Therese earned her bachelor’s degree in History from UCLA, her MPA from USC’s Price School of Public Policy, and she is currently finishing up her second Master’s degree in Global Studies at Cal. Therese has worked in humanitarian and refugee policy and programs for international NGOs such as Save the Children and International Rescue Committee and she has also spent time working at the US Mission to the United National headquarters in Switzerland as a Refugee and Migration Affairs Fellow for the US Department of State. Her professional experiences have influenced her current gradate...
Mehnaz is a 3rd year student studying Political Science with a minor in Public Policy. She is from Elk Grove, California, where she developed a profound appreciation for the rich culture of the Punjabi migrant community in Northern California. Mehnaz also serves as a Senator in the Associated Students of California, representing the Middle Eastern, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian student community. When she’s not involved in Punjabi-Sikh and MEMSSA community advocacy, Mehnaz loves to take film photos, ride her bike, and try new coffee shops and cafes. Some of Mehnaz’s policy interests are...
World Bank Africa Fellow/ Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group
When I was a teenager, I remember how devastated I became when I saw a homeless Chadian family with little children, coming from the far north part of the country and begging for a shelter in a cold morning in Yaounde, Cameroon. My soul became very sorrowful and I started crying incessantly, not only because I was unable to undertake any effective action to help but mostly given that our 100 sq. meter house already full of 9 people was too small to accommodate another family. The GARE family was only one out of thousands who were forcibly displaced, fleeing the first and second Chadian...
PhD Candidate, University of California, San Diego
Rebecca Franklin is a PhD Candidate in sociology at the University of California, San Diego. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College in Latin American Studies and History and her M.A. from American University in Latin American Studies and International Relations, the first portion of which was completed as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico. Her primary research interests are in race, gender, migration, and the workforce. She has taught undergraduate courses in Social Inequality and Racial and Ethnic Relations in the United States.
I am a socio-legal scholar of U.S. immigration law and policy, law and social movements, and the legal profession. I study how legal actors understand their direct legal services work with asylum seekers and how legal ethics shapes lawyering in legally liminal spaces like the U.S.-Mexico border and inside detention centers. I am also interested in how newly arriving asylum seekers understand and draw upon law, whether U.S. law, the laws of their country of origin, or the laws of counties through which they have traversed, in asserting rights against the state. Another strand of my...
PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Before beginning graduate school, I worked as a casework intern in a refugee resettlement agency, as a legal assistant to immigration attorneys, and as a research assistant investigating the effects of trauma on refugees in the U.S. I hold a B.A. in International Studies and a B.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies, both from the University of Kentucky. My research interests include the experiences of Middle Eastern emigrants, the politics of immigration law, and the intersection of nationalism and forced migrations.
Luna Kohut is a current third-year student at UC Berkeley double majoring in Global Studies and Sociology. She has a keen interest on understanding the politics of immigration law as well as the cross sections between social justice and migration rights. Luna is interested in examining international refugee crises and desires to further develop her understanding on how massive political institutions balance their agendas with the needs of migrants. She built on this interest in the past while working on a URAP team for the "Oversight in the European Union" project. She also works as a Peer...
My research interests are in critical refugee studies, Vietnam / Southeast Asia / their diasporas, scholar-activist pedagogies, and abolition feminisms, specifically abolitionist responses to harm. My dissertation centers on Vietnamese refugees within the California carceral system, and looks at abolitionist organizing against incarceration and deportation.
Mr. Tenorio's research interests broadly include: children/youth, social policy, immigration, and economic sociology. Currently, Mr. Tenorio is working on a study of unaccompanied migrant minors from Central America in the United States.
My name is Luis Hassan Gallardo, and I'm an undergraduate-DACA student at UC Berkeley, majoring in political science and ethnic studies. After graduation, I hope to continue my research to explore how salient identities like race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender intersect in migration policy, advocacy, and law.
