May 27, 2025

CISSR is pleased to announce our Dissertation Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year. Representing four departments and disciplines, our fellows will complete their dissertations focusing on international and transnational social science research. The CISSR Dissertation Completion Grant provides funding, office space, and research support to outstanding doctoral candidates conducting innovative research on global topics. This fellowship reflects CISSR’s commitment to advancing rigorous social science scholarship at the University of Chicago.

 

The Dissertation Fellows’ projects span various global regions, demonstrating the value of interdisciplinary and international research. CISSR aims to continue developing international social science research by supporting and growing an interdisciplinary community of researchers within the university and beyond. 

The CISSR Faculty Board is delighted to present this cohort of dissertation fellows.

Read the full announcement on our website.

2025-26 Dissertation Fellows

Xiaoyu Gao 

Empire of Copper: British and American Global Trade, Chilean Copper, and the Transformation of Chinese Monetary System (1800-1862) 

Hadeel Badarni

Ecologies of Settler-Colonial Know-How: Israel’s Mode of Environmental Apprehension

Alexander Koenig

Access or Exclusion: A Mixed-Methods Study of Divergent School Outcomes among Foreign-Born Adolescents in Puebla, Mexico

Ari Weil

Explaining Insurgent Ideological Flexibility in Civil Wars

Throughout the year, CISSR hosted nine Fellows Fridays lunches, where student and faculty fellows shared their ongoing research projects. Each session began with a brief presentation outlining key research questions, early findings, and hypotheses, followed by an open and wide-ranging Q&A. Read about their presentations below:

• CISSR Board Member Michele Friedner presented her research on how Pakistani families of children with cochlear implants are building informal networks of care and support in the absence of a formalized implant infrastructure.
• 2024-25 Dissertation Fellow & 2023-24 Rudolph Fellow Madeleine Stevens presented on her dissertation, examining how the goals and consequences of forced disappearances vary depending on the type of armed actor carrying them out.
• 2024-25 Dissertation Fellow & 2021-22 Rudolph Fellow Xiaogao Zhou presented on his dissertation, discussing how transgender activists in China utilize transnational resources to improve access to gender-affirming health care. 
• 2021-22 Rudolph Fellow Gabriel Groz presented on his dissertation, exploring how ideas about government, finance, and foreign policy from across Europe influenced statecraft in England during the Interregnum period.
• 2024–25 Faculty Fellow Chiara Galli presented research on the experiences of recent Venezuelan asylum seekers in Chicago and how various stakeholders across the city have responded to their arrival.
• 2024–25 Dissertation Fellow Rohan Chatterjee presented on his dissertation, examining how the growth and transformation of peasant agriculture in a Peruvian valley over the twentieth century shaped global social and ecological change.
• 2024-25 Dissertation Fellow Myungji Lee presented on her dissertation, discussing how bureaucratized religion in Turkey shapes a common life in a polarized world with an unexpected finding about K-pop and parental concerns
• 2024–25 and 2023–24 Faculty Fellow Marisa Casillas presented research that re-examines how and why infants develop a preference for infant-directed speech and how it varies across different cultures.
• 2024–25 Faculty Fellow Yuting Dong presented her current project, which uses historical directories and digital mapping to reconstruct how Japanese and Chinese communities lived alongside imperial infrastructure during the colonial era in Manchukuo.

We warmly congratulate our outgoing dissertation fellows on their upcoming appointments and recognize their achievements as they begin the next chapter of their academic careers!

Myungji Lee 

Teaching Fellow for the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago

Xiaogao Zhou 

Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College

Rohan Chatterjee 

Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah



Madeleine Stevens 

Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Tecnológico de Monterrey

Celebrating Our Fellows’ Achievements

CISSR Faculty and Student Fellows were honored with a range of prestigious awards this year. See below for a list of their accomplishments and accolades:

Madeleine Stevens

2024-25 Dissertation Fellow

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Emerging Scholar

James Robinson

2024-25 Faculty Fellow

Nobel Prize in Economics



Lenore Grenoble

2025-26 Faculty Fellow

Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award

Michael Albertus

2024-25 Faculty Fellow

Malyi Center Research Award



Paul Cheney

CISSR Board Member

Named Sorin and Imran Siddiqui Professor in the Department of History and the College

Rachel Tils

2024-25 Rudolph Fellow

Julius S. Scott III Fellowship in Caribbean and Atlantic History

Xiaogao Zhou

2024-2025 Dissertation Fellow

Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Global and Transnational Sociology Section of the ASA

Susan Stokes

2025-26 Faculty Fellow

Named President-Elect of APSA



Rochelle Terman

2020-21 Book Workshop & Monograph Enhancement Fellow

Dean’s Early Career Research Award 

Jenny Trinitapoli

CISSR Faculty Director

Gordon J. Laing Award from the University of Chicago Press

Have you or your research received an award or other recognition this year?

Email cissr@uchicago.edu so we can highlight your achievement!