2021
Roundtable: Narratives
Lauren Campbell, Food Within Narratives; Advisors: Carol DeBoer-Langworthy; Lina Fruzzetti; Evelyn Lincoln
Riya Kothari, Lost & Found: stories of partition, people, and place; Advisors: Sheila Bonde; David Udris; Michael Stewart
Michael Angel Mireles, COVID-19 in the Borderlands; Advisors: Anne DeGuzman
Karya Sezener, Music and Dramatic Meaning in Narratives (Google Drive link); Advisors: Eric Nathan
Facilitator: Nicole Sintetos, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies
Roundtable: Growing Up in America: Contemporary Youth Issues
Morgan Awner, The Failures of the Juvenile Legal System; Advisors: Tracy Lehman; District Court Judge Alexandra Robert Gordon; Ari Gabinet
Bella Cavicchi, The Essentiality of Playing Pretend: Imagination, Creativity, and Theatre-Based Teaching Artistry in the Early Childhood Virtual Classroom; Advisors: Patricia Sobral; Eileen Landay; Laura Snyder
Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit, Beyond Popular Discourses of Military Families: Families of Service members; Advisors: Jessaca Leinaweaver, Catherine Lutz
Facilitator: Lindsay Garcia, MFA, Ph.D., Assistant Dean of the College for Junior/Senior Studies and Recovery & Substance-Free Student Initiatives
Roundtable: Sustainable Infrastructure for Emerging Markets
Rose Beatty, Sarang Mani,Camilla Scaramelli dos Santos; Advisor: Ricardo Bayon
Facilitator: Nirva LaFortune ’19 A.M., Assistant Director, Curricular Resource Center for Peer Advising
Roundtable: Human Progress
Wassa Bagayoko, Environmental Refugees? The Terra Nullius of International Law; Advisors: Nina Tannenwald
Nhu Phung, Multispecies Ethnography—A Beyond Human Approach to Climate Change; Advisors: Elizabeth Lord
Benjamin A. Spiegel, Grounding Adverbs in Parameterized Skills; Advisors: Professor George D. Konidaris; Stefanie Tellex; Ellie Pavlick
Facilitator: Avery Danage, Jr., Transfer, RUE, and E-Gap Program Manager, The College
Poster Session:
Anchita Dasgupta, Legal Resistance in Kashmir and Palestine
Madeline Greenberg, Face the Data (Website link)
Abby Wells, देव and θέος: A Comparative Analysis of Divine Narratives in the Hindu Purāṇas and the Homeric Hymns
Bashar Zaidat, Machine Learning To Improve Electronic Stimulation
Linda (Yue) Zhang, Make-or-break: The Influence of Expected Challenges and Rewards on the Motivation and Experience Associated with Cognitive Effort Exertion
Sai Kurapati, COVID-19 Equity and Ethics: Dissecting America’s Response to the Pandemic
Jenny Lee, Impact of Pre-existing Mental Illness on TBI Outcomes
Ashwin Palaniappan, Medical Malpractice Litigations Involving Aortic Dissection
Emilia Ruzicka, Postmarks: The Life and Legacy of the United States Postal Service (Podcast link; Website link)
Roundtable Presenters
Morgan Awner
Morgan is a senior from Buffalo, New York studying public policy and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her public policy capstone explores the historical and legal origins of the juvenile legal system as an inequitable and informal institution. Morgan has worked extensively in Providence on issues of education equity and progressive campaigns.
Bella Cavicchi
Bella Cavicchi is a senior from Mansfield, MA with an independent concentration in Literacy and the Performing Arts. Her work on and off campus reflects her passion for teaching and learning; participatory theatre-making, and working with young people, interests she has coalesced in the design of her honors thesis on the role of the imagination in virtual early childhood theatre classrooms. Following her graduation, she will pursue an MPhil in Arts, Creativity, and Education at Cambridge University.
Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit
Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit is a senior at Brown University concentrating in Anthropology, French and Francophone Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is a general peer advisor and DUGs and Theories in Action Conference Co-Coordinator at the Curricular Resource Center, and he has very much enjoyed helping fellow students across a wide range of academic issues as a peer advisor. Poom is also a leader of the French and Francophone Studies DUG as well as a staff columnist for the Brown Daily Herald.
Benjamin A. Spiegel
Benjamin is a senior concentrating in Computers and Minds, an Independent Concentration he designed to be a comprehensive study of Artificial Intelligence. His passion for AI has lead him to pursue research on the intersection of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL). His interest in AI goes beyond the technical issues and into the macro-sociological and ethical dilemmas surrounding it.
Wassa Bagayoko
Wassa Bagayoko is a senior from Harlem concentrating in International Relations. She is passionate about the intersections between climate change and human rights, most notably the legal grey areas concerning climate change migrants. She hopes to continue exploring this passion by pursuing a law degree after graduation.
Nhu Phung
Nhu is a senior from Vietnam studying Anthropology and Environmental Studies, and is actively involved in DUG leadership for both department. Nhu has done multiple fieldwork studying eco-anxiety, climate activism during corona, DPS and student relations, & climate literacy in Vietnam. She also works as a coordinator for the Global Brown Center for International Student, a writing fellow at Writing Center, and a Brown Outing Club leader
Riya Kothari
Riya is a senior and an international student from New Delhi, India with an Independent Concentration in Narrative Form and Visual Culture. Her concentration looks at the intersections of anthropology, visual theory, film and performance. During her time at Brown, she has worked in student film, theatre, and dance, and hopes to continue being involved in the arts in the future.
Michael Angel Mireles
Michael is a Senior from Alton, Texas, concentrating in Development Studies. He has conducted several research projects on immigrant populations, and is currently helping administer an IRB study on Refugees in Providence.
Karya Sezener
Karya Sezener is a composer and singer-songwriter from Istanbul, Turkey. Her focus is in scoring for visual media, theatre, and sound design. She has worked on a number of short films and theatre productions, and is currently working on a Turkish pop/rock EP.
Lauren Campbell
Born and raised in New York, Lauren is an independent concentrator studying Food and Culture. Her work analyzes food’s impact on people, examined through the lenses of narrative, agricultural practices, and cultural context.
Rose Beatty
Rose is a senior from New Jersey concentrating in Public Policy. She’s had experience in impact investing and implementing ESG frameworks for the buy side. She’s excited about the growing participation in ESG accountability and hopes to make meaningful contributions to the space after graduation.
Sarang Mani
Sarang is a senior from Bangalore, India studying Engineering and Economics. He is really interested in all things sustainable finance and (aero)space; on campus, he dedicates his time to the Socially Responsible Investment Fund and the Brown Space Engineering team. Over the past couple of years, he has become particularly passionate about the role sustainable investing can play in addressing SDGs in emerging markets
Camilla Scaramelli dos Santos ‘22
Senior Reflections Presenters
Shira Abramovich ‘21
Project Title: Poems from a University Quarantine
Project Mentor(s): Deb Mills-Scofield, Jim Egan, Ada Smailbegovic, Peter Gale Nelson
Shira Abramovich works across languages, spoken and computational. She is very happy with her first name.
Deven Carmichael ‘21
Project Title: Sonic Entanglements and Quantum Resonances
Project Mentor(s): Brad Marston
Deven is a senior from Tucson, Arizona concentrating in Physics. His thesis investigates how atmospheric waves realize mathematical structures found in quantum matter. Additionally, he is active in Brown’s musical community, creating and performing music from a range of traditions including jazz, experimental, and Hindustani musics.
Rachel Landau ‘20
Project Title: Poems from a University Quarantine
Project Mentor(s): Deb Mills-Scofield, Jim Egan, Ada Smailbegovic, Peter Gale Nelson
Rachel Landau is a recent graduate from Wellesley, Massachusetts. At Brown, she concentrated in Slavic Studies and Literary Arts. She will pursue an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University next year.
Peri Sheinin ‘21
Project Title: PERI
Project Mentor(s): Professor Jonathan Readey; Professor Kate Schapira; Professor Elizabeth Taylor
Peri Sheinin is an aspiring writer, poet and children's book author based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. She is a senior on the Women's Tennis Team and a sportswriter for The Brown Daily Herald. She is pursuing a sports entertainment career and recently worked at HBO.
Sumera Syeda Subzwari ‘21
Project Title: Asian-American, Female, and Mentally Ill: Four Years of Organizing and Advocacy at Brown
Sumera is half-Korean, half-Pakistani, was born in Miami, FL but grew up in Sydney, Australia. She is a senior concentrator in Health and Human Biology, with a focus on disability and mental health studies and how they affect sociocultural understandings of health and healing in minority communities (especially among Asian/Asian-American women). While at Brown, she has been part of Disability Justice at Brown, Project LETS, and various community-based and scholar-activist based work.
Poster Presenters
Anchita Dasgupta ‘21
Project Title: Legal Resistance in Kashmir and Palestine
Project Mentor(s): Alex Winder, Sreemati Mitter, Beshara Doumani
Anchita is a senior from Kolkata, India concentrating in History and Middle East. Activism at against statism and statist violence has molded her political voice which she has used in her research, journalism, and community organising at Brown. Her thesis juxtaposes the mobilization of international law by Kashmiri and Palestinian resistance actors against the law's systemic marginalization of the subaltern to demonstrate that participation in legal processes radicalizes the law incrementally. After graduating, Anchita will spend a year studying Criminology at Cambridge University studying the statist construction of crime, and extend criminological theory to understandings of state crime and violence.
Madeline Greenberg ‘21
Project Title: Face the Data
Project Mentor(s): Sydney Skybetter
Madeline is a performance studies researcher interested in affect theory and embodied trauma at the intersections of performance and technology. Graduating into an arts sector in flux, she is dedicated to establishing communities of service, foregrounding care, and practicing everything.
Sai Kurapati ‘21
Project Title: COVID-19 Equity and Ethics: Dissecting America’s Response to the Pandemic
Project Mentor(s): Professor Daniel Smith and Professor Jennifer Nazareno
Sai Kurapati is a senior double concentrating in Health Equity and Ethics (HEE) and Biology with a focus in Physiology and Biotechnology. She was inspired to design her independent concentration in HEE to challenge society’s accepted definitions of wellbeing and explore how interdisciplinary approaches could be utilized to understand human health on a multidimensional level. As an aspiring physician and lifelong dancer, Sai is particularly passionate about health equity advocacy and using art as a medium for healing.
Jenny Lee ‘21
Project Title: Impact of Preexisting Mental Illness on TBI Outcomes
Project Mentor(s): Dr. Latha Ganti, Professor Sarah Skeels
Jenny is a senior from San Francisco, CA concentrating in Health and Human Biology and Contemplative Studies. She is passionate about social justice and its intersection with holistic health. Through her various roles as a research assistant, PAL tutor, and peer mentor, she has been able to put theory into practice, and hopes to one day be an activist and ally alongside those who are often unheard.
Ashwin Palaniappan ‘21
Project Title: Medical Malpractice Litigations Involving Aortic Dissection
Project Mentor(s): Dr. Frank Sellke
Ashwin is an Applied Math-Economics and Public Health concentrator from New York. He is interested in medical law, and studied abroad in England. After graduation, he will be attending medical school.
Emilia Ruzicka ‘21
Project Title: Postmarks: The Life and Legacy of the United States Postal Service
Project Mentor(s): Leslie Welch, Jonathan Readey, Linda Clark
Emilia Ruzicka is a graduating senior studying data journalism. Her current work includes a year-long personal data collection project, a podcast with WTJU, and her senior thesis, which explores the life and legacy of the U.S. Postal Service. Find out more at emiliaruzicka.com.
Abby Wells ‘21
Project Title: देव and θέος: A Comparative Analysis of Divine Narratives in the Hindu Purāṇas and the Homeric Hymns
Abby has spent her years at Brown working with ancient languages, literatures, and cultures, studying Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Modern Greek. Her work focuses on examining cross-cultural connections within the ancient world, specifically between Ancient Greek and Hindu mythologies. She hopes to continue this research and writing after Brown.
Yue (Linda) Zhang ‘21
Project Title: Make-or-break: The Influence of Expected Challenges and Rewards on the Motivation and Experience Associated with Cognitive Effort Exertion
Project Mentor(s): Dr. Amitai Shenhav, Xiamin Leng
Linda is a senior from Chengdu, China, studying Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research at Brown has focused on people's choice to exert cognitive effort, specifically on how more difficult tasks influence behavior in her honors thesis. Following graduation, she will continue to pursue research in developmental psychology in graduate school.
Bashar Zaidat ‘21
Project Title: Machine Learning To Improve Electronic Stimulation
Bashar Zaidat is a senior from Michigan doing an Independent Concentration in Computational Neuroscience. He is interested in the intersection of technology, medicine, and communication. He hopes to work with immigrant and refugee health in the future.
TiA 2021 Bonus Video: The Meaning of Hope, Then and Now
Inaugural Theories in Action Co-Coordinators Amanda Machado '10 & Nikkisha Smith '10
Moderated by CRC Director/Associate Dean of the College Peggy Chang '93 '13A.M.
The Meaning of Hope, Then and Now connects the Brown undergraduate experience to finding one's path and trajectory through life beyond Brown. It is a reflective conversation drawing upon current events and the panelists' life experiences.
Amanda concentrated in English (Creative Nonfiction) and is a freelance writer. Nikki concentrated in Economics and is an associate at a corporate law firm.