Graduate Student Minors

American Studies and J.D. Program in the Law School

Akeem Anderson is in two terminal degree programs. One is towards a PhD in American Studies. The other is towards a J.D. at the law school. He is also registered for the disability policy certificate. He is a CIC fellow and an MNLEND fellow. Akeem has also attained scholarship within the Legal History space because of his current research. He has been looking at the legal history of Eugenics, how that relates to black ontology, and the conditions of healthcare that persists in light of this legal history and ontological consideration. Most recently, Akeem has been doing a cross comparative analysis between black life in the U.S. and in Germany as it relates to eugenics. He hopes to do a similar analysis with Latin America next year.

Political Science PhD

Larissa is a Brazilian Lawyer and holds two Master's degrees in Law, the first from the Judicial School of the State of Rio de Janeiro (EMERJ-Brazil) in Public and Private Law and the other from the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL-UK) in Human Rights Law. As a Political Science Ph.D. student, Larissa's main fields are Comparative and American Politics, with a particular geographical focus on Brazil and Latin America. Larissa is interested in researching the intersections between gender, race, Law, and the political science studies of institutions.

Theatre Historiography



Briana Beeman (she/her) is a student in the Theatre Historiography (MA/PhD) program. Her research focuses on how Puerto Rican theatre, performance, and protest have resisted U.S. colonialism, as well as how commercial theatre has obscured the ongoing history of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. She was a 2022 recipient of the Jesús Estrada-Pérez Memorial Fellowship and will be participating in the College of Liberal Arts' 2023 Dissertation Proposal Development Program.

Social Work in CEHD



Labibah M. Buraik is a 2nd-year Social Work Ph.D. student in the College of Education and Human Development. Her research interests mainly center around BIPOC students in higher education, their mental health, and their experiences in academia, as well as imperialism and colonialism. Labibah is currently working on a manuscript with her GRA advisor and a fellow cohort member on the experiences of Black students in predominantly white upper, and upper-middle-class secondary schools. She is also working with an associated professor conducting a scoping review on exclusionary discipline in LGBT2SQIA+ students in primary and secondary US schools.

Labibah is also a caregiver to 7 children between the ages of 7 and 17 and is a Licensed Graduate Social Worker working at a private practice providing individual psychotherapy to predominantly BIPOC clients. 

Natural Resources Science and Management (NRSM) in CFANS

Hannah Jo King (they/she) is an environmental social sciences PhD scholar in the Natural Resources Science and Management (NRSM) program (in CFANS). Their research focus includes environmental justice, Black ecologies, tribal natural resources management, and the intersection of Black and Native environmental studies. Hannah Jo currently holds a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) fellowship. 

Organization Leadership and Policy Development: Comparative International Development Education specialization in CEHD

Sunga is an aspiring farmer, community-centered design practitioner, and PhD scholar-activist in the Comparative International Development Program (in OLPD/CEHD). Her research focuses on Eco-Colonialism in Political Ecology, Indigeneity in the African context, and Community Participation in Teacher Education in Climate Change Education, especially in last-mile communities experiencing poverty. Sunga is also interested in African Feminisms, Place-Based Education, and Critical Ecopedagogy. She is a recipient of the AAUW International Fellowship (AY24/25) and the International Peace Scholarship (AY23/24, AY24/25). She is from Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi.

Geography

Mariana Peñaloza Morales (they/she) is a community organizer, cultural worker, and geography PhD student from Miami, FL (Pointed Land). Their scholarly work raises conceptual suspicions about the city — as a category, as an environment, as an ontology — and its hegemonic authority from the place that we now know as Miami. As the City of Miami is made analogous with catastrophe, their dissertation project centers the cultural work by queer Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people from Miami that troubles this impulse to sentence Miami to a doomed, drowned future. Mariana was the recipient of the 2023 Jesús Estrada-Pérez Memorial Graduate Fellowship and the 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRFP). 

Feminist Studies

Magaly Ordoñez (they/them) is a Feminist Studies PhD Candidate, minoring in RIDGS and HSPH (Heritage Studies and Public History. They currently hold the Schochet Interdisciplinary Fellowship. Magaly's dissertation examines historical and contemporary cannabis culture in Los Angeles (L.A.), California, to understand how queer of color cannabis histories, relations, and spaces refuse subversion to a capitalist cannabis industry by centering care, cannabis education, and political advocacy. 

American Studies



Kiara Padilla is a PhD candidate in American Studies with a minor in RIDGS. Her dissertation, Border Abolition in (Re)integration Support, examines the ways formerly incarcerated deportees and their networks of support illuminate an abolitionist praxis specific to a binational carceral regime in the Tijuana-California borderlands that incarcerates, excludes, and deports Chicano/Mexicano (im)migrants. Drawing from scholarship in critical carceral studies, women of color feminisms, and immigration/deportation regimes, Kiara's research has been supported by the University of Minnesota's Diversity of Views and Experiences Fellowship, Leadership, Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Fellowship, and the Ford Foundation's Dissertation Fellowship.

American Studies

Jonny Quenga Borja (they/he) is a queer CHamoru Ph.D. candidate in American Studies focusing on Critical Indigenous Studies, Queer Indigenous Studies, queer of color critique, women of color feminism, and Indigenous feminism. Jonny's current work examines Guåhan history, historiography, and society to understand the ways in which queerness, gender, and sexuality were regulated in Guåhan and how contemporary queer CHamorus incorporate their queerness into their art, activism, and careers.

American Studies

Demiliza Sagaral Saramosing is a doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She holds graduate minors in the Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, Sexuality (RIDGS), and American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) programs. Her dissertation tentatively entitled, "Messin' Wid Paradise: Kalihi Youth & Oceanic Homeplace-Making in the City with No Pity," captures how immigrant, second-generation, and Kānaka Maoli youth in the urban inner-city of Kalihi, Honolulu understand their relational lives, cultural identities, and positionalities amidst colonial legacies and present-day issues of poverty, racialized policing, and assimilation. While this work is in progress, Demiliza expects to argue that this vantage point illuminates social injustices in "multicultural paradise" and reorients our attention to the historical, temporal, and spatial forces that shape the choices, ambitions, disappointments, and dreams of young adults from Kalihi in occupied Hawaiʻi and beyond. Demiliza is a recipient of the 2018-2019 Diversity of Views and Experiences Fellowship and the 2022-2023 Beverly and Richard Fink Fellowship.

Strategic Communications

Charles Trường (he/him) is a first generation Vietnamese American. He is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota (U of M) pursuing a professional MA in Strategic Communications with a graduate minor in Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality. Charles currently serves as the Internal Communications and Antiracism Strategist at the U of M School of Public Health (SPH), where he manages the school’s internal communications portfolio and leads messaging for SPH’s Strategic Plan for Antiracism. His interests are in culturally tailored communications and messaging for equitable health outcomes. Previously, Charles worked in marketing and communications at the Network for Public Health Law, where he prepared communications in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has received numerous recognitions for his work in advancing equity and inclusion.