamers sponsored by Ubisoft. Morganâ€™s current research interests include sociality in online video game communities, collaborative and competitive gaming practices, social networking and communications technology, constructions of gender in gamer culture, and design practices within game development studios. Her dissertation research aims to look at how social phenomena like deviance (ie. griefing), addiction, and complex collaborative efforts (ie. dungeon raids) are produced by how players and makers jointly imagine and interact with their online game world. She has received funding for her research from the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Intel/UCI People and Practices Research initiative for which she is currently doing a study of Xbox Live gamers. She is a graduate research assistant for the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion.
	Daina Sanchez dainas@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Nick Seaver algorithmic filtering, quantification, automaticity, sound studies, media studies, science and technology studies nseaver@uci.edu \| Web Site \| CV Admitted in 2010. Nick holds an SM in Comparative Media Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BA in Literature from Yale University. He has written on the history of the player piano and the connection between definitions of "noise" and the history of sound reproduction technology. Nick's current research investigates the design of algorithmic music recommendation, exploring how engineers develop cultural theories about taste and music through the production of software systems. His research interests include sound studies, classification, automaticity, algorithms, and the history of quantitative anthropological methods.
	Mindy Wynn Tauberg Youth identity formation, Muslim Americans, transnational and interfaith families, immigration, diaspora, online communities mtauberg@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2012. Mindy graduated from Oberlin College in 2008 with a BA in Anthropology and East Asian Studies. In her undergraduate thesis she investigated identity formation among students who were children of interfaith couples. Mindy went on to obtain an MA in Elementary Education from Teachers College in 2010 and taught in New York City public schools.
	Michael Villar Tecson mtecson@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Heather Thomas autism spectrum disorders, diagnosis and identity formation, social media, narrative thomash@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Natali Theresa Valdez nvvaldez@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2009
	Catherine Grace Whelan conflict, identity, space, memory, anthropology of law, northern ireland cgwhelan@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Josef N. Wieland Brazil, mining, semiprecious gemstones, commodity chains, crystal healing, Social Studies of science and medicine, Economic Anthropology jwieland@uci.edu \| Web Site
	Lydia Catherine Zacher medical anthropology, anthropology of science and technology, midwifery, Mexico, women\'s health lzacher@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Lydia received her BA in Gender Studies and Latin American Studies in 2002 from the University of Chicago. She spent four years traveling between Mexico and the US before graduate school working with midwives and women's health organizations. Her research has focused on the institutionalization of midwifery and midwifery education in Mexico. She is interested in the ways in which international development frames and impacts women's bodies, and how processes of standardization force differentiations between local models of health care. Her work draws from the fields of Medical Anthropology, the Anthropology of Science and Technology, and Global Health.
	Sana Zaidi szaidi1@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008.
	Leah Brooke Zani prosthetics, maiming, embodiment, Southeast Asia, Buddhism, animism, STS, medical anthropology lzani@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2011. Leah received her BA from Lewis & Clark College in 2008, where she majored in Sociology and Anthropology, with honors, and minored in Religious Studies. Leah is exploring the different ways that we animate matter, paying particular attention to how embodiment is mediated by religion and nonhuman agency. In her thesis research, she explored how tumors and anti-cancer drugs acquire agency through religion, producing different kinds of science for differently religious people. In her current work, Leah is examining the embodiment of prosthetics in Laos within that region’s legacy of wartime violence and continuing maiming due to landmines. Through this research, she will inquire into the intimate politics of how people conceive of new types of bodies: bodies with augmented limbs, or no limbs at all. Located at the intersection of embodiment and nationalism, this research aims to explain how Theravada Buddhism has come to shape a specifically Lao form of embodied politics that links individual loss of limb with collective loss.
	Shaozeng Zhang zhangs@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2007. Shaozeng received a B.A. in sociology and a M.A. in anthropology from Peking University, China. He is currently working on his dissertation project about the ongoing process of making carbon credit payment policy in the Brazilian Amazon based on the new CO2 emission reduction scheme of REDD (Reduced Emission through Deforesation and Degradation), (to be) approved by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2009. Shaozeng's research looks at the coproduction of expert knowledge and politics in Brazil's REDD policymaking in the shifting context of global climate change politics.
	Ather Zia atherz@uci.edu \| Web Site Admitted in 2008. Ather Zia is from Kashmir. Her research interests lie in the issues of conflict, media, gender and human rights. She wants to explore the critical and cultural theories of communication, feminism, human rights, and nationalism in conjunction with postcolonial theory in order to yield a broader understanding of womenâ€™s agency and contextualized narratives. She has two Masters Degrees, one in Mass Communication and Journalism from Kashmir University and another in Communication from Cal State University Fullerton. Before coming to U.S. on a Fellowship she has had varied experiences as a journalist with BBC, administrator with Kashmir Government, writer, activist, and a teacher. Ather has several publications to her credit including a book on poetry. She continues to be a part of social justice projects and is editing an e-zine titled Kashmir Lit.