Training Program Fellows

Graduate students interested in taking part in the Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) are required to pass the gateway course to the SJTP Science and Justice: Experiments in Collaboration offered as BME/FMST/SOCY 268A or ANTH 269A.

Graduate students from all departments are encouraged to participate

2022-2023 Fellows

ksenia fir (they/she) is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with designated emphases in Feminist Studies and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. Their research and creative practice focus on science fiction, futurism, labor, and science and technology, in particular carceral and surveillant technologies. ksenia graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Cinema, concentration in screenwriting, from San Francisco State University, where they were a recipient of Achievement Awards for Special Recognition as Department Honoree and for Academic Excellence. They received their M.A. in Film and Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. Their dissertation, Robocops and Prison Spaceships: Carceral Futurism in American Science Fiction Film and Television, focuses on the representation of carceral technologies, such as predictive policing, robotic law enforcement, and extraterrestrial prison colonies, in popular American film and television, and the impact of the normalization of carceral imaginaries on the public discourse around punishment, reforms, and abolition.

Carrie Hamilton is a PhD student in environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her work draws on political ecology and critical resource geographies to examine the social and environmental dilemmas posed by the expanding U.S. energy transition mineral frontier. Prior to coming to UCSC, she worked as a program associate at the Social Science Research Council, the administrative coordinator of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science, and a research technician at the Center for the Study of Adolescent Risk and Resilience at Duke University. She earned her bachelor’s in environmental science and geography from UNC Chapel Hill.

Marilia Kaisar is a filmmaker, artist, and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Film and Digital Media with designated emphases in History of Art and Visual Culture. She holds an MA in Media Studies from Pratt Institute and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her experimental practice uses affect theory and a feminist perspective to explore intersections of media, technology, and desire, using the body as the nexus point.

Kellie Petersen (she/her) is a PhD student in the Sociology department. Her research interests broadly concern future-focused themes such as climate change and the Anthropocene, technology, and urbanization. She has a BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Northern Iowa and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Florida.

Gregory Woolston is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology with research interests in the politics of spatial design (architectural and cartographic), and in particular, those possibilities for the built environment that emerge from the everyday lives and social movements of inhabitants working toward liberation through imagining or creating spaces for themselves. Gregory also works as a cartographer and previously studied architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle and geography at Middlebury College in Vermont.

2020-2021 Fellows

Jonas Oppenheimer is a second-year member of the paleogenomics lab with Beth Shapiro in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics. Jonas works to understand the evolutionary dynamics of Beringian megafauna through ancient DNA, investigating the consequences of climate, population history, and hybridization on these species. Jonas is also a Fellow with CITL (Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning) learning pedagogical techniques to make an education in science accessible to all.

Jenny Pensky is a third-year member of Professor Andrew Fisher’s hydrogeology lab in Earth & Planetary Sciences. Jenny focuses on how managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can be used to improve both water supply and quality. For their SJTP project, Jenny and Jonas will explore the relationships between “invasive” plants, botanical gardens, and colonialism.

2018-2019 Fellows

Jon Akutagawa is a graduate student following the PBSE BMEB Track working with Angela Brooks’ Lab. Jon holds a B.S. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley. Jon wants to develop better models to predict disease progression and drug resistance in cancers that arise from mutations that alter splicing and the transcriptome. Jon’s current project involves uncovering mutations in the 5′ untranslated regions of genes and characterizing their effects on transcription and translation. When not in the lab, Jon enjoys discovering new rock walls to climb, re-imagining childhood Japanese dishes, and fiddling with new frameworks for data visualization.

Dennis Browe obtained his MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University and a BA in philosophy from Binghamton University - State University of New York (SUNY). Dennis is a graduate student is Sociology with research interests in the fields of medical sociology, science & technology studies (STS), and sexuality and gender. Faculty Advisor: Jenny Reardon.

Halie Kampman is a graduate student in the Environmental Studies department. Research interests address agricultural projects in sub Saharan Africa which are designed to improve nutrition. More specifically, I study the recent effort to solve malnutrition through biofortification, the breeding of staple crops to be richer in essential micronutrients. Rather than accepting biofortification as the silver bullet it is often made out to be, my research troubles biofortification to examine the degree to which it offers an alternative to conventional approaches (short term nutritional supplements), and how its outcomes may be gendered.

Dorothy R. Santos is a Filipina American writer, editor, and curator whose research interests include digital art, computational media, and biotechnology. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. Her work appears in art21, Art Practical, Rhizome, Hyperallergic, Ars Technica, Vice Motherboard, and SF MOMA’s Open Space. Her essay “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture. She serves as a co-curator for REFRESH, in partnership with Eyebeam, and is the program manager for the Processing Foundation.

Caroline Spurgin is a graduate student in the Education department.

Erica Zurawski is a graduate student in the Sociology department working on food justice and has a blog: onthetableblog.com. Areas: Food Studies; Food Inequality & Food Access; Race & Ethnicity; Cultural Studies; Cultural & Anthropological Studies; Social Theory; Urban Sociology; Ecofeminism; Historical Sociology; Critical Ethnography; Urban Political Ecology

2017-2018 Fellows

Krisha Hernandez’s doctoral research works at the interfaces of anthropology, Native and Indigenous studies, and sciences and technologies studies. Hernández examines the ways in which U.S. conventional agricultural research, development and practices may (re)produce settler colonial structures and ethics by reinforcing invisibility of and violence against Native and Indigenous lives and bodies.

Paloma Medina is a PhD student in the BioMolecular Engineering Department at UC Santa Cruz. The diversity of life is a true wonder to behold: from the smallest microbial cell to the largest redwood tree, millions of years of evolution have given rise to these diverse forms of life. Paloma’s research centers around the science of de-extinction, population genetics, and sex and gender diversity in nature.

Vivian Underhill is a PhD student in the Feminist Studies program at UC Santa Cruz. Previously, she worked at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, digitizing and mapping historical records of Arctic sea ice concentrations. She is interested in the intersections of queer ecology, feminist and decolonial science studies, and polar oceanography. Her work focuses on the politics of knowledge production in land management and permitting processes, specifically related to oil and gas extraction on Alaska’s Northern Slope.

2014-2015 Fellows

Carolyn Branecky, Earth and Planetary Science

Sandra Harvey, Politics

Linda Dayem, Philosophy

Jessica Neasbitt, History of Consciousness

Stephen Sepaniak, Sociology

Jeffrey Sherman, Politics

Samuael Topiary, Film and Digital Media

Jen Trinh, Physics

2013-2014 Fellows

Tracy Ballinger, Bio-Molecular Engineering

Luz Cordoba, Sociology

Gene A. Felice II, Digital Arts and New Media

Kelly Gola, Psychology

Elizabeth (Lizzy) Hare, Anthropology

Sophia Magnone, Literature

Andrew (Andy) Murray, Sociology

2011-2012 Fellows

Zachary Caple, Anthropology

Ian Carbone, Physics

Elaine Gan, Digital Arts and New Media

Colin Hoag, Anthropology

Alexis Kargl, Sociology

Miriam Olivera, Environmental Studies

Katy Overstreet, Anthropology

Derek Padilla, Physics

Kate Richerson, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Kathleen Uzilov, Earth and Planetary Sciences

2010-2011 Fellows

Celina Kapoor, Anthropology

Martha Kenney, History of Consciousness

Alexis Mourenza, Philosophy

Costanza Rampini, Environmental Studies

Jennie Ohayon, Environmental Studies

Felicia Peck, Politics

Micha Rahder, Anthropology

Benjamin Roome, Philosophy

Tiffany Wise-West, Environmental Studies