Current Postdocs

Chinbo Chong

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-2023

Email:

chchon@iu.edu

Chinbo Chong is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University. She is a first-generation college student who grew up in South Korea, Alaska, Kansas, Washington, and California. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2019). Her main fields of study are in American politics, political behavior, and race and ethnic politics. At CRRES, she will be working on her book manuscript titled Identity Appeals in the Age of Immigration. Her book project uses original survey experiments, large observational political surveys, and qualitative data, which speaks to the discussion about the formation of political identity, how this differs for Asian American and Latino voters, and its impact on mobilizing these two important American electorate. She has also examined how immigrant voters form their party identification, and the role of discrimination and xenophobic rhetoric on their political behavior and collective action.

Aleshia Barajas

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2021-2023

Email:

alebara@iu.edu

Aleshia Barajas is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at Indiana University. She received her PhD from Yale University and is currently working on a book manuscript introducing an other-than-linear conceptual framework that challenges our current binary—here or there—understanding of the US-Mexico border and quotidian border-crossings. This work is based on three years of ethnographic field research at four ports of entry in Baja California/California and Sonora/Arizona, as well as her own personal experience crossing the border every day to attend school in the US. Her research has been generously supported by the Ford Foundation.

Juan Mora

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2021-2023

Email:

jimora@iu.edu

Juan Ignacio Mora is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University. Although he has spent time living in San Antonio, Texas and Mexico City, he is a committed Midwesterner who has spent the majority of his life in Chicago and Champaign, Illinois. Juan received his PhD in History with a minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2021). He is a historian of Latinxs, race, labor, and popular culture whose work questions the meaning of foodways, migration, and citizenship in the modern United States. As a CRRES Postdoctoral Fellow, he will primarily be working on his book manuscript titled Latino Encounters: Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans in Michigan, 1929-1971. Drawing on multi-lingual research in U.S., Mexican, and Puerto Rican archives, his book examines three groups of Latina/o/xs as they forged national and transnational networks through postwar migration and agricultural labor.

Olivia Ekeh

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2022-2024

Olivia Ekeh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Broadly, her research centers on 20th Century Black history, music, and popular culture. At CRRES she will be working on a book manuscript focusing on the historical and aesthetic significance of the soul era from the mid 20th Century on the larger Black music tradition. Using historical methods combined with literary criticism and analysis, music and performance studies, the project explores the importance of quotidian or experiences of the everyday on music from the soul era of the 20th Century on post-soul and contemporary Black musicians. Her archival research is heavily indebted to the Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) supporting her endeavor to broaden the sphere of soul music’s historical legacy beyond the exclusive scope of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power.

Min Joo Lee

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2022-2024

Min Joo Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University. Min Joo received her Ph.D. in Gender Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to coming to Indiana University, she worked as a Visiting Lecturer at Wellesley College. Her research is positioned at the intersection of Asian Studies, Gender Studies, and Media Studies. Min Joo’s first book project, tentatively titled Finding Mr. Perfect: Korean Television Dramas, Romance, and Race, examines the gendered and racial politics of the transnational popularity of Korean popular culture. Her second book-length research project, tentatively titled Digital Rape: Illicit Pornography, Sexual Consent, and Race, analyzes the transnational dissemination of illegal and non-consensual Korean sex videos to examine how digital media have generated new forms of sexual and racial violence.