Sara Abed
  • Graduate Student
    M.A. Human Rights, University College London, 2014

  • social movements, feminist political economy, sex work and labor studies, performance studies

  •  546 Social Science Tower

  • ssabed@uci.edu
Julian Arreguin Vega
Jake Atienza
  • Graduate Student
    M.A. Sociology, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2023

  • extraction, epistemology, patronage politics, everyday violence, archipelagos, human geography, political and eco-theology, social and legal theory, world-systems analysis, Bisayan studies, counter-mapping, and participatory research

  •  509 Social Science Tower

  • atienza1@uci.edu
  • Website
Yiping Cai
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., History, Peking University, 1995
    B.A., History, Peking University, 1992

  • gender and sexuality, development, transnational feminist movement, global China

  •  507 Social Science Tower

  • yipinc1@uci.edu
Lupita Cisneros-Arroyo
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., Global Studies, University of California, Irvine, 2023
    B.A., Chicanx Studies, California State University, Long Beach, 2020
    A.A, Chicanx Studies, Fullerton College, 2018
    A.A., Arts and Human Expression, Fullerton College, 2018

  • global fascism and eugenics, history of health sciences, far-right studies, chicanx studies, latin american studies

  •  511 Social Science Tower

  • gscisner@uci.edu
Aakanksha D'Cruz
  • Graduate Student
    M.Phil. Women & Gender Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi 
    M.A. Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University 
    B.A.(Hons.) Political Science, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi 

  • girl studies, girlhood, femininity, gender performativity, hidden curriculum, discipline at school, social reproduction, girls' education, power, ethnography, qualitative methods

  •  511 Social Science Tower

  • dcruza@uci.edu
Trinh Dang
  • Graduate Student
    B.A., California State University, Long Beach 

  • food studies, consumption, production, gastronomy, Vietnamese diasporas, labor, coloniality, imperialism and colonialism

  •  517 Social Science Tower

  • trinhhd@uci.edu
Jaiden Davis
  • Graduate Student
    B.A., African American & African Studies, The Ohio State University 

  • politics of anti-blackness, black resilience neoliberalism, black masculinity studies and anti-black misandry, Africana studies, comparative global movements, critical archival theory, black political thought

  •  546 Social Science Tower

  • jaidend1@uci.edu
Maira Delgado Laurens
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., Migration Studies, University of San Francisco, 2021
    B.A., Sociology, University of California Davis, 2015

  •  507 Social Science Tower

  • mairad@uci.edu
Luthfi T. Dzulfikar
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, 2025

  • knowledge production; the social sciences and power; political precarity in the intellectual field; archives and past atrocities; postcolonial scholarship; Indonesia; Southeast Asia

  •  546 Social Science Tower

  • ldzulfik@uci.edu
Temi Famodu
  • Graduate Student
    B.A., DePaul University 

  • black geographies, queer placemaking, geopolitical economy, critical social theory, afterlives of socialist internationalism, anti-colonial methodologies, arts-based pedagogy

  •  531 Social Science Tower

  • tfamodu@uci.edu
Charles Finn
  • Graduate Student
    M.S., Development Studies, SOAS, University of London 
    B.A., Global Studies, St. Lawrence University 

  • Palestine studies, Marxist theory and praxis, armed social and political movements, settler colonialism and anti-colonialism, historical materialism and dialectics

  •  503 Social Science Tower

  • cfinn1@uci.edu
Katherine Funes
  • Graduate Student
    B.A. Ethnic Studies & Political, Legal, & Economic Analysis, Mills College, 2019

  • queer mobilities, LGBTQ social movements, queer/trans worldmaking, critical Central American studies, abolition, migration

  •  531 Social Science Tower

  • kfunes@uci.edu
Gvantsa Gasviani
  • Graduate Student
    M.A. in Global Studies, Leipzig University, 2019
    M.A. in Global Studies, Roskilde University, 2019
    B.A., International Black Sea University, 2016

  • global and international studies; gender and sexuality in media; migration, war and exile; militarization & masculinities; citizenship, nationalism, & belonging; eastern european studies; post-soviet studies; southern caucasus studies

  •  515 Social Science Tower

  • ggasvian@uci.edu
Joma Geneciran
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2021
    B.A., Political Science, New College of Florida, 2020

  • global political economy, global marxisms, critical development studies, political ecology, critical agrarian studies (rice, land reform), critical logistics and infrastructure studies, critical human geography, law and political economy (TWAIL), the philippines and southeast asia, modern middle east (comparative), visual ethnography, archival and policy research, GIS/spatial analysis

  •  509 Social Science Tower

  • j.geneciran@uci.edu
  • Website
Jala Grant
  • Graduate Student
    M.A. Pan African Studies, Syracuse University, 2024
    B.S., Business Administration, Bucknell University, 2022

  • Politics of Anti-Blackness, Afro-Caribbean Migration, Socialist and Anti-Capitalist movements, Conflict Transformation, Afro-Caribbean's in Britain, and the social mobilization and organizing of the Black diaspora

  •  511 Social Science Tower

  • jalag1@uci.edu
Jimena Laso
Heidi Lucero
Safia Msami
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., University of California, Berkeley 

  •  531 Social Science Tower

  • smsami@uci.edu
Silvi Naci
  • Graduate Student
    M.F.A., Photography and Media, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, 2019
    B.F.A., Fine Arts and Graphic Design, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, 2011

  • queer and gender studies; decolonization; counter archives; traditional craft practices; arts-based pedagogy; anti-inter-transdisciplinarity; human rights; labor; intersection of power and knowledge production; translation; migration; globalization; feminist praxis

  •  509 Social Science Tower

  • snaci@uci.edu
  • Website
Edward Kenneth Lazaro Nadurata
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2019
    B.A., Ethnic Studies and Political Science, University of California, San Diego, 2017

  • aging and retirement, reproductive labor, mobilities, migration, Filipino Studies, Disability Studies

  •  531 Social Science Tower

  • enadurat@uci.edu
Samantha Olvera
  • Graduate Student
    B.A. Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, California State University, Long Beach, 2023

  • food studies, culinary labor as resistance, Oceania diasporas, feminist methodologies, gender studies, decolonization, solidarities

  •  546 Social Science Tower

  • siolvera@uci.edu
Shreya Paudel
  • Graduate Student
    M.Sc. in Conflict Studies, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2016
    B.A., International Politics, Middlesex University, 2014

  • Migration, Capitalism, Migrant workers, South Asia, Progressive popular culture

  •  546 Social Science Tower

  • spaudel2@uci.edu
Gunn Phikrohkit
  • Graduate Student
    B.A., Critical Global Studies, Pitzer College 

  • global Thailand, global Asias, global cultural studies, film and media studies, queer cultural productions and popular culture, selfhood and identity, Buddhist metaphysics, phenomenology, new materialism

  •  517 Social Science Tower

  • kphikroh@uci.edu
Alex Piña
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., University of California, Irvine 
    B.A., University of California, Los Angeles 

  • critical feminist geographies; transnational social movements; tourism geopolitics; race, gender, and sexuality; queer theory; affect and aesthetics; latin american cultural studies

  •  515 Social Science Tower

  • dapina@uci.edu
  • Website
Meena Sadr
Melissa Sanford
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., History, California State University Fullerton, 2023

  • histories of US imperialism; historical materialism; political economy of surveillance and repression; global political economy; racial capitalism; anti-colonial theory and praxis

  •  507 Social Science Tower

  • mmsanfor@uci.edu
Derek Sherrange
  • Graduate Student
    M.A. International Relations  
    B.A. Global Studies and International Economics  

  •  503 Social Science Tower

  • dsherran@uci.edu
Olivia Sirchio
  • Graduate Student
    B.A., International Studies, University of California, Irvine, 2025

  • urban studies, economic development and poverty alleviation, human rights, neoliberalism and financialization, housing, Latin America

  • osirchio@uci.edu
Katherine Alissar Tannous
  • Graduate Student
    M.A., University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill 

  •  511 Social Science Tower

  • ktannous@uci.edu
Demetrius Tien
  • Graduate Student
    B.A. History, California State University, Long Beach, 2023

  • Cambodian Studies, Asian American Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, Representation

  •  509 Social Science Tower

  • demetrt@uci.edu
Zoë Van Gyseghem
  • Graduate Student
    B.A. African American and African Studies, and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University, 2024

  • decoloniality, Puerto Rican Studies, human geographies, critical dance studies, corporeal politics, black radical tradition

  •  517 Social Science Tower

  • zvangyse@uci.edu