I was raised in India, and I am majoring in Political and Social Thought. My specific interests lie in the intersections between religion, race and government in the global East, as well as how race and religion inform American democracy through American literature. I am also broadly interested in social movements—their origins and impacts. Although these topics seem disparate, I enjoy making connections between them in order to better understand the state of democracy in our world today.
Katherine Martin is a fourth-year Studio Arts major with a concentration in New Media. Her research interests include societal and cultural views of people of color as well as how individuals process emotional events through animation, painting, and other forms of art creation.
Matthew Slaats is a PhD candidate in the University of Virginia School of Architecture’s PhD program in the Constructed Environment. As a part of his research he is building a participatory action research initiative with community partners to study how grassroots social transformation is imagined and realized by Black communities in the Southern US. Based on this work, the group is thinking about how these ideas around assemblies and solidarity economies might be implemented in Virginia. Previous to this Matthew dedicated his career to supporting grassroots community-based decision making by implementing creative placemaking projects and participatory budgeting initiatives. This included developing unique collaborations that magnified the immense knowledge that resides in every neighborhood. This has led to projects focusing on environmental sustainability, affordable housing, community development, and food justice that have been supported through a range of foundations and federal grants.
Michelle Bostic is a second year PhD student in Religious Ethics at the University of Virginia. She has a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies and Communications from Lee University. Michelle is interested in the intersections of Race, Poverty, Housing, and Virtue Ethics through engaging non-ideal theory, epistemology, and black feminism/womanism.
Ryan Russell is a PhD candidate in the department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He studies African and American political thought, focusing on the intersections and politics of anticolonialism, violence, and racial capitalism.
I received my BA in cinematography and political and social thought from the University of Virginia in 2021. I love to create art, find stories, and be outdoors. I also love to explore questions art, activism, and colonial legacies. I have spent most of my life in Tanzania.
Lauren Budreau is a fourth year student with a double major in Studio Art and American Studies and a minor in Art History. She has been interested in how art can be used to convey the damages humans are inflicting on the environment. Her recent work has approached this in the aspect of apocalypse, envisioning if humans have failed to preserve their ability to exist on the earth. Through her work, she hopes people will be more conscious of their daily actions and how they affect the environment.
Michelle Walsh is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies, specializing in Himalayan Buddhist practices and contemplative studies. Her research focuses on the globalization of religion and contemporary religious approaches to emotional well-being while considering local contexts and their impact. As a trained healthcare practitioner and program developer in public health, social service, and higher education in Asia and North America, her work lies at the intersection of religion and health.
Enrique Unruh was born in Madrid, Spain and grew up in Phoenix Arizona and Fairfax, Virginia. He is majoring in Global Studies with a concentration in Global Development and minoring in Statistics. His work for Batten’s Global Policy Center mapping the Venezuelan exodus sparked his interest in immigration policy. Over the summer, he interned for the UVA Equity Center on their Democratization of Data project where he analyzed the Charlottesville police department’s search and frisk practices. As he continues his undergraduate career, he hopes to research how the legacy of Spanish colonialism influences modern Spanish politics.
Clara Ma is a Ph.D. candidate in art and architectural history in the McIntire Department of Art. Her dissertation explores how Buddhist monks negotiated their identity in the western borderland of China from the eighth to the tenth century.
Allison Mitchell is a Ph.D. student in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. She studies 20th-century African American history, focusing on Black political organizing during the Civil Rights Movement.
Jason Oliver Evans is a PhD student in the Christian Theological Perspectives area of study in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Evans primarily studies Christology, soteriology, creation and theological anthropology. In his work, Evans considers how identity, race, sexuality and gender more broadly factor into the study of Christian faith and practice. Evans’ other research interests include trinitarian theology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, practical theology, Scripture and theological hermeneutics, and the thought of 20th-century Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Previously, Evans earned a Bachelor of Science in speech communication at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Divinity at Duke Divinity School, and a Master of Theology at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Evans is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, Inc. In his spare time, Evans enjoys cooking, baking, reading cookbooks and food magazines, and binge watching cooking shows.
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