Perry World House Welcomes 2023-24 Class of Postdoctoral Fellows

Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania’s hub for global affairs, has announced its 2023-24 cohort of Postdoctoral Fellows. Each fellow was selected both for their outstanding academic excellence and research interest in global policy. The fellows will spend a year on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia, pursuing their own research and supporting Perry World House’s mission to bring the University’s knowledge to bear on urgent global challenges. Among other contributions, Postdoctoral Fellows mentor undergraduate Student Fellows on their year-long policy projects; take part in our academic programming, including workshops and colloquia; and help to shape public events.  

“Our new class of Postdoctoral Fellows bring expertise on diverse policy areas to Penn,” said LaShawn R. Jefferson, Senior Executive Director of Perry World House. “Reflecting disciplines such as sociology, journalism, history, and political science, they will invigorate our work on the most crucial global policy issues facing our world with their unique perspectives and insights.”  

The 2023-24 Perry World House Postdoctoral Fellows are (an asterisk denotes a returning fellow): 

Angela Chesler researches the themes of political violence, migration, climate change and environmental politics. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Global Environmental Politics, Climatic Change, and Climate Policy, and her research has received awards from organizations such as the American Political Science Association and the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. Chesler received her PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame and her BS in economics and international affairs from Georgia Tech. Previously, she worked in Washington, DC as a researcher at the United States Institute of Peace. 

Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn’s research covers the imperial histories of surveillance and agribusiness throughout the twentieth century. His book project, Net Empire: US and Israeli Technologies of Counterinsurgency Across the Americas, argues that US efforts to subcontract the control of movement of people in Palestine and Latin America shaped contemporary policing protocols and data surveillance of agricultural farmland in the United States. Cutipa-Zorn’s writing has been published in Cultural Dynamics, Review of International Studies, and Space and Society. He received his PhD in American studies from Yale University and his BA in history and Africana studies from Brown University. 

*Biz Herman works with Beth Simmons, the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science, and Business Ethics, on Perry World House’s Border and Boundaries Project, which examines how political life both affects and is affected by border security policies. Her research explores how experiencing violence in the context of conflict and forced migration shapes social cohesion and prospects for sustainable peace. She is a visiting scholar at The New School for Social Research’s Trauma and Global Mental Health Lab and a member of the Human Trafficking Vulnerability Lab, and previously served as a Fulbright Fellow to Bangladesh and an Innovation Fellow at Beyond Conflict’s Innovation Lab. Herman received her PhD in political science from University of California, Berkeley and her BA in political science and economics from Tufts University. In addition to her academic work, she is an Emmy-nominated visual journalist.  

Manya Oriel Kagan is a sociologist of education, with a focus on refugee and migrant children’s rights to and in education in urban settings, primarily in East Africa and the Middle East. She has co-authored papers in journals including Race, Ethnicity and Education, Critique of Anthropology, and Adoption and Fostering. She co-edited a Hebrew-language book, Development in Africa, and is the current co-editor of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology of Childhood. Kagan also serves as a visiting scholar at Clark University. She completed her PhD at the School of Education at Ben Gurion University, Israel, and received her BA in comparative religions and her master’s in international development from The Hebrew University, Israel.  

Suji Kang will work on the Borders and Boundaries Project at Perry World House. She researches political psychology, political behavior, misinformation, experimental methods, and causal inference, also examining how trusted sources influence people’s political perceptions and behaviors. Her work is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. She received the Rapoport Family Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant. Kang completed her PhD in political science at Northwestern University. 

Amanda Pinheiro is an interdisciplinary scholar of the intersection of race, migration, and transnational policy. She investigates the human cost of racially charged migration deterrence policies and practices in the Americas, foregrounding race in global migration research and policymaking. Her current work is a multi-country ethnography that examines how migration policies, imbued with transnational anti-Black racism, displaced Haitians throughout the Americas in the last decade. Pinheiro holds a PhD in global studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MA in Latin American and Latino studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to joining academia, she was an investigative reporter in her hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.