Zoë Clark-Kawwa is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, specializing in political theory. Her dissertation re-conceptualizes the "machine question"—the longstanding debate about what machines do to workers and society—by foregrounding its normative, political, and moral dimensions. Drawing on labor history, worker poetry, empirical research, and political philosophy, she advances a conceptual framework distinguishing "mechanization" from "automation" to examine the specific ethical and political problems that arise when machines increasingly mediate, subsume, or replace human beings in our social and political relationships. She received her M.A. in Political Science from Brown in 2024. Prior to Brown, she received her B.A. in political science with honors from San Francisco State University. She is also the recipient of the Matthew F. Stolz Scholarship in Political Theory (2020), the Stolz Prize for Best Political Theory Paper (2021), and the P. Terrence Hopmann Award for Excellence in Teaching (2023).

Ruby Erickson is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Music, pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology and a Doctoral Certificate in Africana Studies. She has published articles in Anthropology Today and Ethnomusicology. Her dissertation, which has been supported by a Fellowship from the Society for American Music, queries the theorization of “cultural sustainability” through grounded analysis of grassroots cultural vitality work by Cabo Verdean Americans, revealing that community members “keep the music alive” through an ethics of material indebtedness and an aesthetics of temporal non-linearity. She is a collaborator in several community-centered arts and activism projects; she co-hosts a public-facing podcast, “Sounds from the Eleventh Star,” an episode of which was republished by UCLA’s Sounds Promising, and she is the Secretary for the Cabo Verdean Heritage Month Coalition, a local cultural advocacy collective which was recently awarded a project grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. She is the Vice President of the Lusophone African Studies Organization, an affiliate of the African Studies Association.

Jennifer Greenberg is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies. Her work focuses on modern philosophy of religion and Jewish thought, with particular attention to religious ethics and religion and politics. Her dissertation explores the philosophical, theological, and political dimensions of interpreting texts and traditions for their “plain sense.” It especially considers modern Jewish discourses, including those on “peshat” and “derash,” revelation, and communal membership. In emphasizing “plain sense” as a social practice, the project addresses the ethics of authority within interpretive traditions. Greenberg holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. 

Georga-Kay Whyte is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of History, where she studies 20th-century U.S. history with a particular interest in education, care work, race, and class. Her dissertation, “The University Works Because We Do: A Social and Intellectual History of Custodial Labor at U.S. Universities c.1870–1970,” interrogates the labor history of universities in the U.S. and focuses on custodial laborers. In her project, she traces worker protest movements across various campuses from the post-emancipation period to the Civil Rights Movement, where these struggles intensified. She holds an M.A. in History from Brown University and a B.A. in History from Agnes Scott College. She has shared her work at the Organization of American Historians, the African American Intellectual History Society, and the Southern Association for Women Historians. As a first-generation scholar, she is committed to public scholarship and translating her academic research for cross-disciplinary audiences.