MMUF Fellows and Alumni

Current Fellows

CLASS OF 2024

Eli Andrade
English

Eli Andrade is a proud first-generation, low-income, Mexican-American student at Columbia University. As an English major, they enjoy devouring books—anything from classic literature to young adult novels helps satiate their cravings for knowledge. Indeed, their research centers on youth literacy and the power YA novels have to craft discourse surrounding queer relationships, race, and ethnicity. When they’re not writing essays for class, they enjoy eating delicious tamales, listening to rock music, and petting fluffy cats. In the future, they hope to become an academic who champions education accessibility for all.

Hoda Elsharkawy
Middle Eastern Studies; Political Science

Hoda Elsharkawy is a rising junior double majoring in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. She was born and raised in Jersey City and is of Egyptian, Palestinian, and Moroccan descent. Her research—while in its early stages—engages with literature to explore the conception and actualization of prison and its application in the US and Middle East. After graduation, Hoda hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in (drum roll, please) Arab and Islamic Studies.

Roberta Hannah
African American and African Diaspora Studies; Psychology

Roberta Hannah is an African American and African Diaspora Studies and Psychology student from Massachusetts. She is interested in studying the spread of gang culture through social media and its impact on consumers.

Dale Mcenany
Education Studies; Sociology

Dale is from San Diego, California (by the border) and studying sociology and education. Besides majoring in Education Studies and Sociology, Dale is trying to learn Arabic and how to take care of my plants.

Kennedy Winslow
Urban Studies

Kennedy is a fan of rap (and its many forms) and is interested in engaging with the genre academically by examining the importance of place and experience in rap music to create a geography of carceral trauma in Black American communities. She is also interested in working with GIS technologies and qualitative sources to better represent marginalized people and places not served by a reliance on quantitative data. When she is not thinking about maps or music, she is keeping busy baking, knitting, or roller-skating.

CLASS OF 2025

Xavier Amaro
History

Xavier is a first-generation Chicano from North Carolina in his sophomore year at Columbia University. His primary research interest is in the formation of anti-colonial Chicano nationalism and how it interacts with gender and sexuality, the family, capitalism/neoliberalism, and the State. Xavier is especially interested in marrying his research interests to the new Chicano borderlands in El Nuevo South.

Asher Baron
Sociology

Asher Baron (they/them) is a sophomore at Columbia College studying Sociology and Public Health. They are deeply interested in the construction of the category of the transgender child, its dependence upon historical and ongoing medical racism, and the maintenance of this category today as a means for suppressing bodily autonomy. Through their research, they hope to advocate for transgender children as a population deserving of study and explore the consequences of the emergence of new social categories.

Korrin Lee
Ethnicity & Race Studies

Korrinn is a first-generation, low-income Latin student majoring in Ethnicity and Race Studies with a concentration in computer science. Korinn is interested in examining the ways in which online spaces create and maintain dominant modes of thinking in regard to gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, as well as how cultural diffusion and appropriation come as a result.

Renee Morales
English

Renee Morales is an English Literature and Creative Writing student from Miami, Florida, interested in researching the cultural and linguistic biases that favor the English novel in the discourse surrounding global literature. As a bilingual Cuban-American, she hopes to use her research to liberate the English language from a Eurocentric Western canon that suppresses people of color in their effort to repurpose English. Examining the role of translation as a genre, Renee will work towards positioning English as a tool of empowerment for writers of color, ostracized for their distance from the English language.

Colin Roedl
Urban Studies

Inspired by his life as a military brat, Colin is a Columbia College student passionate about broadening the horizons of public discourse through traditional and avant-garde modes of engagement. When he's not writing and editing Op-eds for the Columbia Daily Spectator, you can find him recording the stage of New York with his camcorder or speaking about his latest endeavor, "Afro-Assemblage."

MMUF Alumni

CLASS OF 2023

  • Elizabeth Clarke
    Classics; Post Colonial Studies
  • Runnie Exuma
    Comparative Literature & Society
  • Sebastian Preising
    Political Science; Mathematics
  • Harry Foster
    English; Creative Writing
  • Astrid Liden
    Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Class of 2022

  • Jaala Alston
    Ethnicity and Race Studies; Economics
  • Diogene Artiles
    Comparative Literature & Society
  • Tyler Campbell
    African-American Studies; Creative Writing
  • Ariana Orozco
    Ethnicity and Race Studies; Medicine, Literature, and Society

CLASS of 2021

  • Yosan Alemu
    Comparative Literature & Society
  • Cassidy Nichole Gabriel
    Political Science; History
  • Abigail Hickman
    Political Science; Anthropology
  • Payton Johnson
    Sociology
  • Isabel Sepulveda
    English; Ethnicity & Race Studies

CLASS OF 2020

  • Keziah Trine Anderson
    History
  • Nicole Leon Elvir
    Political Science; Drama and Theatre Arts
  • Samuel George Hennison Powell
    Classics
  • Angelo Miguel Hernandez-Sias
    English; Creative Writing
  • Alan Burnett Valverde
    English

CLASS OF 2019

  • Sofia Nina-Bernardes Martins
  • Jorge Antonio Ochoa
  • Donovan Redd
  • Andrew Joseph Suarez

Class of 2018

  • Maia Collins
  • Mamasa Dukureh
  • Alyssa Mendez
  • Sydney Pickens
  • Migueyli Rivera

Class of 2017

  • Ashleigh Cartwright
  • Carmen Ervin
  • Breanna Leslie-Skye
  • María Muratalla Maes

Class of 2016

  • Ashley Casiello
  • Lorenzo Gibson
  • Isabel Iturrios-Fourzan
  • Elan Pochedley

Class of 2015

  • Kelly Luis
  • David Luna
  • Lauren Rangel
  • Giovanna Sánchez-Esquivel
  • Shondrea Thornton

Class of 2014

  • Keyanah Freeland
  • Marvellous Iheukwumere
  • Tamar Nisbett
  • Marlen Rosas

Class of 2013

  • Jennifer Alzate
  • Maryam Aziz
  • Rebecca Clark
  • Gerard Ramm
  • Devyn Tyler

Class of 2012

  • Daniel Alonso
  • Louisa Levy
  • Michelle Rosales
  • Nataly Sauceda
  • Daniel Valella

Class of 2011

  • Juan Lamata
  • Alex Moll
  • Albert Rigosi
  • SaraEllen Strongman

Class of 2010

  • Destin Jenkins
  • Paige Johnson

Class of 2009

  • Maria Abascal
  • Courteney Ervin