Visiting Fellows
Fellow, Literature, St. Paul’s University, Kenya,
Garnette Oluoch-Olunya is an adjunct Lecturer in Literature at St. Paul’s University, Kenya, a Strategic Consultant with the Godown Arts Centre in Nairobi, and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She was Senior Lecturer and founding Director of the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at the Technical University of Kenya, building on the GoDown’s collaborative work with Natverkstan Institute of Sweden, the British Council, and Goldsmiths, University of London, in partnerships that sought to link academic research with arts practice. She sits on the editorial board of Jahazi, a Journal of Culture, Arts & Performance, and is a Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Scholarship (Ubuntu Project), University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Aya Ouais is an abolitionist organizer and recent graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in History, born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco. As a student, she specialized in the histories of anti-racist social movements in the United States.
Fellow, Women and Gender Studies, Hunter College, CUNY.
Rupal Oza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. Her work focuses on political economic transformations in the global south, the geography of the right-wing politics, and the conjuncture between development and security. Her first book, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization was published in 2006 by Routledge, New York and by Women Unlimited, India. She has several articles in peer-reviewed journals. She has written on special economic zones, the discourse of security, and Hindutva politics India. Her current project examines the relationship between sexual assault, caste, and land in Haryana, India. She is also working on a collaborative project that examines foreclosures and gentrification in New York City.
Fellow, History of Architecture and Urban Development, Cornell University
Ana Gisele Ozaki is a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University, with specializations in Africana and Latin American studies. Her dissertation investigates the complex ways colonial ideologies of race have interfered with modern architectural understandings of climate in Brazil and its connections with Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique
Fellow, Arts and Sciences, Sabanci University (Turkey)
Ayse Parla is on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Sabanci University (Turkey). She is the recipient of a TUBITAK research grant for a collaborative project on "Forms of organization among new migrants: A comparative analysis of Bulgarian Turks, Iraqi Turkmens and Moldavians in Turkey." (with Mine Eder and Didem Danis). Her recent publications include: "Irregular Workers or Ethnic Kin?
Fellow, Neonatologist, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
After a long and distinguished career as a faculty pediatrician/neonatologist in Chicago, and her time at HSPH, Dr. Anita Patil Deshmukh returned to her native India with a vision. The government of the state of Maharashtra had supported her education and, along with HPSH, given her the tools to become who she is today – medical doctor, advocate for populations without a voice, passionate believer in human dignity and the right to health – and Anita knew she wanted to give back to her country and community, and give others the opportunity to flourish.
Fellow, Architecture, University College, London
Barbara Penner is a Professor at the University College, London. She is author of Bathroom (2013) and Newlyweds on Tour: Honeymooning in Nineteenth-Century America (2009), and co-editor of Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience, Politics, Transgression (2017), Forty Ways to Think about Architecture (2014), Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009), and Gender Space Architecture (2000).
Fellow, Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Shilpa Phadke is assistant professor at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has been educated at St. Xavier’s College and SNDT University, Mumbai, and the University of Cambridge, UK.
Fellow, Urban Planning, Columbia University
Vidyadhar K. Phatak, after 37 years of experience in various sub-fields of urban planning and development in government agencies in Mumbai, retired from the service of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority as its Principal Chief, Town and Country Planning Division on February 29, 2004. His interests include - Urban and Shelter Sector Studies, City Development Strategy, Preparation and appraisal of projects for the Development Banks and Financing local governments and Structuring projects for Public-Private-Partnership.
Fellow, Anthropology, University of the Western Cape.
Associate Professor Suren Pillay is a Senior Researcher and Acting Director at the Center for Humanities Research. He holds a Phd (with Distinction) in Anthropology from Columbia University, and an MA (cum laude) in Development Studies from the University of the Western Cape. Between 2007 -2010 Suren was seconded to the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa where he led research on the effects of violence and crime on citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa, and conducted research on migration and xenophobia.
Fellow, Sociology, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center
Victoria Pitts-Taylor is Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. At the Graduate Center, she is also Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society and Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Doctoral Certificate Program. She is author of two books, In the Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification and Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture, as well as Editor of The Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body.
Fellow, English, New York University
Sonya Posmentier is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at New York University, where she teaches African American and Black Diasporic literature and culture, poetry and poetics, and environmental literature. Her first book Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature was published in 2017 by Johns Hopkins University Press, and is a recipient of the William Sanders Scarborough award from the Modern Language Association.
Fellow, History, University of Pennsylvania
Eve M. Troutt Powell teaches the history of the modern Middle East. As a cultural historian, she emphasizes the exploration of literature and film in her courses. She is the author of A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan (University of California, 2003) and the co-editor, with John Hunwick, of The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton Series on the Middle East, Markus Wiener Press, 2002).
Fellow, International Politics of the Middle East, University of Warwick, UK.
Nicola Pratt is Reader of the International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick, UK. She has written on human rights, civil society and democratization in the Arab world, including Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner, 2007). More recently, she has written on issues of gender, war and security in the Middle East. She is co-author, with Nadje Al-Ali, of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (University of California Press, 2009), co-editor, also with Nadje Al-Ali, of Women and War in the Middle East (Zed Press, 2009) and co-editor with Sophie Richter-Devroe of a special issue of International Feminist Journal of Politics on ‘Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security’ (December 2011) as well as articles in International Studies Quarterly and Third World Quarterly, amongst others.
Fellow, Visual Audio, Instituto Arcos
Gonzalo Rabanal estudió Comunicación Audio Visual en el Instituto Arcos, periodo donde emprende la elaboración de un trabajo de obra que se proyecta de lo particular a lo colectivo, abriendo lugar a una multiplicidad expresiva. Ha sido reconocido el año 1989 con la beca Fundación Andes y el año 2010 con la beca Fundación Ford. Actualmente cursa como alumno de postgrado el Magíster en Artes Visuales en la pontificia universidad católica de chile.
Fellow, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Metropolitan Studies, NYU
Assistant Professor, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Metropolitan Studies; Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis , Africana Studies , American Studies ; Director, Metropolitan Studies Ph.D. 2007 (Anthropology), University of Chicago; M.A. 2002 (Anthropology), University of Chicago; B.A. 2000 (Africana Studies) Morris Brown College.
Areas of Research/Interest: Citizenship, Sovereignty, Risk, Liability, Urban Youth Culture, Diaspora, Postcolonialism
Fellow, History and Afro American and African Studies, University of Michigan
Sherie Randolph is assistant professor of History and Afro American and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The former Associate Director of the Women’s Research & Resource Center at Spelman College, Randolph received her Ph.D. from New York University in 19th- and 20th-century American history with concentrations in African Diaspora and women and gender history.
Fellow, Anthropology, New York University
Rayna Rapp (former Rayna R. Reiter) is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and forward-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and has been praised for providing "invaluable insights into the first generation of women who had to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies on the basis of amniocentesis result".
Fellow, History, University at Buffalo
Michael A. Rembis is the Director of the Center for Disability Studies and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He came to Buffalo from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a visiting scholar in the Department of American Studies and the Department of History. His work, which has appeared in many journals and edited collections, has won several awards, including the 2008 Irving K. Zola Award, awarded annually by the Society for Disability Studies to emerging scholars.
Fellow, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati.
J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is also part of the University’s urban futures initiative. Roane is broadly concerned about matters of geography, sexuality, and religion in relation to Black communities. He is at work on a manuscript, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place in Philadelphia, which historicizes multiple modes of insurgent spatial assemblage Black communities articulated in Philadelphia in the second half of the twentieth.
Fellow, Photographer, Columbia University
Huáscar Robles is an author and photographer from Caguas, Puerto Rico. He has written about the revitalization of Santurce, Puerto Rico through tax incentives and the impact of the economic crisis on the Island’s middle class.
Fellow, English, City University of New York
Julia Miele Rodas is assistant professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY). She teaches writing at CUNY’s Bronx Community College and is on the faculty of the Master’s program in Disability Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. Her writing has appeared in Victorian Literature & Culture, Dickens Studies Annual, the Victorian Review, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, the Explicator, and other venues.
Fellow, Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania
Akira Drake Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School in the Department of City & Regional Planning. Her research examines the politics of urban planning, or the ways that disenfranchised groups re-appropriate their marginalized spaces in the city to gain access to and sustain urban political power.
Fellow, Economics, Brandeis University
Harilyn Rousso is a writer, painter, educator, social worker, psychotherapist and activist who has worked in the disability rights field, with a particular emphasis on issues of women and girls with disabilities, for more than twenty-five years. She is the founder of the Networking Project for Disabled Women and Girls of the YWCA/NYC, a unique mentoring program that has been replicated widely, and the President of Disabilities Unlimited Consulting Services, which provides education and training on disability equity issues.