Global Impacts Graduate Fellows
Learn about the 2022-2023 Global Impacts Graduate Fellows below. View the 2020-2021 Global Impacts Fellowship Cohort here and the 2021-2022 Global Impacts Graduate Fellows here.
2022-2023 Cohort
Vidura Jang Bahadur
Communication Studies, School of Communication
ViduraBahadur2023@u.northwestern.eduVidura Jang Bahadur is a photographer and is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies in the program of Rhetoric and Public Culture at Northwestern University. Bahadur's doctoral dissertation explores the relationship between image making practices, citizenship and belonging in this age of rising ethno-religious nationalism, displacement, and mass migration. Through the experience of the ethnic Chinese in India and in the Indian diaspora in Canada and the United States, this project demonstrates that questions of identity and belonging are complicated, and challenges homogenous understandings of national culture and identity.
Esra Cimencioglu is a PhD candidate in Screen Cultures program. Her research interests include global and transnational media, postcolonial theory, and feminist geography with a particular focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her dissertation explores the relationship between space, place, and gender in Iranian cinema and the post-revolutionary feminist media. She has presented her work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, and Middle East History and Theory.
Nnaemeka Ekwelum
African American Studies, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
ekwelum@u.northwestern.eduNnaemeka Ekwelum is a PhD candidate and visual artist in the Department of African American Studies. His dissertation work explores the critical role(s) of beauty, wonderment, and friendship in contemporary and craft art collaborations between and amongst Black artists and creatives.
Nora Gavin-Smyth
Plant Biology & Conservation, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
noragavin-smyth2018@u.northwestern.eduNora Gavin-Smyth is a PhD candidate in the Program in Plant Biology & Conservation. She researches the endemic plant diversity of Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains and specializes in the plant genus Impatiens, which has dozens of IUCN Red Listed taxa in Tanzania. Her research motivation is to understand these rare and unique plants and to find interdisciplinary approaches for their conservation.
Jithin George
Engineering Sciences & Applied Mathematics, McCormick School of Engineering
jithin@u.northwestern.eduJithin George is a PhD candidate in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics. He works in the field of scientific computing, using mathematics to simulate complicated phenomena with the aim of capturing and understanding them better. Currently, his research features the mathematical modeling of electrochemical reactions in order to discover ideal reaction environments for applications like carbon capture and desalination.
Norman Joshua is a PhD candidate in the Department of History. His research traces the historical origins of social order in a postcolonial society. His dissertation examines how the gradual militarization of society prefigured the rise of authoritarian rule in early Cold War Indonesia.
Emilie Lozier is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry, where she studies chemical processes occurring at interfaces. Her research examines artificial systems, such as water splitting on hematite for hydrogen fuel generation, as well as natural ones, such as the interaction of “forever chemicals,” or perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), with groundwater aquifers. She serves on the board of Northwestern's Science Policy Outreach Taskforce (SPOT), a nonpartisan coalition of researchers advocating for evidence-based policy making and science literacy in the local voting-age public.
Ely Orrego-Torres is a PhD candidate in Political Science, focusing on political theory and international relations to address questions on religion and politics in the global context. Her dissertation studies the discourses and practices of religious freedom and secularism in the Americas by devoting attention to transnational and regional networks, particularly, civil society actors participating in the Organization of American States (OAS).
María Palacio
Spanish & Portuguese, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
mariapalacio2023@u.northwestern.eduMaría Palacio is a PhD candidate in the Spanish and Portuguese department. Focused on a group of contemporary testimonial Colombian narratives, her dissertation, “That town is a red zone”: Geographies of the Colombian Armed Conflict in 21st Century Testimonial Narratives, analyzes the impact that monolithic and misleading representations of the conflict have on daily life in what she calls “geographies of war,” or places where war has been prevalent for extended periods. She is interested in exploring how tools and practices like mapping, data visualization, and text analysis might further her research.
Zhihang Ruan
Political Science, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Zhihangruan2021@u.northwestern.eduZhihang Ruan is a PhD candidate in Political Science, focusing on comparative politics, political economy, development, and inequality. His dissertation compares the land institutions in China and Vietnam, traces their historical origins, and examines how the land regimes affect the welfare of rural-to-urban migrant workers through affordable housing provision, tying citizenship rights to property ownership, and urban renewal.
Giovanni Sciacovelli
Economics, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
giovannisciacovelli2024@u.northwestern.eduGiovanni Sciacovelli is a PhD student in the department of Economics. Before joining Northwestern, he studied in Italy, England, Sweden and France for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and spent one year working in the Monetary Policy department of the European Central Bank. His research interests are in Macroeconomics, with an emphasis on issues related to the transmission of monetary and fiscal policies in economies populated with heterogeneous agents.
Qi Song is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. Her dissertation investigates the power dynamic and market inequality intrinsic to the platform economy with China's freight transportation sector and real estate sector as comparative cases.
Tyler Talbott is a PhD candidate in English. His dissertation, “Plotting Ethnonationalism: Race and Novel Theories of the Nation Since the Victorians” brings together the cultures of Victorian empire and postcolonial Britain to examine the relationship between the form of the novel and forms of ethnonational belonging. His research is complemented by his interest in critically analyzing the demographic and methodological assumptions that shape how British literary studies is taught in US universities in relation to questions of race and nation.
Keegan Terek is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology and holds interdisciplinary certificates in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Middle East and North African Studies. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Amman, Jordan, his dissertation examines the discursive politics of humanitarian and activist work around non-heteronormative gender and sexuality.
Hamed Yousefi is a filmmaker and PhD candidate in Art History. His current research interrogates the relationship between modern art and Islamic mysticism ('erfan) in Iran before the 1979 revolution.