Janic Aguirre – Religious Studies
Previous Institution: Yale University
Janic Aguirre is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on the exchange of ideas between the Maya and other civilizations in ancient Mesoamerica, such as the Lenca in Honduras and the Nicoya in Costa Rica. Janic is interested in ancient writing and art, ceramic production, obsidian trade, and XRF and petrographic analysis. Janic has conducted fieldwork in El Salvador and in Belize. He looks forward to further examination of ancient interethnic and interreligious exchange and dynamics.
Ali Alkhatib – Information Studies
Previous Institutions: University of California Irvine
Ali Alkhatib is a Ph.D. student in Information Studies. He is interested in how people reject algorithmic systems and the infrastructures connected to them. Lately, his work has focused on understanding organized movements against data centers. He is also considering a more capacious understanding of the rejection of data centers and of the roles designers occupy in this discussion.unication practices that support underrepresented and marginalized communities and improve access to care.
Jiawen Cui – Social Work
Previous Institutions: Hainan University, Arizona State University, Columbia University
Jiawen Cui is a Ph.D. student in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Her research focuses on the intergenerational transmission of adversity, including how poverty-related constraints affect parental mental health and are transmitted to children through family processes. She aims to design community-based interventions that target these mechanisms to support caregivers’ mental health and to evaluate whether strengthening these mechanisms improves parental and child outcomes over time.
Adrianne Kweon – Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
Previous Institutions: University of Oxford, Harvard University
Adrianne Kweon is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern Studies. In her research, she seeks to better describe and understand the Hebrew of the book of Job, the language of which is notable for its virtuosity and obscurity. She examines whether Job’s idiosyncratic linguistic profile reflects a particular compositional setting or an artificial language (Kunstsprache) constructed across the synchronic and diachronic axes. She intends to integrate recent developments in comparative Semitics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, and textual criticism to offer a fresh, philologically grounded approach.