Postdoctoral Scholars

Joseph Wei

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2023-2024

Joseph Wei was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University. Following his fellowship with CRRES, Joe accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia, and his scholarly interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, literature and sociology, and oral history. As a CRRES fellow, he will primarily be working on a book manuscript titled Refugee Poetics, which draws on oral history alongside textual analysis to examine the poetry and literary organizations made by 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese, Hmong, Lao, and Cambodian American poets. He is also creating an oral history archive of Asian American poets from the 1970s to the present with support from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. 

Olivia Ekeh

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2022-2024

Email:

oekeh@iu.edu

Olivia Ekeh was 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. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Olivia accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies here at IU. 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, 2022-2023

Min Joo Lee was 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. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Min Joo accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at Occidental College. 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.

Aleshia Barajas

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2021-2023

Email:

alebara@iu.edu

Aleshia Barajas was 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. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Aleshia accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies 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 was 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. Following his fellowship with CRRES, Juan accepted a position as an 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 was primarily 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.

Chinbo Chong

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-2023

Email:

chchon@iu.edu

Chinbo Chong was 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. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Chinbo accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Asian American Studies at Northeastern 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 was 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.

Vivek Vellanki

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-2022

Email:

vvellan@iu.edu

Vivek Vellanki was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education at Indiana University. Following his fellowship with CRRES, Vivek accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Education.  Vivek earned his PhD in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University. His scholarly and artistic work is centered on issues of migration, transnationalism, and youth identity/culture. He draws on visual methodologies and research-creation in order to question the boundaries between scholarly/creative work. Vivek’s dissertation examined the experiences/stories of immigrants and refugees in the U.S. using the photographic medium. He curated an exhibition titled, Do you have anything to declare?, featuring his dissertation work in the fall of 2019. He has worked with teachers and youth in India and the U.S. in exploring the role of the arts and the possibilities for envisioning the classroom as a site for exploration, play, and imagining socially just futures. At CRRES, Vivek’s work explored the relationship between photography, migration, and youth identity/culture through a collaboration with South Asian youth living in the area.

Candace Miller

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2019-2021

Candace Miller was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Candace accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology with the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Broadly, her research interests focus on race/ethnicity, urban sociology, and culture. Currently, Candace’s research agenda is driven by an interest in racial inequalities embedded in and stemming from the contemporary urban political economy. She is currently working on a book based on a mixed-methods examination of the disparate experiences and outcomes of Black and white small business owners in the context of contemporary redevelopment efforts in Detroit, Michigan. In addition, she is currently examining how arts organizations are distributed among poor and minority urban neighborhoods, tracing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black and white business owners’ outcomes, and tracing the exchange of capital between higher- and lower-socioeconomic status neighborhoods in metropolitan Indianapolis, Indiana during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oscar Patrón

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2019-2021

Email:

opatron@iu.edu

Oscar E. Patrón was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program in the School of Education. Following his fellowship with CRRES, he accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Indiana University. Oscar received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and spent the last two years of his program as a Visiting Scholar and Research Associate at the USC Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California. His research interests broadly examine the racialized, gendered, and sexualized experiences of Latina/o students in higher education; men of color; student success; and resilience. Oscar's dissertation, which was funded by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation dissertation fellowship, examined processes of resilience that gay Latino men undergo as it relates to social identities that are most salient to them. In doing so, he accounts for the role and manifestation of systems of oppression that underlie the adversity encountered by Latino men.

Christine Peralta

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2019-2021

Christine Noelle Peralta was 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. Following her fellowship with CRRES, Christine accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College. She is a first-generation college student who grew up in Houston, Texas. She received her Ph.D. in History with a minor in Asian American Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (2019). Her research interests are in the fields of U.S. history, empires and imperialism, comparative ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and migration. Her book project uses a transnational approach to examine the history of Filipina women’s medical knowledge production during Spanish and U.S. empire. Locating Filipina women’s intellectual labor in unexpected places, she assembles a wide-ranging archive that includes sources from demography, botany, medicine, and native folklore in order to recover women’s stories by carefully examining these sources for traces of their erased knowledge, revealing the multiple interactions women had with colonial medicine. She is also interested in developing decolonial pedagogies for the classroom, collecting comic books, and listening to ghost stories.

Tennisha Riley

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2018-2020

Email:

rileytn@iu.edu

Tennisha N. Riley was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University from 2018-2020. Following her fellowship with CRRES, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Indiana University. She received her PhD. In Developmental Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. Her research interests focus on cognitive and emotional processes associated with the development of both risk-related and prosocial behaviors among African American youth. Specifically, she is interested in the degree to which adolescents’ emotion-related physiological responses in particular contexts (i.e., family, peers, school, and community settings) informs decision-making. She received her M.A in Marriage and Family Therapy from LaSalle University in 2009, and subsequently worked as a multi-systemic therapist for adolescents and their families. Her previous work with families and clinical training informs her current research in adolescent development, as well as her interest in translational research and intervention development.

Denia Garcia

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2017-2020

Denia Garcia was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University from 2017-2020. Following her fellowship with CRRES, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University in 2017. Her research interests include race/ethnicity, urban sociology, political sociology, and organizations. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on a three-year ethnography of a multiethnic neighborhood in Chicago, which speaks to ongoing debates about the consequences of ethnic/racial diversity for social relations and civic participation. She has also examined how social cues influence the perception of race and skin color, racial attitudes, and social capital among urban families using survey and experimental data.

Vanessa Cruz Nichols

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2017-2019

Email:

vcruznic@iu.edu

Vanessa Cruz Nichols was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society in 2017-19 and accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University.  Her research interests have centered on citizen activism and motivators of political participation with a particular focus on reassessing the hypothesis that threat is the main catalyst that awakens the Latino “sleeping giant.” Instead of potentially exacerbating feelings of helplessness while only emphasizing a sense of urgency (or policy threat), combining these messages with more opportunity-based policy alternatives may be an improved strategy to catalyze a group to rise, and not succumb, to the challenge before them. Vanessa’s dissertation leveraged data from an original bilingual survey experiment and observational survey analyses from the American National Election Study. To build on her dissertation work, Vanessa is conducting mobilizer interviews and analyzing data from a second survey experiment, which delves into the causal mechanisms of fear and hope. Vanessa’s book project is tentatively titled “Latinos Rising to the Challenge: Political Responses to Peril and Promise.”

Dorainne Green

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2016-2018

Email:

dojlevy@indiana.edu

Dorainne Green was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University from 2016-2018. Following her fellowship with CRRES, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Northwestern University in 2016. Her research explores the pathways through which stigma-related stressors contribute to disparities in education and health between socially advantaged and socially disadvantaged individuals. A primary interest is the identification of strategies to help stigmatized individuals manage the challenges of navigating diverse spaces, including those with the potential to expose them to stigma-related stressors.

Adam Bledsoe

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2016-2017

Adam Bledsoe was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society during the 2016-2017 academic year. Following his fellowship with CRRES, he accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Geography and African American Studies at Florida State University. His research focuses on racialization, social movements, and struggle in the context of the African Diaspora, drawing on participatory research, archival work, and critical theory to examine the historical and contemporary struggles of Black communities in Salvador, Brazil, as they seek to defend their territories from a series of land grabs. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Defending Our Piece of Ground: The Quilombos of the Bay of Aratu.

Tristan Ivory

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2015-2017

Tristan Ivory served as a Postdoctoral Fellow with CRRES from 2015-2017, and is now  in a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University.  Tristan’s areas of specialization include international migration, race and ethnicity, inequality, and transnationalism, and he utilizes ethnographic observation, interviews, contemporary news accounts, and archival data to examine the resources and strategies that Sub-Saharan African migrants use to try to maximize social and economic outcomes in the Tokyo Metropolitan Region. He is currently working on his first book project, tentatively titled Greener Pastures: Sub-Saharan Africans and the Pursuit of Social Mobility in Japan.

Hyeyoung Kwon

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2015-2017

Hyeyoung Kwon received her Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Southern California. Following her Postdoctoral Fellowship with CRRES (2015-2017), she accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research focuses on immigration, comparative race/ethnicity, social inequality, and family. Drawing from in-depth interviews and ethnographic data, she is currently writing her book manuscript, tentatively titled, Translating Race, Class, and Immigrant Lives, which examines the daily lives of Mexican- and Korean-American “language brokers” who use their bilingual skills to navigate English-speaking institutions for their immigrant parents. In a socio-historical moment where immigrants of color are depicted as threats to the economic stability of “true” Americans, her work seeks to expose the contradictions between the ideal of equality and the actual practices of race, class, and language-based exclusion. Her publications appear in Social Problems, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Childhood.

Sean Everette Gantt

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2014-2016

Website:

https://seangantt.wordpress.com/

Sean Everette Gantt earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico before joining CRRES as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014. Following his CRRES Fellowship, Sean accepted a position as Assistant Director of Education at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO. Sean is a visual and public anthropologist with training in archaeology and ethnography, specializing in Southeastern U.S. Native American Studies and focusing on economic development, indigenous self-representation, and identity. His dissertation, entitled “Nanta Hosh Chahta Immi? (What are Choctaw Ways?): Cultural Preservation in the Casino Era,” investigates the long-term impacts of tribal economic development programs on the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians reservation in East-Central Mississippi.

Diana Martha Louis

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2014-2016

Diana Martha Louis received her Ph.D. in English from Emory University in July 2014. Following her Postdoctoral Fellowship with CRRES, she accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her research pursues the intersections of Disability Studies and Critical Race Studies with respect to issues of mental illness in African American life. Her current project, The Colored Insane: Slavery, Asylums and Mental Illness in 19th-Century America, examines the impact of major transformations in both American psychiatry and African Americans’ social condition—the end of one of America’s prototypical institutions of confinement and the expansion of another, slavery and asylums, respectively.

Nicole Ivy

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2013-2015

Following the conclusion of her Postdoctoral Fellowship with CRRES, Nicole became an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Public Fellow in Washington, D.C., where she also worked as a Futurist with the Center for the Future of Museums. In this her unique role as a Futurist with a formation in History, Nicole collaborated with museums, educators, and researchers to innovate museum practice and conducts research on the history of labor organizing in the nonprofit sector. She is now an Assistant Professor in American Studies at George Washington University. Her scholarly work focuses on racial formations, memory, and the labor of representation. 

Julie Lee Merseth

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2013-2015

Julie Lee Merseth received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2013. After finishing her Postdoctoral Fellowship with CRRES in 2015, she accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. Her areas of specialization are situated in the field of American politics with a dual and overlapping focus on race and immigration. Her research is especially animated by questions of how racial and ethnic politics in the United States are changing as a result of fast-growing populations of immigrants, largely from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Her current book project, tentatively titled, Beyond Panethnicity: Immigration and the Challenges of Racial Solidarity, investigates the potential and pitfalls of forging a race-based political solidarity among Asian Americans and Latinos.