Current STS Graduate Students

Martin Abbott mja273@cornell.edu	Martin’s research is concerned with the nature and culture of climate change. This research is focused on how the conception of urban resilience promoted by the high-profile 100 Resilient Cities initiative intersects with urban politics, emerging technologies, and environmental change in the coastal cities of Chennai (India) and New Orleans (USA). Martin’s studies at Cornell are supported generously by the John Crampton Travelling Scholarship. Martin holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Master of Arts in Political Sociology from Sciences Po Paris.
Audrey Baker azb4@cornell.edu	Audrey's research interests center on emerging sociotechnical food regimes, including how institutional, political, technological and ecological structures mediate emerging food production strategies such as digital and cellular agriculture, how these impact and may be influenced by food sovereignty movements at different scales, which experts get to define a healthy, sustainable, just food system, and how different actors in these spaces conceptualize the roles of nature and land. Audrey is an employee degree PhD student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies who is also on staff and an instructor with Cornell’s Master of Public Health Program.
Brenda (Bren) Castañeda bfc32@cornell.edu	Bren’s research interests include: nuclear disaster, apocalyptic imaginaries, environmental catastrophe, and speculative science fiction. They hope to dive into the global nuclear waste crisis to explore the aftermaths of radioactive contamination and the alterlives of those who face its impacts. They aim to examine the spread of environmental disasters as a racial justice issue to highlight inequalities faced by people in their experiences of earthly apocalyptic catastrophes. Bren’s previous research focused on the intersections of legal studies and STS in relation to forensic science, jury decision-making, and admissibility of evidence in court trials. Bren has a B.A. in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry from Wesleyan University, where they also completed the Science in Society Program. They received their M.A. in Psychology from Wesleyan University.
Amy Cheatle ac2288@cornell.edu	Amy investigates how computational systems and practices change time-honored forms of craftwork. Her ethnographic field research focuses on a trio of case studies; the fine art furniture studio adopting digital fabrication technologies, the operating room introducing robotic surgical procedures, and the luthier’s workshop combining both empirical and data-driven techniques in contemporary violinmaking. Together these cases reveal emergent forms of artisanal practice, reconfigurations to teamwork and collaboration, and unique and interdisciplinary pathways for transmitting knowledge relevant to larger audiences interested in human-computer interaction and science and technology studies.
Cat Coyle cmc569@cornell.edu	Cat is a Ph.D. student who works at the intersection of science and technology studies, media studies, and the history of technology. Her research interests include the historical and material study of media and media transmission, and utilizes the techniques of media archaeology. She is interested in the study of failed, broken, and fossilized media technologies and phenomena. Cat received a B.A. in English from Saint Joseph’s University and an M.A. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University.
Shoshana Deutsh smd338@cornell.edu	Shoshana's areas of interest are: Illness subjectivities of healthcare professionals; mental health and trauma; prevention and risk; anthropology of the body and bodily knowledges; nursing education, expertise and practices; medical training and professional knowledges; epistemologies of care; institutional ethnography; sensory studies; feminist science studies.
Amanda Domingues aad247@cornell.edu	Amanda's dissertation examines what is at stake in the production of scientific knowledge about the past. Focusing on the work of archaeologists, Amanda carries out ethnographic work in archaeological sites, laboratories, and museums in Brazil and in the US using feminist theoretical approaches. Her dissertation will explore accomplishments and struggles of archaeologists in their quest to incorporate marginalized knowledge systems in archaeological practices. She will use STS insights on issues of gender, race, categorization, and ethics to understand how archaeologists coordinate scientific evidence with knowledges that transcend science. Amanda is also an undergraduate and graduate tutor with Cornell's Knight Institute and a regular collaborator in pedagogical projects that encourage feminist and radical teaching practices.
Mehmet Ekinci me332@cornell.edu	Mehmet's interests include: Sociology and anthropology of science-technology; laboratory studies; intellectual histories of life sciences, biomedicine, biotechnology and bioinformatics; social and critical theory; economics of science; new institutionalism; public engagement with science; science journalism; science fiction and STS.
Kathrine Gilman keg97@cornell.edu	Kathrine is interested in the intersection of environmental science, history, and Indigenous studies. She is particularly interested in the transfer of environmental knowledge between Haudenosaunee people and settlers and how that knowledge has evolved as Haudenosaunee people have been forcibly removed from their homelands, as they return to them, and how colonizers remaining in the area co-opted, discarded, or modified Native knowledges of the land. She is also curious how knowledges of the land have been preserved, written, and recorded and how that has impacted our current understanding of the land. Kathrine has a B.A. in History from West Virginia University and an MAT in secondary education from Boston University. She taught high school for several years before coming to Cornell.
Bianca Grier bg423@cornell.edu
Rebecca Harrison rah288@cornell.edu	Becca's research considers how agricultural biotechnologists are deliberate, ethical actors navigating both a complex regulatory structure and increasing public concern about genetic engineering. Specifically, she focuses on academic scientists at land-grant institutions (like Cornell), and is using tools from STS to imagine a more reflective type of public engagement around technology development.
Jiuheng He j h2666@cornell.edu	Jiuheng's research is concerned with the encounter of human's expertise with Artificial Intelligence. The dissertation project aims to study the interactions between humans and AI with the case of AlphaGo and Go community, where human’s expertise is challenged by machine learning’s capability. This research will provide insights on governance and interpretability of machine learning algorithms at the intersection of the human world and the rapidly-changing AI world. Additional research interests include social construction of technology, history of artificial intelligence and critical data studies.
Wanheng Hu wh429@cornell.edu	Wanheng is a Ph.D. candidate in Science and Technology Studies with a minor in Media Studies. His research lies at the intersection of social studies of science, medicine, and technology; critical data/algorithm studies; and public engagement with science. His dissertation examines the cultivation of credible machine learning (ML) algorithms in expert practices, with an empirical focus on image-based diagnostics within the Chinese medical artificial intelligence (AI) industry. His most recent work is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Machine Learning and Public Understanding of Science.
Hai Ri Jeon hj455@cornell.edu
Yuxin Jia yj379@cornell.edu	Yuxin’s current research focuses on labor and environmental issues in computing infrastructures. She’s curious about people’s alternative technological solutions and imaginaries beyond designers’ intentions. She also has a broad interest in anthropology, human-computer interaction, and media studies.
Barkha Kagliwal bsk76@cornell.edu	Barkha's dissertation is tentatively titled, "Understanding Processing: Food and Technoscience in India". One solution to the problem of food wastage in India could be processing, the thesis analyzes how processing technologies are shaping the food system. Using the case of Mega Food Parks, it illuminates interactions between food processing technologies, infrastructures and national policy design in changing the agri-food sector. Keywords: Sociology of technology; economic sociology; market sociology; food studies; food quality; Indian food system; food processing technologies.
Faridah Laffan fel23@cornell.edu	Faridah's areas of interest include: History of archaeology, anthropology, and museums; race, gender, class, and religion in the production of new knowledge; public understandings of science via 19th century museum and press practices. Her dissertation will be on the history of Assyriology in the British empire.
Lissette Lorenz ldl54@cornell.edu	Lissette Lorenz is a PhD candidate with a background in environmental studies, theater, and dance. They study the environ-mental health challenges of more-than-human communities in the age of planetary crisis. Drawing from critical social theories across the humanities and social sciences, Lissette utilizes interdisciplinary and experimental qualitative methods involving somatic techniques to address this crisis. Lissette also draws from their own neurodivergent experiences to further explore Earthly un/worlding in art-science contexts. Their writing on community-based theater for environmental justice can be found in the Routledge Handbook for Art, Science, and Technology Studies. Their research is funded in part by the Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation. For more information, visit their website: https://lissettelorenz.com/.
Jason Ludwig jdl328@cornell.edu	Jason Ludwig is a PhD candidate in Science & Technology Studies. His dissertation examines how government officials, computer experts, and activists sought to advance racial equality through computing in the postwar United States. His interests span histories of race science, surveillance, disaster studies, and the radical politics of science and technology.
Vishal Nyayapathi vn82@cornell.edu	Vishal is interested in how agroforestry management works on the ground in contemporary Sri Lanka. This project speaks to discussions in the environmental humanities, postcolonial science studies and South Asian area studies. They received a B.A. in Anthropology from The George Washington University.
Donny Persaud dhp75@cornell.edu	Donny is interested in how internet infrastructures construct and reshape understandings of place, nature, and the environment. His dissertation research explores emerging issues associated with low-earth-orbit satellite internet infrastructure, examining how stakeholders including telecom operators, astronomers, legal bodies, and activists mobilize overlapping and conflicting visions of nature to argue for varying levels of environmental protection for outer space.
Andra Sonia Petrutiu ap794@cornell.edu	Combining STS and sociocultural anthropology, Sonia’s current research is theoretically situated at the intersection of infrastructure studies, technopolitics, and postcolonial science studies. Framed by a general concern with climate science and climate politics, she discusses how Indian climate modeling and supercomputing shape and are shaped by far-reaching technopolitical trajectories, changing discourses of self-reliant development, and the re-production of the postcolonial nation as well as state power via articulations of technoscientific nationalism. Another strand in Sonia’s work uses Indian climate modeling as an empirical case to examine postcolonial science studies vis-à-vis critical discourses on the Anthropocene in order to analyze the multilayered interplay between climate change, scientific knowledge and geopolitical power.
Sahar Tavakoli st696@cornell.edu	Sahar's areas of interest include: Material culture studies, performativity, sociology of medicine and medical technology, identity and gender in relation to clinical technologies/spaces/practices, commonplace/invisible/mundane artifacts in technological spaces.
Dawn Warfield dmw333@cornell.edu
Elexis Williams etw34@cornell.edu	Elexis Trinity is a PhD student in the field of Science and Technology Studies with a background in area studies, human and nonhuman rights. While their master’s research focused on Russian water policy during the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, their current research interests mobilize around histories of science, environmental history/STS and knowledge-making, with a particular focus on the sea in human history, the making of underwater laboratories, and the spatialization of the oceans and seas in scientific practice, ecotourism, and conservation. Currently reading: anything about oceanography, marine archeology, or seascape epistemologies.
Alena Zhang axz3@cornell.edu	Alena’s research interests are in environmental and postcolonial science studies, with a particular focus on energy infrastructure. She is affiliated with the Southeast Asia program at Cornell. She likes the curry lentil soup at Zeus.
Yue Zhao yz2765@cornell.edu	Yue Zhao is a PhD Candidate in Science and Technology Studies. Her dissertation project investigates the intersection of medical history and history of information technology in modern China. She is interested in examining technical embodiment through feminist STS perspectives. She received her MA in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. View Yue's website.