Fellowship Recipients 2023-24
The Clough Center has continued to fund Boston College students to facilitate their research and participation. We are especially proud to support the work of our outstanding student fellows, providing an interdisciplinary milieu for their intellectual explorations. Clough Fellows are at the heart of the center’s community: they attend regular seminars and Clough events, and publish their original research in the center’s annual journal and other venues. Read about our 2023-24 Fellows below, and if you're interested in learning more or applying for a grant, please visit our Grants page.
Clough Postdoctoral & Visiting Fellows
Nicholas Hayes-Mota
Nicholas Hayes-Mota is a social ethicist and public theologian who joins the Clough Center as its first Postdoctoral Research Fellow. In his doctoral dissertation, Nicholas draws on faith-based community organizing and Catholic social thought to propose a constructive new approach to the “politics of the common good,” one better suited to today’s contentious and pluralistic democracies than available alternatives. More broadly, his scholarship explores the connection between moral and political agency, the history of the Catholic social tradition and democratic community organizing, and the public role of religion in contemporary liberal democracies. As a Clough Postdoctoral Fellow, Nicholas will prepare his doctoral dissertation for publication while contributing to a variety of research projects at the Center, including a joint research initiative on religion and democracy directed by at the University of Bern. Nicholas’s work has been published in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, the T&T Clark Handbook of Public Theology, Ecumenical Trends, and Syndicate. A prior Clough Graduate Fellow, he now serves as the Center’s Assistant Director.
Chandra Mallampalli
Chandra Mallampalli is a historian of modern South Asia with interests in religious pluralism, nationalism, and the secular state. He comes to the Clough Center with an interest in examining challenges facing India’s multi-religious democracy, especially in light of the surging Hindu nationalism and violence against religious minorities. This fall, he is researching the unfolding conflict in Manipur (northwest India), where conflict over the rights and privileges of tribal communities has assumed religious overtones, resulting in the destruction of churches and other religious structures. He is the author of four books and many articles, which examine the intersection of religion, law, and society in colonial India. His scholarship and teaching span the fields of modern India, British Empire, World History, and Global Christianity. His recent book with Oxford University Press (New York), , describes how the lives of Roman Catholics, Syrian Christians , and Protestants have been shaped by centuries of interactions with Hindus and Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. Â
Salim Çevik
is a fellow at the Center for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS), established at the Berlin based think tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Prior to joining SWP, he held researcher and/or teaching positions at Columbia University, Istanbul Bilgi University, Ipek University, Lund University and the Free University of Berlin. He received his Ph.D from the Political Science Department of Bilkent University in 2015. His main areas of research are religion in politics, democratization, nationalism, and nation building. Dr. Çevik’s most recent publications are “A Comparative Approach to Understanding Regime Trajectories of Tunisia and Turkey” published by the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (co-authored with Pelin Ayan Musil), and “New Turkey and Management of the Religious Realm: Continuities and Ruptures,” published by the European Journal of Turkish Studies.
Clough Doctoral Fellows
Justin Brown-Ramsey
Justin Brown-Ramsey is a second-year Ph.D. student in English at Boston College. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Augusta University and a master’s degree in English from Loyola University Chicago. Justin specializes in print culture, book history, and textual studies – especially as these fields apply to early modern England and early colonial America. During his tenure as a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Justin aims to contribute to emerging conversations surrounding the ever-increasing demands for archival democratization by practicing primary source-grounded, faithfully-researched literary and textual criticism. In doing so, he hopes to elucidate individual histories within larger, collective narratives about early modern England and early colonial America as a means to provide crucial, tangible contexts for contemporary discussion about emergent democracies and political movements in both nations. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Justin’s research will explore the extent to which the printing press – as the preeminent tool for information dissemination – played an important role in the fostering and hindering of the replication of early modern English politics, aesthetics, and economic practices in the early American colonial world.
Emily Dupuis
Emily Dupuis is a second-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. from Brown University and M.A. from Providence College. Emily’s specialization is Irish history; more specifically, she seeks to examine the intersections between gender, colonialism, and religion, and how women both shaped and were shaped by the imperialist experience. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Emily’s research focuses on women and popular religion. Of particular interest is how women acted as intergenerational transmitters of belief systems, maintaining the strength of Catholicism in Ireland in the face of English suppression. Operating within an imperialist framework in which external values, beliefs, and lifestyles were unjustly imposed upon them, Irish women nevertheless maintained a certain degree of sovereignty which would ultimately lead to Ireland’s successful twentieth-century independence movement. Emily also seeks to understand women’s roles in creating the unique shape of Irish Catholicism. Questions of what constituted femininity, respectability, and devotion are at the forefront of her work. Emily’s aim is to illustrate the continuing importance of Irish women in the centuries-long effort of maintaining Irish culture.
Alexa Damaska
Alexa Damaska is a second-year Ph.D. student in Sociology at Boston College. She earned a B.S. in Economics from Miami University in 2017 and an M.A. in Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University in 2019. Alexa’s master’s research focused on the path to and impact of undergraduate major choices in the women’s studies field. Since completing her degree she has been working in the nonprofit sector serving persons who experience homelessness. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Alexa’s research interests exist within the subfield of economic sociology and include mixed method feminist analyses of mechanisms in governments, economies and education systems which work to maximize equitable resource distributions. She foresees her findings supporting the actors in these spaces to refine mechanisms and foster life-affirming experiences for individuals, particularly those most marginalized. She believes more equitable access to resources will enhance the health of societies via increased capacities for democratic engagement.
Junwoo Kim
Junwoo Kim is a second-year Ph.D. student in Political Science at Boston College. Junwoo earned a B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago. His current research interests include nuclear deterrence and proliferation, grand strategy, nationalism, and balance-of-power realism. More specifically, Junwoo’s current work focuses on studying the conditions under which a state with nuclear arms can make credible threats against an adversarial nuclear power. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Junwoo aims to investigate the internal politics of minor powers who are geographically located between nuclear-armed great powers, with a particular focus on how nationalism and competing interpretations of territorial integrity inform the threat perceptions of diverse domestic actors in those states.
Stephen de Riel
Stephen de Riel is a first-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College. He received his B.A. in History from Hampshire College in 2022. Stephen’s interest is in 19th and 20th century American history, with a focus on how industry has shaped our environmental past and present. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, he is exploring how social and cultural narratives of industrial change, especially decline, have influenced American ideas of class, race, and more broadly, power. Stephen is particularly interested in how this has occurred in response to the wide-scale environmental change bought on by industrial development and abandonment. By examining these ideas, Stephen aims to understand how to approach historic and modern environmental injustices, and, specifically, how current industrial projects can better account for historic injustices and address inequity through planning and outreach.
Barbara Kozee
Barbara Anne Kozee is a second-year Ph.D student in Ethics in Boston College's Theology Department. Barb received a B.S. from Georgetown University in International Political Economy with a minor in Spanish.She completed her M.Div. at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University with a certificate in Women's Studies in Religion. Valuing both academic scholarship and grassroots activism, Barb also serves on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Ordination Conference. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Barb’s research interests include the interactions between gender, sexuality, family, and politics. She hopes to use feminist and queer ethical methods to contribute to conversations on LGBTQ issues in the Catholic Church and society and is influenced by Catholic Social Teaching. Qualitative methodologies and the sociology of religion have also influenced Barb’s interdisciplinary approach to research questions such as how Queer Catholics imagine self-identity, sexuality, family, and marriage. She is eager to pursue data-informed and nuanced conversations at the intersection of religion, gender, and politics, conversations that have become increasingly critical in the current U.S. political climate.
Kelvin Li
Kelvin (Ka Ho) Li is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Philosophy Department. He received his B.A and M.Phil in Philosophy in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he concentrated in the field of phenomenology, that is, the study of the structures governing human existence and experiences. His master’s thesis critically engaged with the individualistic conception of subjectivity prevalent in contemporary cultural and political paradigms, and its possible transformation by reimagining our relationships with others. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Kelvin’s research explores the multiple layers of attachment formation through human and inter-human vulnerability in the lived experience of diasporas, particularly in those facing political atrocities and displacement. While vulnerability is an integral part in the constitution of communal identities, it also embodies an essential ambiguity: though it can be employed to support generosity and hospitality to others, it can also promote violence and xenophobia in the name of self-defense. Kelvin’s aim is to better articulate the ethical significance of vulnerability and its implications in the debate between nationalism and globalism.
Trystan Loustau
Trystan "Trys" Loustau is a second-year Social Psychology PhD student at Boston College working with Liane Young in the Morality Lab. Funded by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship, Trys studies how the complexity of people's social identities and social networks influences their intergroup attitudes, moral judgements, intellectual humility, and wellbeing. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, she is particularly interested in examining how individuals with identities that challenge stereotypes, such as Christian liberals, navigate social spaces with conflicting group norms. Trys is also a Research Fellow with Listen First, a non-profit coalition of organizations across the U.S. dedicated to promoting conversations across divergent groups. In this position, she leads the development of surveys and other resources for helping these organizations to measure the impact of their programs.
Meghan McCoy
Meghan McCoy is a second-year Ph.D student in the History Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her M.A. from Boston College. Meghan studies US history from 1865 to the present, with a focus on reproductive and maternal health, pregnancy, race, state violence, and criminalization. She is especially interested in how pregnancy and maternity act as a conduit for the state to impose, control, or otherwise shape social, political, and economic goals both domestically and transnationally. Through her research as a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Meghan is exploring how white nationalism and domestic terror are linked with ideas of gender, race, and class specifically through the lens of reproduction, abortion, and motherhood. By studying these fields, Meghan aims to better understand how the state has criminalized, surveilled, and controlled the reproductive health of BIPOC and low-income women and how that affects the constitutional rights of all people. She Meghan hopes to help improve all people’s access to equitable reproductive health care and nuance the often dichotomous arguments surrounding public health and the role of the state.
Elijah Rockhold
Elijah Rockhold is a third-year law student at Boston College Law School. He received his B.A. in English and International Relations from Drake University. Elijah was a research grantee for the Center for Human Rights and International Justice and has done multi-country comparative research with the School for International Training. His honors thesis at Drake was a case study of a suburban shopping complex, and his research examined the effect of the "experience economy" and its relationship with civic engagement. Elijah will continue to focus on these trends as a Clough Doctoral Fellow. Specifically, he hopes to examine how economic and political forces disrupt traditional notions of "space" and "place,” and to explore the question: what spaces are necessary for democracy to function?
Casey Puerzer
Casey Puerzer is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department at Boston College, specializing in American Politics. He received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 2020, where he concentrated in Philosophy and Classics. Casey’s research interests lie at the intersection of non-governmental cultural associations (namely the media) and the formal institutions of our governance. In particular, he is fascinated by the political causes and eventual ramifications of conspiratorial patterns of thought and moral panic. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Casey intends to focus on two specific questions that implicate four inescapable facets of American political life: federalism, individualism, bureaucracy, and the role of experts in government. . First, why do Americans seem to be so uniquely disposed towards conspiratorial patterns of thought and moral panic? Second, how do these two impulses manifest themselves in public opinion, legislation, and the behavior of courts? Using Tocqueville as his guide, Casey seeks to situate his analysis of conspiratorial thought patterns and moral panic in a historical context, identifying what previous generations have done wrong, and done right, when dealing with these phenomena.
Shaun Slusarski
Shaun Slusarski is a fourth-year Doctoral Candidate in Theological Ethics. He graduated from Boston College in 2012 with a B.A. in Theology and from the University of Notre Dame in 2020 with an M.T.S. in Systematic Theology with a minor in Peace Studies. In his dissertation, Shaun is writing about the ethics of prison healthcare in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to illuminate the unique health vulnerabilities of incarcerated people as well as the inequitable distribution of medical resources to the only population with a constitutionally guaranteed right to healthcare. As Clough Doctoral Fellow, Shaun hopes to explore bioethical issues surrounding organ donation in the prison context. Beyond clinical issues in prison, he is interested in analyzing mass incarceration as a public health issue that threatens the collective flourishing of our society. Shaun wishes to bring the insights of Catholic social teaching to contribute to a vision of criminal justice that promotes the holistic wellbeing of victims, offenders, and the larger community.
Marcus Trenfield
Marcus Trenfield is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Psychology Department at Boston College. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Harvard College. Marcus’s undergraduate thesis focused on a potential mechanism by which rationalization can improve humans’ ability to recall information. He has also studied how moral norms, charitable actions, and game theory principles influence our behavior and our perceptions of others. As an incoming Clough Doctoral Fellow, Marcus is broadly interested in studying the factors that promote and inhibit cooperative and prosocial behavior, particularly when addressing collective action problems. Within this area of interest, Marcus is eager to pursue multiple questions that complement the Clough Center’s interest in democratic politics and societies. Some topics he hopes to explore include researching how leaders and institutions can encourage prosocial behavior; studying how to cultivate prosocial norms across diverse groups and societies; and motivating people to support policies that help distant others. This year, Marcus is particularly interested in studying the role journalism and the media plays in shaping democratic and cooperative norms and behavior.
Ophelia (Fangfei) Wang
Ophelia Fangfei Wang is a second-year PhD student in the English Department. She received her B.A. in Translation and Interpretation at Shandong University in China and her M.A. in Critical Asian Humanities at Duke University. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Ophelia plans to study urban Asian American community building in literary texts, specifically by theorizing Chinatown to contextualize and historicize Asian American literature. She argues that “Chinatown” comprises not only the urban spaces where Chinese immigrants dwell but also the layers of transnational history, culture, and relations that have been shaped by discriminatory racial laws and policies and stereotypical narratives. Another of Ophelia’s research ambitions is to understand race in a geopolitical framework rather than as localized knowledge. She is interested in exploring the connection and collusion between anti-Asian racism and Sinophobia against the backdrop of global superpower competition and geopolitical struggles. Ophelia aims to facilitate more conversations between area studies and Asian American studies and contribute to research on racial equality, justice, and constitutional democracy.
Yinan Xu
Yinan Xu is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Prior to her doctoral study, she completed her B.A. and M.A., respectively, in English Language and American Studies in China. Living in transformative China, she is interested in individual participation in social activism that strives for social justice, as she explores the form and style of civic endeavors in non-democratic contexts. At the center of Yinan’s academic investigation is how individuals react to inequalities and establish their resistances in post-socialist China, where social conflicts and contentions constantly emerge under the state’s transformative courses in political, social, and cultural procedures. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Yinan is focusing on activism in the digital sphere and has two lines of exploration. First, she is interested in understanding the role of digital media in facilitating social change, as digital media has emerged as one of the major channels for activism in non-democratic societies. Second, she explores state–society relations through the lens of digital activism, as digital media increasingly emerges as the public communicative surface that connects to the infrastructural core of regimes.
Clough Public Service Fellows
Katie Brown
​​Katie Brown is a second year Masters in Theological Studies student at the School of Theology and Ministry. Katie is an alumna of Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she studied Philosophy and Political Science. Previously, Katie served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), helped to organize lobbying efforts for carbon pricing bills in Congress, and worked in communications and fundraising for environmental nonprofits. While pursuing her graduate degree at Boston College, she is also working for the Laudato Si’ Advocates Program and the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, where she engages young adults in faith-based, grassroots environmental advocacy and community organizing. As a Clough Public Service Fellow this summer, Katie will continue her work by developing program curriculum and planning an in-person gathering for young faith leaders across the country with the Laudato Si’ Advocates Program. She is also working to provide mentorship and education around faithful, place-based civic engagement and community organizing to promote integral ecology and the values espoused in Catholic Social Teaching.
Meghan Heckelman
Meghan Heckelman is a junior at Boston College. She is pursuing a double major in Applied Psychology & Human Development and Political Science, with a minor in Management & Leadership. This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Meghan will intern at the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in Washington, D.C. She is especially interested in the relationship between constitutional democracy and federal education policy. Meghan looks forward to learning more about elementary, secondary, and higher education policymaking, as well as the areas of human services and labor. She has participated as an undergraduate fellow of the John Marshall Project, which promotes the study of citizenship and statesmanship within democratic and constitutional republics. Meghan is the Executive Vice President of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College.
Ali Shafi
Ali Shafi is a rising 3L at Boston College Law School, where he serves as the Vice President of the South Asian Law Student Association. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he completed his undergraduate education at the American University Honors Program in Washington, D.C. Majoring in both International Relations and Spanish studies, he graduated summa cum laude. During his undergraduate career, Ali also interned at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, DC, where he conducted intakes and built cases for Muslim clients alleging workplace discrimination, hate crimes, or prisoner’s rights issues. Before starting his legal education at Boston College Law, he worked in the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Political Advocacy Department, in which he developed campaigns, proposed policy, and drafted legislation surrounding issues related to immigration, domestic terrorism, and government surveillance. As a returning Clough Public Service Fellow, he is spending the summer of 2023 interning with the Prisoners' Legal Services in Boston.
Tracy Werick
Tracy Werick is a third-year student at Boston College Law School. She is from Buffalo, NY, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Georgetown University. After graduating from Georgetown, Tracy joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), and served as a housing and benefits advocate at Make the Road New York in New York City. She then accepted a position as an AmeriCorps member in Buffalo, NY, working with Buffalo public high school students on their college and financial aid applications. At ňňň˝Ö±˛Ą Law, Tracy is a member of the Public Interest Law Foundation, ňňň˝Ö±˛Ą Law Ambassadors, and the Law Students Association. She is thrilled to be returning to the Clough Center for a second year as a Clough Public Service Fellow. This summer, with the support of the Clough Center, Tracy will be interning with the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia (ACLU-DC). There, she will work on litigation and advocacy efforts to uphold and expand the civil rights and civil liberties of Washington, D.C. residents, employees, and visitors.
Clough Research Fellows
Jaida Charles
Jaida Charles is an undergraduate student at Boston College from the class of 2025, double majoring in Political Science and Communication. Jaida is interested in studying social structures, policies, and law. As a Clough Research Fellow, she is investigating the ethics,protection, and identities of Black refugees in Athens, and will explore how nation-statehood has affected the Greek response to this issue. Jaida will be participating in the Boston College summer abroad program in Greece for 4-weeks. There, she will be studying migration as a human phenomenon, philosophical concepts and categories that shape debates about migration, and the contemporary situation of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons. Jaida will also volunteer and meet with local migration groups while studying abroad to explore the issue of social imaginaries and identity within nation-states. Her research centers the narratives of Black migrants to increase awareness of the European Migrant Crisis.
Akash Chopra
Akash Chopra is a second-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science concentrating on the field of Comparative Politics, with a specific focus on South Asia. He earned a Bachelor's degree from Boston University in 2020, where he majored in Economics and International Relations, and subsequently obtained his Master's degree in Political Economy from Duke University in 2022. Akash's scholarly interests encompass a broad range of topics, particularly corruption, voter participation, and education systems. In his current research, Akash aims to comprehend the factors that affect the relationship between education and voter participation in India and to better understand how it diverges from Western countries.
Kelly Gray
Kelly Gray is a fourth-year PhD candidate in English at Boston College, studying twentieth century American literature. Kelly’s research treats the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and the environmental humanities through post-1945 literature of the “great acceleration.” She holds both her B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Vermont. Kelly’s work on subjectivity in the Anthropocene has been published in Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment and the Journal of Ecohumanism, and she has written for public audiences in The Philosophical Salon. As a Clough Research Fellow, Kelly will be conducting archival research on the impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) on the popular environmental imagination. While postmodernism is often understood as beginning with the atomic bomb, her work will instead explore the impact of DDT in shaping the everyday paranoia of the post-1945 cultural environment. Through conducting this research, she plans to build a digital humanities soundscape project that recovers the sounds of Silent Spring.
William Lombardo
William Lombardo is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Boston College. He received an A.B. in Philosophy and a B.S. in Economics from Duke University in 2019. William’s research focuses on the history of political philosophy, with a special emphasis on the confrontation between the Enlightenment and its Romantic critics. As a Clough Research Fellow, he will explore ideas of place and community within Romantic political philosophy. In particular, William will investigate the perils and promises of Romantic strains within pluralistic societies. He is especially interested in underexplored elements of cosmopolitanism in the thought of key Romantic figures. William’s research aims to recover diagnostic and normative resources for contemporary liberal democracies within this clash of Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Jacob Saliba
Jacob Saliba is a PhD candidate in the department of history at Boston College. Prior to thedoctoral program, he earned a M.A. in political science at Boston College as well as a B.A. withhonors in Political Science and Economics from Ohio Dominican University. His currentdissertation project, “The Discovery of the Sacred in Interwar France: From Contestation toCooperation, 1919-1941,” examines how and why community bonds and mutual projectsemerged between Catholic and non-Catholic intellectuals in interwar France. In particular, itfocuses on the relationship between the religious and the secular during this time period. Catholicism has frequently competed against the secular French state for claims of ultimate authority, interwar France saw a transformative moment of dialogue and renewal in which thereligious-secular divide softened and spaces of cross-cultural exchange,democratic politics, and lasting social bonds arose. With generous support from a 2023-24 Research Fellowship, Jacob will travel to archives in France for the summer to investigatesets of correspondence and unpublished manuscripts at the Archives françaises de la Compagnie de Jésus in Paris, the Institut mémoires de contemporaine in Caen, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Finnegan Schick
Finnegan Schick is a 3L at Boston College Law School. Finnegan graduated from Yale University in 2018 with a degree in English literature, writing his thesis on the revival of Hawthorne and Melville. After college, he served for two years with Teach for America in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He then went on to teach for a third year and earned his Master of Education from Boston University in 2021. Finnegan’s research focuses on tax law and how culture, behavioral economics, and civic engagement influence compliance with laws. As a Clough Fellow, he will continue research for his Boston College Law Review note “Minding the (Tax) Gap: Philosophies of Tax Compliance and the Future of the IRS.” Finnegan has written about politics, art, and culture for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New Criterion, The American Interest, and City Journal. He spent the summer of 2023 as a summer associate at Ropes & Gray, LLP. After law school, Finnegan will be clerking for the Honorable Judge Paul Barbadoro at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire.
Emily Turner
Emily Turner is a third-year doctoral student studying Historical Theology at Boston College. Before beginning her studies at ňňň˝Ö±˛Ą, Emily earned a B.A. in History at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon in 2017, and completed a year of law school at the University of Kentucky College of Law in2018. Emily left law school for the study of Theology, and received her M.A. in Religion, with a concentration in Theology, from Yale Divinity School in 2021. Studying the development of early Christian doctrine and Christian catechesis in Late Antiquity, Emily has a particular interest in the mutually informing understandings of Roman, Mosaic, and natural law reflected in the writing of early Christian thinkers. These interests converge around questions about the strategies employed by historical and contemporary communities working to interpret their most important texts.
Clough Correspondents
Deniz Ayaydin
Deniz Berfin Ayaydin is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology Department at Boston College. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Syracuse University, an MSc in Media and Communications from London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in Business Administration from Bosphorus University. Deniz works at the intersection of political sociology, gender, feminist theory, sociology of emotions and culture. Her current research focuses on affect as a political force in the democratic backslide in Turkey, as well as the gendered drivers and implications of this backlash. Deniz focuses on the gendered histories of resentment and approaches hegemony as not only a political and cognitive achievement but also an affective one. She has previously worked on the politicization of art in public spaces and the politics of visibility as well as racialized and gendered commodification of labor in the global care economy.
Madeline Carr
Madeline “Maddy” Carr is a sophomore studying Political Science and History at Boston College. She is on the pre-law track, with a potential concentration in Civil Rights or Immigration Law. Her interest in politics is grounded in her passion for history. Specifically, Maddy loves to examine current political systems and phenomena by deciphering the history behind them. In her academic life, she enjoys reading, writing, and research. Maddy is an Editorial Assistant and Staff Writer for The Gavel, the progressive student newspaper at ňňň˝Ö±˛Ą. She writes columns for the Opinions section, primarily focused on social or political issues on campus or in the Boston area. Maddy is also part of the Outreach department for FACES, ňňň˝Ö±˛Ąâ€™s only anti-racist organization. She is committed to bettering her community, especially through an academic and political lens. Maddy joins the Clough Center as an Undergraduate Correspondent for the fall of 2023.
Boyu Jin
Boyu Jin is an undergraduate student at Boston College in the class of 2025, originally from Princeton, New Jersey. He is majoring in international studies with a concentration in conflict and cooperation. He is also pursuing minors in history and accounting to receive credentialing as a Certified Public Accountant. Boyu is particularly interested in the institutional development of politics in developing countries. As a student with a profound interest in Chinese political history, he is motivated to understand the political influence of the Belt & Road Initiative over not only developing countries with relatively weaker political institutions, but also developed countries with established democracies. Boyu is also interested in studying the issue of gender equality. He conducted extensive research on “Miss Zaho’s Suicide,” a pivotal event in Chinese feminist development, and detailed its cause and social impact (see , which he edited). Boyu will serve as theClough Undergraduate Correspondent for the summer of 2023 as well as the 2023-24 academic year, assisting the Center with its internal operations, publicity, and publications.
Sam Peterson
Samuel Peterson is an undergraduate in the Class of 2025, double majoring in English and Hispanic Studies on the pre-law track. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Samuel interviewedCNN anchor Jim Acosta as part of the Clough Center’s programming on journalism and democracy (). That experience left Samuel eager to engage more with the Center, and he is thrilled to be joining the team as a Clough Correspondent. A member of the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program at Boston College, Samuel has also been an Undergraduate Research Fellow in the English and Theology departments, as well as an intern at the Boston College Law School’s Innocence Program. Previously, Samuel was an intern with the Voice of America in Washington, DC, where he was a first-hand witness to the importance of a free press on the global stage. Samuel is excited to see how his lifelong interests in communications, judicial issues, and politics will overlapwith the Center’s 2023-2024 theme, “Attachment to Place in a World of Nation States.”
Justine Rozenich
Justine Rozenich is a rising junior in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, majoring in International Studies with minors in Finance & Philosophy. She is passionate about social justice and politics, hoping to someday attend law school and work in policy or the human rights field. As a Clough Undergraduate Correspondent, Justine will work on a variety of the Center’s projects and assist in its research on nation-states, a cause that resonates with her personally through her family history in the former Yugoslavia. Justine serves as a researcher for Professor Peter Krause’s Political Violence Project, where she has worked on a variety of initiatives, including studying insurgent groups, conducting statistical analyses on definitions of terrorism, developing a Research Methods curriculum for upcoming implementation, and researching the ethics behind the study of armed groups. Outside of the classroom, Justine works at the Women’s Center as a student staff member, splitting her time between different projects related to female empowerment and sexual assault prevention throughout the school year. She is also a board member for Camp Kesem Chestnut Hill, and plays violin for the Boston College Symphony Orchestra.
Olivia Strong
Olivia Strong is an undergraduate student in the class of 2024 at Boston College, where she studies History with a minor in Journalism. She has a strong interest in how gender roles have impacted different moments in history and she hopes to continue the pursuit of gender equity through law school. In the fall, she will begin her honors thesis, which examines how religion has shaped the roles and expectations of gender, specifically in the conflict between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots during the 16th Century. She is excited to bring her experience as Editor-in-Chief of Oracle: The History Journal of Boston College and as an intern for the Chatham Living Magazine to her work as a Clough Correspondent. Outside of academics, Olivia has a passion for fitness and works as a personal trainer.
Sonia Toloczko
Sonia Toloczko is a recent graduate of Boston College (Class of 2023), where she majored in Political Science and Slavic Studies. During her time at ňňň˝Ö±˛Ą, Sonia was president of the John Quincy Adams Society, graduated from the Jenks Leadership Program, and studied abroad in ňňň˝Ö±˛Ąâ€™s first War, Peace, and Reconciliation program in Croatia. She is originally from Great Falls in Northern Virginia, but plans to stay in Boston to explore careers in the federal government’s regional offices. One of her professional aspirations is to enrich the public’s understanding of ground conditions that inform U.S. foreign policy. Between her experience in the Slavic world and her perennial interest in international affairs, Sonia is looking forward to exploring the Clough Center’s annual theme of “attachment to place in a world of nation states” during her tenure as a Clough Correspondent in the summer of 2023, and contributing to the Center’s newsletter.