Graduate Research Mentors
Iris Ramirez
Area of Research Inquiry: How do migration and labor intersect in Los Angeles?
Department: Chicana/o and Central American Studies
Entering her fifth year of doctoral study in the department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, Iris's research interests include Central American history, labor, and migration. Specially, her research explores the experiences of Central American workers in the notorious Los Angeles garment industry. Through one-on-one interviews, Iris aims to capture first hand accounts of workers experiences, and in doing, addressing the dearth of literature on Central American garment and textile workers. She is also a proud fur parent of two cats and a chihuahua.
Miya Shaffer (she/her)
Area of Research Inquiry: How does social media support, enhance, or challenge contemporary social justice concerns in North America?
Department: World Arts and Cultures/Dance
Miya is a sixth-year PhD student in Culture and Performance, where she studies contemporary dance and performance art by engaging theories of race and multiracialism, spectatorship, and visuality. Miya's dissertation research explores an original theorization of a multiracial analytic for dance interpretation, but she has also published writing and taught undergraduate lectures on the topic of social media, particularly as a space for exploring, nuancing, and challenging various politics. Her writing has also explored "dance memes" as opportunities to challenge ingrained white supremacy, ableism, and fatphobia in dominant US-based dance forms. As someone who is always online, Miya found writing this meme-centric essay to be challenging and very exciting — it led her to propose her research area of inquiry for the Summer Research Incubator!
Fernanda Castellon (she/her/ella)
Area of Research Inquiry: How are schools addressing disability as a component of social justice?
Department: Human Development and Psychology
Fernanda is a current graduate student and the University of California, Los Angeles and is pursuing a PhD in Human Development and Psychology with an emphasis in Disability and Special Education. She recently completed her MA at UCLA in Education and received her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbra in Psychology and Chicana/o Studies. Fernanda is interested in researching how culture and Autism intersect and consequently impact family dynamics, schooling, and access to care. She is also interested in culturally appropriate autism interventions for minority communities with the goal of promoting family cohesion and high quality of life. Fernanda’s passion stems from her own experience as a sibling of an Autistic adult. As a native Spanish speaker, Fernanda advocates and promotes the implementation of cultural adaptations to recruitment and intervention protocols in order to promote the recruitment and retention of ethnic and racially minority populations.
Sayantan Mukhopadhyay (he/him)
Area of Research Inquiry: What can representation in queer media do for politics?
Department: Art History
Sayantan is a PhD candidate in the department of Art History, where he earned his MA in 2017. He also holds a BA in Comparative Literature and Art History from Williams College. His dissertation examines how contemporary art in India at the end of the millennium offered ideas of collectivity and belonging outside the hegemonic structures of the postcolonial nation-state. His primary theoretical investments are in queer, postcolonial, and feminist thought. His research area for the Summer Research Incubator follows from this interrogation of the relationship between art, politics, and activism. In their projects, he encourages his students to ask what visual culture can do to effectuate real political change.