BIMI Team

Shadi Anello

Reimagining Refuge Graduate Fellow

Broadly, my questions focus on the dynamics of recognition and belonging in contexts of protracted displacement. I am particularly interested in how the recognition of shared internal markers of selfhood—such as dreams, aspirations, and vulnerabilities—can emerge through relational encounters between individuals with distinct traditional identities. Such encounters, I suggest, hold the potential to cultivate forms of belonging that transcend conventional in-group boundaries. More specifically, my inquiry focuses on two relatively understudied phenomena: (1) relational forms of...

Lena Ramos

Reimagining Refuge Undergraduate Fellow

Lena Ramos is a Research Analyst with the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI) and a student at UC Berkeley, pursuing degrees in Legal Studies and Society and Environment on the pre-law track. She is passionate about immigration law, policy, and reform, with a particular focus on Latin American communities. Her academic interests are rooted in her dedication to advocacy and humanitarian aid.

Lena serves as a Staff Editor for the California Legal Studies Journal, Co-Director of Finance for the Berkeley...

Yannick Coenders

Visiting Scholar

Angelica Remache Lopez

UC Berkeley Department of Political Science

Angelica Remache Lopez is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Political Science, specializing in Comparative Politics, Political Economy, and Methods. Her research interests focus on migration, economic development, and corruption. She is particularly interested in the Latin American region, where her research has examined how political corruption may incentivize emigration; the impact of youth unemployment on migration; and the effects of government performance on economic and human development. She employs a mixed-methods approach in her research...

Michele Tan

Graduate Student
UC Berkeley School of Engineering

Michele Tan is a Master of Advanced Study in Engineering student at UC Berkeley whose research sits at the intersection of using AI and technology for environmental justice, health equity and access, policy, and immigrant health outcomes. Her work focuses on how environmental toxicants and systemic inequities in healthcare access shape migrant well-being, particularly for youth and families navigating displacement.

As co-founder of Kultevat Org, Michele advances plant-based innovations that address both climate and health inequities. She has published peer-reviewed...

MJ Wong Engel

UC Berkeley Law School & Energy and Resources Group

MJ Wong Engel is a joint MS/JD student in the Energy and Resources Group and Law School, interested in the intersecting challenges between climate change and migration. Drawing on legal geography, spatial analysis, landscape ethnography, and legal analysis, MJ studies the legal limbo faced by climate-displaced peoples and how the climate crisis shapes migration journeys. MJ's goal is to develop interdisciplinary frameworks that advance more just advocacy and policy.

Daisy Trujillo

Graduate student affiliate
UC Berkeley Law Jurisprudence and Social Policy

Daisy Trujillo (she/her) is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) Program at Berkeley Law. Her current research investigates “Crimmigration” and the intersection of the US criminal legal system with the US immigration system. More specifically, Daisy focuses on the construction of “the criminal” and what this concept means in the immigration context. Her current project centers around the history of the US immigration system to analyze how immigrants and migration have long been criminalized due to nativist and anti-criminal sentiments.

Vera Parra

Community Partnerships Coordinator
Vera Parra is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on labor, migration, and political economy. Her current research examines how shifting trade and development regimes impact labor organizing on either side of the US-Mexico border. Vera conducts research and training with immigrant worker centers and labor unions. Before graduate school, she spent 10 years organizing in the immigrant rights movement. As an organizer with the Cosecha Movement, she led a successful statewide...

Dori-Taylor Carter

Research Program Coordinator

Dori-Taylor Carter (she/her) is a Sociology PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley and BIMI's Research Program Coordinator. Dori-Taylor's research is centered on issues of identity classification, political representation, and panethnic social movements. More closely, Dori-Taylor focuses on the construction of identity categories and populations, the political representation of identity groups, and the mobilization of shared identities and experiences toward collective political power. Her current project examines how political action committees construct identity...