Scholars 2024-25
Members
E. Tendayi Achiume
Stanford Law School
International Migration Law
tachiume@ias.edu
While at IAS, E. Tendayi Achiume will explore the ways in which transnational corporations (colonial and contemporary) have made and used borders and race together as technologies of economic profit. At the heart of her project is concern for the role of international law in facilitating corporate border and migration injustice.
Diana Allan
McGill University
Anthropology
dallan@ias.edu
Diana Allan is an anthropologist and filmmaker studying histories of Palestinian displacement and exilic experience in Lebanon. While at IAS, she will be working on a book on refugee archives and completing a film, "Partition," which brings together colonial films from British Mandate Palestine with recordings from the Nakba Archive.
Mike Amezcua
Georgetown University
History
mamezcua@ias.edu
Mike Amezcua is a historian of the United States, political economy, and Latinx peoples. At IAS, he will be working on a book that examines the evolution of Latino capitalist endeavors ranging from commercialist crusades to global trade in the twentieth & twenty-first centuries, providing a framework to understand Latino economic history in the U.S.
Ulla Berg
Rutgers University
Migration Studies
uberg@ias.edu
Ulla Berg is a cultural and visual anthropologist interested in transnational migration, (im)mobilities, and contemporary politics and regimes of control in Latin America and among U.S. Latinx populations. While at IAS, Berg will research deportation and its aftermath between the Andean region of South America and the United States.
Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Texas A&M University
Law
hblochwehba@ias.edu
Hannah Bloch-Wehba is a legal scholar whose work examines the intersection of civil liberties, technology, and democratic accountability. While at the Institute, she will begin a book project exploring the relationship between technological change and the reshaping of public governance and power in the United States.
Çetin Çelik
Koç University, Istanbul
Sociology of Migration, Education, Race and Ethnicity
ccelik@ias.edu
Çetin Çelik is interested in the fields of sociology of migration, sociology of education, and sociology of race and ethnicity. While at IAS, Çelik will write a book on ethnic boundaries, stigmas, and responses within the context of interactions between Syrian refugees and Turks in Turkey.
Paisley Currah
Political Science, Gender and Sexuality Studies
pcurrah@ias.edu
While at IAS, Paisley Currah will be working on his book, tentatively titled “The Politics of Sex Classification,” situating the current wave of anti-trans legislation in the United States within a longer history of the regulation of gender.
Sandipto Dasgupta
The New School for Social Research
Political Theory, History of Political Thought
sadasgupta@ias.edu
Sandipto Dasgupta is a political theorist and historian of political thought, with a research interest in the political theory of empire, decolonization, and postcolonial presents. At IAS, he is working on a book on the emergence and decline of the concept of public ownership in the postcolonial world.
Nicholas De Genova
University of Houston
Migration and Border Studies, Critical Race Studies
ndegenova@ias.edu
Nicholas De Genova is a cultural anthropologist, focused on migration, borders, race, citizenship, and labor. At IAS, he will be working on a new book on "The Migrant Metropolis," examining how migrant projects of re-making life through urban place-making situate migrants as protagonists in global/postcolonial struggles.
Ayten Gündoğdu
Barnard College-Columbia University
Political Theory
agundogdu@ias.edu
Ayten Gündoğdu is a political theorist with research interests in modern and contemporary political thought, migration, and human rights. At IAS, she will be completing a book on migrant deaths and disappearances, examining the regime of impunity surrounding racialized operations of border violence.
Brian Jordan Jefferson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Science and Technology Studies
bjefferson@ias.edu
Brian Jordan Jefferson studies political geography, political economy, and science & engineering. At IAS, he will work on a book that explores the integration of cybernetics into U.S. statecraft and its wider political consequences.
Rajbir Judge
California State University, Long Beach
South Asian History, Intellectual History, Sikh Studies
rjudge@ias.edu
Rajbir Singh Judge is interested in the writing of history, the Sikh tradition, and historical changes in nineteenth and twentieth century Punjab. While at IAS, he will be working on his book manuscript on contextual reason.
Nahoko Kameo
New York University
Sociology, Science and Technology
nkameo@ias.edu
Nahoko Kameo’s research interests lie in the intersection of economic sociology and science and technology studies. At IAS, Kameo will be working on a book based on her ethnography in a social robotics laboratory in Japan, with a focus on humanoids and the questions surrounding interactional morality of human-robot interaction.
Leszek Koczanowicz
SWPS University, Warsaw
Philosophy, Political Science, Cultural Studies
lkoczanowicz@ias.edu
Leszek Koczanowicz specializes in social theory and critical political theory, exploring the cultural dimension of politics. At IAS, he will be working on a project on the ethics, politics, and culture of migration and displacement.
R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy
New York University
Sociology, Education
lewismccoy@ias.edu
R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy is interested in issues of space, race and class. While at IAS, he will be working on his book manuscript currently entitled "Afterlives of Integration: Belonging and Community Power in Suburbia." He primarily is interested in minoritized communities's experiences and voices in majority spaces.
Iymon Majid
Institute for Advanced Study
Political Science
imajid@ias.edu
Iymon Majid is a political scientist with a focus on comparative political theory and modern South Asia. At IAS, he will be working on a new project studying the relationship between law, politics, and religion in Kashmir.
Jeanne Morefield
University of Oxford
Political Theory
jmorefield@ias.edu
Jeanne Morefield's research interests sit at the intersection of political theory, global intellectual history, and international relations. While at IAS, she will research the historical and contemporary relationship/overlap between sex trafficking panics, the liberal internationalist imaginary, and fascist conspiracy theories.
Ahmad Qais Munhazim
Thomas Jefferson University
Political Science
amunhazim@ias.edu
Ahmad Qais Munhazim is an interdisciplinary scholar of migration, war, gender, and sexuality studies. At IAS, Munhazim will work on their book project based on a de/colonial ethnography of displacement(s) in the lives of recently evacuated queer and trans Afghan refugees in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Ireland.
Juan Thomas Ordóñez
Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá Colombia
Migration Studies, Anthropology, Colombia
jordonez@ias.edu
Juan Thomas Ordóñez studies Venezuelan migration to Colombia and migrants who cross the country looking to reach the U.S./Mexico border. While at IAS he will work on Colombia’s strategic position in global migration routes to North America and the ways borderlands are affected by global migration routes and policies.
Mahua Sarkar
University of Toronto
Guestwork and Transnational Labor Migration,
Global Labor History
msarkar@ias.edu
Mahua Sarkar's research interests include contemporary guestwork, gestational surrogacy as a new form of gendered and racialized labor, socialist internationalism, and the politics of methods. While at the IAS, Sarkar will focus on her book, "Moving Stories: Contemporary Guest Work and Bangladeshi Contract Migrants."
Bernardo Zacka
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Political Theory
bzacka@ias.edu
Bernardo Zacka is a political theorist with an interest in ethnographic methods. His research focuses on how citizens ordinarily encounter the state. At IAS, he will be completing a book project on the architecture of welfare offices.
Visitors
Anne-Claire Defossez
Institute for Advanced Study
Sociology
adefossez@ias.edu
Anne-Claire Defossez is a sociologist who has been conducting a research on migration during 5 years at the border between Italy and France. Based on this ethnography her work this year will be focused on solidarity practices toward exiles and their evolution in a context of growing repressive policies.
Rebio Díaz Cardona
City University of New York (CUNY) - LaGuardia Community College
Environmental Psychology, Social Theory, Puerto Rican Studies
rdiazcardona@ias.edu
Rebio Diaz Cardona is an environmental psychologist interested in grassroots placemaking and self-management projects in Puerto Rico, and the geographies of writing in urban contexts. While at IAS he will explore links between theories of writing, theories of social space, and spatial understandings of individual and collective freedom.
Gabriel Greenberg
University of California, Los Angeles
Philosophy
ggreenberg@ias.edu
Gabriel Greenberg's research is concerned with non-linguistic communication, especially the ways that meaning is leveraged by pictures, diagrams, and facial expressions. While at IAS, Greenberg will be working on a book on iconic and symbolic representation.
Raphaëlle Khan
City College of New York
International Relations and Global History
rkhan@ias.edu
Raphaëlle Khan works at the intersection of IR and Global History, with a focus on non-Western perspectives in international relations, decolonization, and the Indo-Pacific region. At IAS, she is completing a book on the role of formerly colonized countries (especially India’s) in the making of the twentieth century international order.
Dorota Koczanowicz
University of Wroclaw, Poland
Cultural Studies, Art, and Food Studies
dkoczanowicz@ias.edu
Dorota Koczanowicz is interested in the aesthetics and cultural value of food and eating. While at IAS, Koczanowicz will pursue a project exploring the role of art in the discourse on the climate crisis, with a particular focus on artists pondering foodways as implicated in the Anthropocene.
Affiliated Scholars
Marc Aidinoff
Research Associate
History and Science and Technology Studies
maidinoff@ias.edu
Marc Aidinoff studies the intersection of public policy, technology, and liberalism in the United States. At IAS, he will be working on a book about the computerization of the U.S. welfare state since 1974.
International Relations, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Global Governance
Christine Custis
Civic Science Fellow
Ethical and Responsible AI Innovation
ccustis@ias.edu
Christine supports the AI Policy and Governance Working Group (AIPGWG), led by Alondra Nelson, and hosted in Professor Nelson's Science, Technology, and Social Values (STSV) Lab within the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).
Marie-Therese Png
Research Associate
Global AI Governance, AI Supply Chains, Critical Minerals
mpng@ias.edu
Marie-Therese works in transnational alliance building at intersections of tech infrastructure, resource justice and antimilitarism in geographies such as Taiwan, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica. Previously at the UN and DeepMind, at IAS she will research global AI governance, the geopolitics of AI supply chains and critical minerals.
