Dorcas Akinwande
Mellon Mays Fellow
Faculty Mentors: Julia Adams and Valarie Hansen
Dorcas Akinwande is a rising junior Mellon Mays Fellow in Ezra Stiles College. She is majoring in East Asian Studies with a concentration on China and a disciplinary focus in the social sciences. This summer, she will be participating in the Summer Research Training Program at the University of Chicago. Dorcas’ research will explore contemporary gender & women’s studies, and media representations of professional women in Taiwan.
Yvette Borja
Mellon Mays Fellow
Faculty Mentor: John Bryan Starr
Yvette is a rising junior in Saybrook College majoring in American Studies. She is interested in researching the inequalities in public school policy, particularly as they pertain to immigrant families. More specifically, she is interested in analyzing the discursive spaces of English Language Learner classrooms in public charter schools.
Heidi Guzman
Mellon Mays Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Jafari Allen
Heidi is a rising junior in Saybrook College majoring in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. Her research focuses on illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic in Puerto Rico. Next summer, she hopes to do field work in San Juan, Puerto Rico and work with local Dominican women to analyze how immigration affects notions of Dominican national identity and gender.
Pedro Rolon
Mellon Mays Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Paulo Moreira
Pedro’s research interests lie in the study of Boom, post-Boom, and contemporary 21st century Latin American literature and theory, analyzing how contemporary discourse informs the structure of Latin American literature today in ways similar, but decidedly distinct, from the ways it shaped the literature of the last century. He is interested in topics of gender, sexuality, realism, and narrative form relating to the literature of Latin America.
Elizabeth “EB” Saldaña
Mellon Mays Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Scott Boorman
EB Saldaña is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles, majoring in Ethnicity, Race and Migration. Her research focuses on intra- and inter-ethnic uses of social media among countries in the Arab Spring, with particular attention to Tunisia and Egypt. She hopes to spend the summer learning the technological and cultural languages of these social media.
Hana Awwad
Bouchet Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Liz Montegary
Hana Awwad is a Bouchet Fellow in Davenport College. A Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major, she is interested in critical pedagogy, critical theory, and postcolonial theory as they relate to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Black Panther Party, especially between 1964 and 1982.
Paolo Costa
Bouchet Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Gary Gorton
Paulo Costa is a rising junior in Ezra Stiles College working with Professor Gary Gorton at the Yale School of Management. Paulo is interested in measuring the level of financial literacy in Brazil and the impact of financial literacy training on people’s financial behavior. As a secondary research topic, Paulo is studying the historically high interest rates in Brazil. Over the summer, Paulo is being mentored by Dr. Arminio Fraga, a former President of the Central Bank of Brazil.
Denise St. Jean
Bouchet Robertson Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Richard Baxtor
Denise St. Jean is a Chemistry major and a junior in Ezra Stiles College. She has a strong interest in the field of public health and eradicating some of the social disparities in health care. Denise is interested in studying infectious diseases and researching the molecular and behavioral epidemiology of malaria and the innate immune system of the mosquito to control and prevent the spread of the vector-borne disease.
Zaina Zayyad
Bouchet Fellow
Faculty Mentor: Marcia Inhorn
Zaina Zayyad is a junior in Davenport College majoring in Global Affairs and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. She is interested in conducting anthropological research on the mental health and education of Iraqi refugees in the United States and Jordan. Zaina plans to continue her research in the laboratory of Dr. Hal Blumenfeld, where as a STARS Summer Research Fellow, she conducted research using epilepsy as a model for consciousness under Joshua Motelow. She believes that the biological understanding that can be garnered from this research can provide insight into the societal condition of refugee populations. Zaina hopes her research can be used to better understand how mental health affects learning, motivation, and education as key components of societal progress.
