The Kellogg Institute is pleased to welcome ten new members of the Doctoral Student Affiliate program to our scholarly community for the 2020-21 academic year.

These students join the ranks of more than 90 current doctoral student affiliates:

  • Brian Boyd is a doctoral student in moral theology whose work focuses on the ethics of economics. His dissertation examines the role of solidarity and the demands of justice in response to the phenomenon of “deaths of despair” – the dramatic rise in deaths from substance abuse and suicide in devastated former manufacturing communities in nations that have switched to importing goods from overseas.
     
  • Colin Davison is a third-year doctoral student in economics whose research interests focus on the confluence of innovation, technological diffusion, and development economics. He specifically looks at how innovation happens and the impact it has on economic activity. His current research explores how the steam engine and industrialization affected innovation, business development, and education.
     
  • Lan Dinh is a doctoral student in economics whose research interests involve firms, market power, and economic growth. While his previous work looked at the role and growth of firms in the US, his focus has shifted to developing economies, exploring what limits firm growth India and China and how this may limit job creation and economic growth itself.
     
  • Maryssa Gabriel Hawking is a doctoral candidate in the JSD Program in International Human Rights Law.  Her research explores the effectiveness of the international human rights law system in improving maternal health across different cultures and societies. On the regional level, her research looks at health care systems in Latin America and Europe, drilling down to the national level in exploring the specific contexts in Brazil and Ireland.
     
  • Peitong Jing is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Political Science. Her research seeks to understand how contemporary communist and post-communist states refashion and utilize religious beliefs to suit their political purposes. She specifically is looking at how religious and political leaders base their political agenda upon Catholic beliefs in Poland and upon mixed traditional religious-philosophical beliefs in China, such as Confucianism with Marxist ideologies.
     
  • Laura Neftaly López-Pérez is a first-year political science doctoral student whose research will analyze the context of gross human rights violations and organized criminal violence in Mexico. She specifically is looking at the many cases of the “disappeared” and the intricate interconnections between state institutions and criminal organizations in Mexico, studying the relationships among human agency, institutional change, and the delivery of justice.
     
  • Vivek Moorthy is a doctoral student in economics whose research looks at family economics and development, with a focus on Asia, Africa, and Latin America and a particular interest in the microeconomic impacts of macroeconomic trends and phenomena on the family. His dissertation examines how, in Brazil, technological changes in agriculture affect demand for men's and women's labor differently, and how these impacts then translate into impacts on bargaining power, family formation, and fertility.
     
  • Santiago Navarrete Astorquiza is a doctoral student in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures whose current research focuses on the effects of extractive economies in Latin American culture. Through the analysis of representations in literature and film, he aims to identify the functions given to different actors in the region in contexts of extraction. He specifically looks at how the presence, agency, languages, and epistemologies of racialized and gendered groups (indigenous and women) participate in economic activities that are based on obtaining and export raw materials.
     
  • Paul Peter Shaloka is a third-year doctoral student in economics whose research looks at how skill-biased technical change affects labor markets and agricultural practices in developing countries.  His ongoing work focuses on how specific types of technical change in agriculture affect agricultural practices and labor and land markets in Brazil.
     
  • Mary A. Shiraef is a fourth year doctoral student in political science whose research examines processes of migration and identity politicization, with a focus on how collective memory takes shape in post-authoritarian regimes. Her dissertation investigates the mechanisms of political identity formation among migrants from southern Albania, specifically comparing notions of community belonging among those from a state-backed "minority zone" with those whose minority rights were removed.

Doctoral student affiliates are nominated by Kellogg faculty fellows or by their directors of graduate studies. Through their connection to Kellogg, affiliates are able to build relationships with faculty fellows and other grad students, meet with outside scholars visiting Kellogg, participate in weekly lectures and work‑in‑progress seminars, attend conferences and workshops, and receive grants and fellowships in support of their research and professional development. In turn, their participation enriches the interdisciplinary intellectual community at Kellogg.