Murilo Dorión (Sociology)

Murilo Dorión (Department of Sociology) is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology. He holds an undergraduate degree in sociology and a certificate in statistics and data science from Yale University. Originally from Brazil, Murilo’s work focuses on the social processes that shape individuals' health epistemology and their relationship with vaccination in the context of Brazilian favelas. During his time at the Yale School of Public Health, he worked with the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (Brazilian Ministry of Health) to understand how social determinants of health, gendered performance, and territorial dynamics were shaping the COVID-19 vaccination rollout and acceptance in a favela in Salvador, Brazil. Through his mixed methods field research, Murilo explores the concept of vaccination-as-performance, and how the act of receiving or resisting healthcare serves gendered goals and can be used to build social identity. He is also interested in the ways in which the disruption of social capital through urban resettlement can hinder established healing systems and affect health outcomes. His work seeks to inform and build policy that is grounded in strong causal evidence as well as social theory and ethnographic insights, which come together through iterative mixed-methods research. He is also interested in the sociology of knowledge, community-based approaches to research, and Brazil-China comparative social and policy analysis. 

Anakwa Dwamena (Anthropology)

Anakwa Dwamena (Department of Anthropology) is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology. He holds a B.A. in government and a certificate in African studies from Georgetown University. He has worked as a journalist in the US and in Ghana, covering topics like politics, culture, environmental protection, youth activism, corruption, mass incarceration, art and memory culture. He is passionate about highlighting the struggles and triumphs of Black diasporic communities in the Americas—from the Bronx, to the Costa Chica region of Mexico, to Quilombola communities in the Brazilian state of Maranhao. He has been on the editorial staff of The Nation, The New Republic and The New Yorker, and his writings have been published by the aforementioned, as well as Foreign Policy, Aperture, Africa is a Country, The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Architect’s Newspaper, among others. He was a 2020/2021 Fulbright-National Geographic Fellow conducting research on the intersection between climate change and indigenous knowledge practices. His book of photographs and essays based on that research is in progress. In broad terms, his research interests for his doctoral project involve the intersection of healing, ritual making, herbal practice, human-environment relationships and visual anthropology. He is also interested in environmental conservation, quilombos, community organizing and histories of community organizing—in short, how people come together to fight for their rights. 

Javier Ruiz (Architecture)

Javier Ruiz (School of Architecture) is a first-year doctoral student in the School of Architecture. He holds a professional and a master’s degree in architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). As an architect and researcher interested in the historiographical frameworks that support the theoretical foundations of cultural heritage, he has served as head of the unit of protections for the National Monuments Council, conducting research on architecture, infrastructures, and cities across Chile. His career has been also committed to teaching undergraduate courses on history and theory of architecture, as well as graduate seminars and research studios at PUC, where he was appointed as adjunct professor. Most recently, his teaching has centered around the concept of terraforming and its links to ecological theory, climate crisis, and world-design experiences ranging from the mid-19th century to the present day. Javier is interested in the notion of preservation, in both its historical and environmental meanings. Amidst this intersection, his research at Princeton explores the architectures of nitrate and the trafficking of knowledge, technologies, commodities, capital and representations between the Atacama Desert in Chile and European metropolises during the so-called “saltpeter cycle” at the turn of the twentieth century. 

Ivanna Velisone (Spanish & Portuguese)

Ivanna Velisone (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She holds a B.A. in history from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT) and an M.A. in Latin American art history from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM). Her M.A. research, supported by a fellowship from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), focused on the intersection of photography, gender performance, and modernity in the work of German-Argentinean photographer Annemarie Heinrich. Since 2022, she has served as a professor of Latin American art history at UTDT, where she also led undergraduate seminars related to her fields of study, such as “8M: Feminismos, imágenes y revolución”. Since 2021, she has been a curatorial assistant at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. Velisone has held research internships at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Her research interests encompass Latin American visual culture, modern and contemporary artistic practices, particularly those at the intersection of various disciplines, and gender studies.