2022-23 Fellows
The Clough Center has continued to fund Boston College students and faculty to facilitate their research and participation. We are especially proud to support the work of our outstanding student fellows, providing an interdisciplinary milieu for their intellectual explorations. Read about our 2022-23 Fellows below, and if you're interested in learning more or applying for a grant, please visit our Grants page.
Clough Doctoral Fellows

Justin Brown-Ramsey
Justin Brown-Ramsey is a Ph.D. student in English at Boston College. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Augusta University and a master’s degree in English from Loyola University Chicago. Justin specializes in print culture, book history, and textual studies – especially as these fields apply to early modern England and early colonial America. During his tenure as a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Justin aims to contribute to emerging conversations surrounding the ever-increasing demands for archival democratization by practicing primary source-grounded, faithfully-researched literary and textual criticism. In doing so, he hopes to elucidate individual histories within larger, collective narratives about early modern England and early colonial America as a means to provide crucial, tangible contexts for contemporary discussion about emergent democracies and political movements in both nations. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Justin’s research will explore the extent to which the printing press – as the preeminent tool for information dissemination – played an important role in the fostering and hindering of the replication of early modern English politics, aesthetics, and economic practices in the early American colonial world.

Taekyeong Goh
Taekyeong Goh is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Boston College, where he focuses on environmental sociology and quantitative methods. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Sogang University in South Korea. Taekyeong’s research interests include environmental sociology, political sociology, social movements, social change, and research methods.His M.A. thesis, “Environmental Issues and Social Change: Using Structural Topic Modeling on Fine Dust Issues in South Korea,” addressed the process of social change to understand the “fine dust” problem in Korean society. He presented his findings at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Taekyeong’s current research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms of sustainable development through the lens of civil society and governance. He explores how the centrality of environmental groups in a civic associational network and good governance shape the interactions between economic growth and carbon emissions. He hopes to contribute to expanding the understanding of the relationship between democratic politics and sustainable development.

Alexa Damaska
Alexa Damaska is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Boston College. She earned a B.S. in Economics from Miami University in 2017 and an M.A. in Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University in 2019. Alexa’s master’s research focused on the path to and impact of undergraduate major choices in the women’s studies field. Since completing her degree she has been working in the nonprofit sector serving persons who experience homelessness. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Alexa’s research interests exist within the subfield of economic sociology and include mixed method feminist analyses of mechanisms in governments, economies and education systems which work to maximize equitable resource distributions. She foresees her findings supporting the actors in these spaces to refine mechanisms and foster life-affirming experiences for individuals, particularly those most marginalized. She believes more equitable access to resources will enhance the health of societies via increased capacities for democratic engagement.

Barb Kozee
Barbara Anne Kozee is a first year Ph.D student in Ethics in Boston College's Theology Department. Barb received a B.S. from Georgetown University in International Political Economy with a minor in Spanish.She completed her M.Div. at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University with a certificate in Women's Studies in Religion. Valuing both academic scholarship and grassroots activism, Barb also serves on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Ordination Conference. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Barb’s research interests include the interactions between gender, sexuality, family, and politics. She hopes to use feminist and queer ethical methods to contribute to conversations on LGBTQ issues in the Catholic Church and society and is influenced by Catholic Social Teaching. Qualitative methodologies and the sociology of religion have also influenced Barb’s interdisciplinary approach to research questions such as how Queer Catholics imagine self-identity, sexuality, family, and marriage. She is eager to pursue data-informed and nuanced conversations at the intersection of religion, gender, and politics, conversations that have become increasingly critical in the current U.S. political climate.

Emily Dupuis
Emily Dupuis is a first-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. from Brown University and M.A. from Providence College. Emily’s specialization is Irish history; more specifically, she seeks to examine the intersections between gender, colonialism, and religion, and how women both shaped and were shaped by the imperialist experience. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Emily’s research focuses on women and popular religion. Of particular interest is how women acted as intergenerational transmitters of belief systems, maintaining the strength of Catholicism in Ireland in the face of English suppression. Operating within an imperialist framework in which external values, beliefs, and lifestyles were unjustly imposed upon them, Irish women nevertheless maintained a certain degree of sovereignty which would ultimately lead to Ireland’s successful twentieth-century independence movement. Emily also seeks to understand women’s roles in creating the unique shape of Irish Catholicism. Questions of what constituted femininity, respectability, and devotion are at the forefront of her work. Emily’s aim is to illustrate the continuing importance of Irish women in the centuries-long effort of maintaining Irish culture.

Meghan McCoy
Meghan McCoy is a first-year Ph.D student in the History Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her M.A. from Boston College. Meghan studies US history from 1865 to the present, with a focus on reproductive and maternal health, pregnancy, race, state violence, and criminalization. She is especially interested in how pregnancy and maternity act as a conduit for the state to impose, control, or otherwise shape social, political, and economic goals both domestically and transnationally. Through her research as a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Meghan is exploring how white nationalism and domestic terror are linked with ideas of gender, race, and class specifically through the lens of reproduction, abortion, and motherhood. By studying these fields, Meghan aims to better understand how the state has criminalized, surveilled, and controlled the reproductive health of BIPOC and low-income women and how that affects the constitutional rights of all people. She Meghan hopes to help improve all people’s access to equitable reproductive health care and nuance the often dichotomous arguments surrounding public health and the role of the state.Â

Casey Puerzer
Casey Puerzer is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department at Boston College, specializing in American Politics. He received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 2020, where he concentrated in Philosophy and Classics. Casey’s research interests lie at the intersection of non-governmental cultural associations (namely the media) and the formal institutions of our governance. In particular, he is fascinated by the political causes and eventual ramifications of conspiratorial patterns of thought and moral panic. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Casey intends to focus on two specific questions that implicate four inescapable facets of American political life: federalism, individualism, bureaucracy, and the role of experts in government. . First, why do Americans seem to be so uniquely disposed towards conspiratorial patterns of thought and moral panic? Second, how do these two impulses manifest themselves in public opinion, legislation, and the behavior of courts? Using Tocqueville as his guide, Casey seeks to situate his analysis of conspiratorial thought patterns and moral panic in a historical context, identifying what previous generations have done wrong, and done right, when dealing with these phenomena.

Marcus Trenfield
Marcus Trenfield is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Psychology Department at Boston College. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Harvard College. Marcus’s undergraduate thesis focused on a potential mechanism by which rationalization can improve humans’ ability to recall information. He has also studied how moral norms, charitable actions, and game theory principles influence our behavior and our perceptions of others. As an incoming Clough Doctoral Fellow, Marcus is broadly interested in studying the factors that promote and inhibit cooperative and prosocial behavior, particularly when addressing collective action problems. Within this area of interest, Marcus is eager to pursue multiple questions that complement the Clough Center’s interest in democratic politics and societies. Some topics he hopes to explore include researching how leaders and institutions can encourage prosocial behavior; studying how to cultivate prosocial norms across diverse groups and societies; and motivating people to support policies that help distant others. This year, Marcus is particularly interested in studying the role journalism and the media plays in shaping democratic and cooperative norms and behavior.

Ophelia (Fangfei) Wang
Ophelia Fangfei Wang is a first-year PhD student in the English Department. She received her B.A. in Translation and Interpretation at Shandong University in China and her M.A. in Critical Asian Humanities at Duke University. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Ophelia plans to study urban Asian American community building in literary texts, specifically by theorizing Chinatown to contextualize and historicize Asian American literature. She argues that “Chinatown” comprises not only the urban spaces where Chinese immigrants dwell but also the layers of transnational history, culture, and relations that have been shaped by discriminatory racial laws and policies and stereotypical narratives. Another of Ophelia’s research ambitions is to understand race in a geopolitical framework rather than as localized knowledge. She is interested in exploring the connection and collusion between anti-Asian racism and Sinophobia against the backdrop of global superpower competition and geopolitical struggles. Ophelia aims to facilitate more conversations between area studies and Asian American studies and contribute to research on racial equality, justice, and constitutional democracy.

Yinan Xu
Yinan Xu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Prior to her doctoral study, she completed her B.A. and M.A., respectively, in English Language and American Studies in China. Living in transformative China, she is interested in individual participation in social activism that strives for social justice, as she explores the form and style of civic endeavors in non-democratic contexts. At the center of Yinan’s academic investigation is how individuals react to inequalities and establish their resistances in post-socialist China, where social conflicts and contentions constantly emerge under the state’s transformative courses in political, social, and cultural procedures. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Yinan is focusing on activism in the digital sphere and has two lines of exploration. First, she is interested in understanding the role of digital media in facilitating social change, as digital media has emerged as one of the major channels for activism in non-democratic societies. Second, she explores state–society relations through the lens of digital activism, as digital media increasingly emerges as the public communicative surface that connects to the infrastructural core of regimes.
Clough Graduate Correspondents

Carter Bryson
Carter Bryson is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Boston College. He received his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 and spent two years working as a Research Assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington D.C. before coming to Boston College. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Carter’s research focuses on the implications of various long-run changes in the U.S. economy for the labor market outcomes of different demographic groups. To date, his research has explored differences in employment opportunities for Black vs. White men during the latter half of the 20th century as well as differences in career mobility for earlier vs. more recent cohorts of U.S. labor market entrants. In his main thesis work, Carter investigates the consequences of the large decline in business dynamism – the rate at which new businesses are created has fallen precipitously since the 1980s – for the career outcomes of recent cohorts of U.S. workers.

Claudio Colnago
Claudio Colnago is an LLM candidate at Boston College Law School. Originally fromBrazil, he has extensive experience as a law professor and practicing lawyer, havingtaught law for over 10 years at FDV (Faculdade de Direito de VitĂłria) and been apartner at Bergi Advocacia, a prestigious law firm in the state of EspĂrito Santo, foralmost 15. Claudio has presented and published his academic research in manycountries throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He is a member of theInternational Association of Constitutional Law (IACL), serving in the research group"Constitutions in the age of the Internet". Claudio’s legal practice, meanwhile, hasfocused on high impact lawsuits and complex consultations about Brazilian tax andconstitutional law, at both the state and federal levels. Though most of his publishedresearch is in Portuguese, he has also published in English, on subjects such asfreedom of thought, internet access as a fundamental right, the right to be forgotten, theright of reply, and the preferred position doctrine for freedom of expression. As a CloughGraduate Correspondent, Claudio looks forward to contributing research on journalismand human rights.

Pietro Dall'Ara
Pietro Dall’Ara is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Economics at Boston College. He earned an M.A. in Economics in Bologna, Italy. Pietro conducts research in economic theory and is mostly interested in modern information economics. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Pietro’s current research concerns the sources of information heterogeneity. He focuses on two features of markets for information: the targeting tools of information providers, and the role of people’s limited information processing ability. One of his research papers explores two questions: when does an information provider choose to exclude some individuals from the information supply, and how does a persuader take advantage of the audience’s attention costs to pursue his or her own agenda? Another paper examines agents’ information acquisition decisions, introducing a new theoretical model of costly information acquisition that can shed light on people’s incentives to acquire similar information to their peers within a network. In other lines of research, Pietro studies voting mechanisms, and the ability of certain voting rules to aggregate information dispersed among voters. He also studies incentives to innovation within product experimentation.

Matthew Gannon
Matthew Gannon is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Boston College where he studies the politics of aesthetics, particularly the political dimensions of modernist literary technique and form. He received his bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Biochemistry from Bowdoin College and his master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Matthew’s research as a Clough Graduate Correspondent brings together disparate strands of critical theory and continental philosophy, especially psychoanalysis and Marxism, in order to ask certain fundamental questions about aesthetics, such as: “How is art political?”; “What are the ethics of reading?”; and “How does art envision more democratic communities?” Matthew’s research leads him to investigate art’s confrontation with the major political events and social movements of the former half of the twentieth century. It seeks to demonstrate how even seemingly apolitical works of art use aesthetic means to disrupt the discursive and aesthetic frameworks of oppressive political regimes, historical narratives, and social structures. The central premise of Matthew’s dissertation, titled “Modernity Against Itself,” is that a fundamental division exists within capitalist modernity between political-economic modernization and artistic modernism.

Daniel Garzon Maldonado
Daniel Garzon-Maldonado is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Boston College. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, he obtained a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy at the National University of Colombia. Daniel’s research has been supported by grants from Fulbright, the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Using interdisciplinary approaches, which include intellectual history and sexuality studies, he explores the ethical and political challenges of selfhood in its connection to others and the world. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Daniel’s research focuses on Michel Foucault’s history of subjectivity, which concerns how one constitutes oneself as an ethical or political subject and how one is subjected to relationships of power and constituted as an individual. Daniel’s dissertation focuses on the problems that Foucault finds in traditional approaches to subjectivity and suggests that he explores an alternative in the notion of ways of life. In the field of sexuality studies, he has also written about the metaphor of the closet and its relationship with the more general problem of the visibility of sexual difference.

R. Zachary (Zac) Karanovich
R. Zachary “Zac” Karanovich is a doctoral candidate in Systematic Theology at Boston College. In 2007, he received his BA in theology and philosophy from Marian College (now University). He also holds a law degree (2014) from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and a Master’s in Theological Studies (2018) from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. Zac’s research as a Clough Graduate Correspondent explores questions relevant to “Religion and Democracy.” His dissertation, “Conversion in a World of Violence: Toward a Theology of Conversion with Johann Baptist Metz, James Alison, and Thomas Merton,” engages the three title interlocutors’ contributions to the development of a holistic understanding of conversion that includes justice, forgiveness, and divinization. Of particular interest in the dissertation is the role narrative and narrative change in conversion. The project concludes with a case study, applying the principles established in earlier chapters to an exploration of the issues of racial resentment and polarization in communities. Zac believes that theologians can play an integral role in strengthening our democracy by interrupting the narratives that subject religion to political categories of meaning.

Saber Khani
Saber Khani is pursuing his Ph.D. degree in Sociology at Boston College. He graduated from Tehran University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and received a master’s degree in sociology from Western Illinois University. His current research project examines the organizational and institutional aspects of pro-government mobilization in authoritarian countries. His other research interests include social movements, political sociology, and computational methods. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Saber is researching government-organized non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) in authoritarian regimes to understand how these state-funded bodies contribute to authoritarian survival. In one of his studies of Iran, he found that state infrastructural structure positively boosts mobilization capacity and facilitates pro-government mobilization. He plans to broaden this research by incorporating oil-producing countries into his analysis, to see whether oil wealth is a contributing factor to both authoritarian survival and state mobilization capacity.Â

Michaila Peters
Michaila Peters is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Boston College. She completed her B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy with a concentration in Political Theory and studies in Economics in the American University School of Public Affairs Honors Program in Washington, D.C. There she received further training as a Community-Based Research Scholar and in the Leadership and Ethical Development honors program. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Michaila’s research and public service are focused on understanding and developing solutions to global, and especially political, hyperpolarization Michaila’s current research project centers on the development of a somatic conception of dignity. She argues that what makes hyperpolarization distinct from healthy deliberation in civil discourse is when the stakes of conversation become the interlocutors' very dignity. In order to cultivate recognition of dignity institutionally, however, we need to understand dignity’s sociopsychological content, such that we know what impedes or fosters its acknowledgement. Michaila’s project broadens the way we think about human rights protections to include the shape of social and economic spaces, rather than just criminal justice and legal interpretations. Michaila has also received a Clough Research Fellowship to support her summer work.

Chandler Shaw
Chandler Shaw is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at Boston College. She holds a B.A. in English from West Texas A&M University. Her research interests include American literary nonfiction, longform journalism, and the lyric essay. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Chandler seeks to explore how storytellers in these genres use narrative to shape community bonds and national identities. Her dissertation will be a series of essays that interrogate how bedrock mythologies, cultural narratives, and built and natural environments shape community—in particular, her hometown in West Texas. In particular, she investigates how the concept of the mythological West—perpetuated by filmmakers, politicians, journalists, and local boosters alike—obfuscates and diminishes the actual experiences of those who live there, even as it enhances the metanarrative that locals and non-locals alike value and believe. Through a mixture of research, literary criticism, and creative writing, Chandler traces the way the mythological West shows up within the landscape and the artistic representations of West Texas in literature and other mediums. She also explores how the region understands its relationship to government and democratic ideals.

Fengrui Tian
Fengrui Tian is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. She received her B.A. in Social Science from Hitotsubashi University and her M.A. in Sociology from Boston College. As a Clough Graduate Correspondent, Fengrui’s research project focuses on authoritarian governance through exploring the everyday practices of the grassroots state and para-state institutions in China. Her dissertation investigates the grassroots state in China, consisting of the local government, known as the “street office,” and the para-state institutions, i.e. the residential committees and village committees that the street office oversees. Since these institutions are windows through which the authoritarian state interacts with society, this research explores how and why the street-level bureaucrats working for them direct limited state resources to selected citizens while punishing others. By shedding light on this micro-level process of street-level bureaucrats’ translation of policies into everyday practices, Fengrui’s work explores how the authoritarian state governs through grassroots level state bureaucracies and examines its unintended effects on the efficacy of such governance and state capacities.Â

Deniz Uyan
Deniz Uyan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at Boston College. She specializes in qualitative methods and holds an M.A. in Sociology from Boston College and a B.S. in Business Administration from Babson College. Deniz’s research as a Clough Graduate Correspondent contributes to the fields of race and ethnicity, global and transnational sociology, political sociology, and social theory. Her dissertation project studies the historical and contemporary antecedents regarding the movement to add a new Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) race category to the 2020 decennial census. The project identifies historically significant mechanisms for Arab/MENA racial group formation and seeks to substantiate “racialization,” not merely as a process, but as a political and social development in its own right. The project’s implications are of twin consequence for sociological theory and policy construction and implementation more broadly. While categorizations for different ethnic groups have afforded more visibility along with economic and political remediation through civil rights legislation, increased visibility has also proved somewhat tenuous for Arabs and Middle Easterners who have been subject to government harassment and overreach. Deniz has also received a Clough Research Fellowship to support her summer work.
Clough Research Fellows

Wesley Chrabasz
Wesley Chrabasz is an M.A. candidate in the History Department at Boston College. Prior to his graduate studies, he earned a Certificate in American Politics from the School of Professional and Extended Studies at American University in 2016 and a B.A. in History and Government from Connecticut College in 2017. His research interests include the study of populist political culture in twentieth-century rural New England, the formation of broad coalitions to achieve common political goals across ideological divisions, and how these coalitions bridge the urban-rural divide. As a Clough Research Fellow, Wesley’s current research deals with analyzing organized opposition to sprawl and development in twentieth-century Vermont. By exploring this example, Wesley’s research seeks to deepen our understanding of the complexities of political coalitions in rural America and how these coalitions have worked toward their goals in and outside of the democratic process. This research project will form the basis of a Master’s thesis which analyzes the history of rural populism in twentieth-century Vermont and the surrounding areas of New England.

Annika Rieger
Annika Rieger is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Boston College, specializing in environmental sociology and quantitative methods. Annika received her M.A. in Sociology from Boston College, and B.S. in Sociology from Southern Methodist University. As a Clough Research Fellow, her current research projects utilize quantitative and computational methods to investigate how transnational corporations contribute and respond to climate change, as well as how nations and international organizations might mitigate these contributions. Annika’s doctoral research examines under which conditions nation-states and other macro-level actors influence corporations to reduce their emissions. This research draws from four classic macro-sociological theories—Varieties of Capitalism, Fossil Capitalism, World Society, and World-systems—each of which propose different pathways through which corporations are pressured to reduce their emissions. The first part of the project focuses on national variation, and examines whether institutional and industrial characteristics are associated with lower corporate carbon dioxide emissions. The second part of the project focuses on non-state actors, including IGOs, NGOs, and INGOs, and focuses on the intersection of civil society and economic hierarchy.Â

Innocent Mpoki
Innocent Mpoki is a first-year doctoral student in Political Science at Boston College. He studies comparative politics with a regional focus in Africa. He holds a master’s in International Affairs from the City University of New York - Baruch College and a bachelor’s in Political Science from Middlebury College in Vermont. As a Clough Research Fellow, Innocent will investigate state-civil society relations in Zimbabwe. Specifically, the research project will analyze the factors that contribute to the resiliency of NGOs in a country where an already repressed civic space continues to shrink. The project will explore how the NGOs survive and adjust to the legal and extra-legal regulations imposed by the government. The resilience of NGOs in Zimbabwe may hold some valuable lessons for NGOs elsewhere who could be in a similar environment and are strategizing on how to survive as civic space shrinks. Understanding the resiliency of NGOs in Zimbabwe could also inform donors and funders interested in strengthening civil society.

Jacob Saliba
Jacob Saliba is a second-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College, specializing in modern European history. As a Clough Research Fellow, he has broad research interests relating to “Religion and Democracy.” Jacob’s dissertation project entitled, “The Sacred and Secular in Interwar France: From Contestation to Convergence (1919-1940),” discusses thought-provoking intersections among religion, politics, and philosophy in interwar French culture. The project examines a set of profound convergences that took place between religious and secular movements as they worked together to come to terms with the cataclysmic devastation of the First World War. Jacob argues that this shared experimentation and creative pluralism emerged in and through a frame of secular-religious dialogue; His aim is to show how the exchanging of ideas between these groups fostered a source of cultural renewal in twentieth century France. Importantly, his research of interwar France—despite differences in context, geography, and time period from today’s world—has led him to better appreciate and reimagine ways of investigating the relationship between religion and democratic politics.

Hilary Nwainya
Hilary Ogonna Nwainya is a Catholic priest of Abakaliki in Nigeria, a chartered mediator, and a Ph.D. candidate in Boston College. After advanced studies in Nigeria and Ireland, Hilary is currently studying Theological Ethics at »ĘąÚąŮÍř. His interests include environmental and ecological ethics, fundamental moral theology, human rights, inculturation theologies, indigenous peoples, race, social ethics, war, peace, and peacebuilding. Hilary’s doctoral research as a Clough Research Fellow focuses on the centrality of recognition to Catholic social ethics. The central thesis of his dissertation is that recognition is a fundamental and constitutive point of departure for doing proper social ethics. The key idea underlying this thesis is that the end of ethics is action; and, that recognition marks the beginning of personal and social action in social ethics. In other words, recognition marks a decisive threshold that a moral agent has to cross in the mechanics of ethical responsiveness, moving from understanding what one’s responsibilities are to actually fulfilling those responsibilities while encountering another human being to whom an actual response is due.

Adam Sliwowski
Adam Sliwowski is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Boston College. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and German from the College of the Holy Cross. As a Clough Research Fellow, Adam’s research focuses on the political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. His dissertation investigates how Hegel’s account of the political community and his philosophy of history shed light on the dissatisfactions and challenges that continue to afflict liberal democracies today. The dissertation explores Hegel’s central claim that the twin aspirations towards freedom and equality find their requisite realization within the institutions and practices that together comprise the modern state. It seeks to reconstruct Hegel’s rich account of freedom and of the conditions that are necessary for its realization, and argues that Hegel provides us with a robust defense of modern social and political relations as reconciling individual freedom with political obligation. Through his dissertation, Adam hopes to show that Hegel’s philosophy can provide us with the conceptual resources to respond to contemporary critics of liberalism and constitutional democracy.

Shaun Slusarski
Shaun Slusarski is a third-year doctoral student in Theological Ethics. He graduated from Boston College in 2012 with a degree in theology, and in 2020, he received an M.T.S. in systematic theology with a minor in peace studies from the University of Notre Dame. In his recent research, Shaun has explored the ethics of prison healthcare in the United States. The Covid-19 pandemic has helped to illuminate the unique health vulnerabilities of inmates as well as the inequitable distribution of medical resources to the only population with a constitutionally guaranteed right to healthcare. As a Clough Research Fellow, Shaun’s current research centers partially on medical issues that arise in the prison context such as end-of-life care. Beyond clinical issues in prison, Shaun is interested in analyzing mass incarceration as a public health issue that threatens the collective flourishing of our society. He wishes to bring the insights of Catholic social teaching to contribute to a vision of criminal justice that promotes the holistic wellbeing of victims, offenders, and the larger community.

Emily Turner
Emily Turner is a second-year doctoral student in Historical Theology at Boston College. Before beginning her studies at Boston College, she earned a B.A. in History at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon (2017). Upon graduation from Willamette, Emily completed one year of law school at the University of Kentucky College of Law (2018), before leaving the study of law for Theology. She completed her M.A. in Religion, with a concentration in Theology, at Yale Divinity School (2021). As a Clough Research Fellow, Emily’s research centers on two related areas. The first is the development of early Christian doctrine and Christian catechesis in Late Antiquity, and the range of images and analogies deployed by Christian bishop-teachers to communicate the content of nascent Christian faith. Second, Emily studies the appearance and function of legal language in early Christian texts, with a particular interest in the mutually informing notions of Roman, Mosaic, and Natural Law reflected in the writing of Christian thinkers in Late Antiquity.

Dennis Wieboldt
Dennis Wieboldt is a second-year M.A. candidate in History at Boston College. Dennis earned his B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Boston College, where he was recognized as a Dean’s Scholar. His research focuses on twentieth-century American history, with a particular emphasis on the development of American Catholic legal thought. As a Clough Research Fellow, Dennis's M.A. thesis, tentatively titled “Catholic Priest, American-Catholic Lawyer: William J. Kenealy and the Neo-Scholastic Legal Revival, 1939-1956,” explores the life and legacy of former Boston College Law School Dean William J. Kenealy, S.J. Though Kenealy is often overshadowed in the historiography by his successor—Robert F. Drinan, the Jesuit priest elected to Congress—Dennis’s thesis uncovers Kenealy’s important role in the mid-century movement to popularize Declarationism, a jurisprudential theory that incorporates the Natural Law into constitutional interpretation through the Declaration of Independence. Given Natural Law philosophy's prominent position in the thought of many contemporary conservatives, Dennis’s thesis suggests that renewed attention to this mid-century history can provide valuable context for today’s pressing jurisprudential debates.

Yiyang Zhuge
Yiyang Zhuge is a P.hD. student in the Political Science Department at Boston College, specializing in political theory. She received her B.A. in Political Science from Boston College, and has held multiple fellowships at the Clough Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Liberty Fund, the Hudson Institute and the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. As a Clough Research Fellow, Yiyang is studying modern (and especially German) theories of punishment in the hope of confronting the nature and boundaries of civil society and the extent of society’s power over the individual. To the extent that modern politics strives to be rational, theorists of modernity try to solve the problem of justice on earth by giving various justifications for criminal punishment and “legitimate” punitive laws. Since a society that does not punish its criminals teeters on the brink of chaos and dissolution, it is both of practical and theoretical interest that we elucidate for ourselves the rationale for the right to punish. To advance her study of German language sources, Yiyang is using her Fellowship to attend Middlebury German School during the summer of 2022.
Clough Public Service Fellows

Ayesha Ahsan
Ayesha Ahsan is a J.D. candidate at Boston College Law School. She received undergraduate degrees in Economics and Sociology, with a minor in Justice Studies and a certificate in Socio-Legal Studies at Arizona State University. She received the National Association of Secretaries of State’s John Lewis Youth Leadership Award, representing the State of Arizona. Ayesha spent a majority of her time during her undergraduate studies working on civil rights issues. As an intern for the ACLU of Arizona, she conducted research on Arizona’s school-to-prison pipeline and was heavily involved in efforts to expand voting rights in Arizona. This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Ayesha is interning at the Criminal Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C. The section largely focuses on investigating and prosecuting hate crimes and law enforcement misconduct, including instances of police brutality. Through her research and writing efforts, Ayesha is assisting her assigned attorney team in their investigations and litigation. She will also have the opportunity to closely observe government lawyering and its impact on the enforcement and expansion of civil rights.

Hannah Ianelli
Hannah Ianelli is a rising junior at Boston College. She is majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Global Public Health and the Common Good, with the goal of obtaining a dual degree in Public Health and Physician Assistant studies. After being introduced to the field of Environmental Health through her Public Health course work at Boston College, she was incredibly interested in the relationship between the built environment and human health. This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Hannah is working with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in their Environmental Toxicology Program. In particular, she is working on their Cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms and Bathing Beaches Programs, assisting with the organization and tracking of beach quality and algal bloom data derived from communities around Massachusetts. Hannah is also assisting in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Bathing Beach Geospatial Data Project, identifying missing, inconsistent, or outdated beach and sampling location coordinate data and corresponding with local health agents in order to obtain up-to-date coordinate data.

Javon Davis
Javon Davis is a rising 3L at Boston College Law School, where he is a Public Service Scholar. He grew up in South Hill, Virginia and received a B.S. in Criminal Justice and a B.A. in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 2014. Javon then went on to serve two terms as an L. Douglas Wilder Graduate Scholars Fellow and graduated with a Master of Public Administration in 2016 from VCU. Prior to law school, he also served as the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives of the Philadelphia Fire Department (PFD), the Policy and Government Affairs Manager for the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department, and a Cookingham-Noll Management Fellow in the Kansas City City Manager’s Office. Javon’s experience in local government inspired him to explore civil rights litigation, election law, and voting rights. As a Clough Public Service Fellow, Javon is spending the summer of 2022 in Washington, D.C. as an intern with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), focusing on voting rights but also working on economic justice, criminal justice reform, and education.

Helen Lykos
Helen Lykos is a rising junior of the Boston College Class of 2024. She is pursuing a major in International Studies with a concentration in Conflict and Cooperation, in addition to a minor in Religion and American Public Life. This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Helen is participating in the Boston College in Madrid internship program for eight weeks. There she is interning for Alianza por la Solidaridad, which is an organization that fights against inequalities and helps to protect human rights in more than 19 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. In her internship, Helen is helping to organize activities for children, including youth exchanges in Barcelona regarding climate justice and migration. In addition, she helped organize the ActionAid Federation assembly that took place at the end of June in Madrid, with representatives from nearly 50 countries. Lastly, Helen is supporting the volunteer team in organizing meetings with partners to manage European projects.

Daniel Hamm
Daniel Hamm is a 2L at Boston College Law School, where he is earning his J.D. and Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration in conjunction with the Lynch School of Education. Daniel is an alumnus of Emory University where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with a minor in Chinese Studies. After law school, Daniel intends to pursue a public service career in higher education law. He hopes to one day serve as General Counsel of a college or university, particularly a Historically Black College or University. This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Daniel is working as a Legal Intern for the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in Boston. OCR investigates discrimination complaints against educational programs and institutions and enforces various federal laws. In this role, Daniel is aiding in all aspects of the investigation process, including but not limited to preparing for and conducting interviews; performing legal research and writing; and drafting memoranda, Statements of the Case, and Resolution Agreements.

Matthew Malec
Matthew Malec is a rising senior at Boston College studying Political Science with a Journalism minor. In the past, Matthew has interned at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he assisted with research on Senior Fellow Dr. Philip Wallach’s upcoming book about the history of the U.S. Congress. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Through the Clough Public Service Fellowship, Matthew is spending the summer interning at the National Review Institute (NRI) in New York City. NRI is the nonprofit arm of the magazine National Review, one of the leading institutions in American conservative political thought. While there, Matthew is assisting scholars with their research, adding to NRI’s extensive archive about the life of National Review founder William F. Buckley, and helping with social media management. Through NRI, he is also assisting with the William F. Buckley Communicator’s Conference in Washington D.C. Matthew is excited to learn from NRI’s brilliant team of scholars and grow as a writer, rhetor, and person.

Julie Meyer
Julie Meyer is a rising 2L at Boston College Law School. She graduated from Princeton University in 2013 with a degree in History, writing her undergraduate senior thesis, How a Noun Became a Verb, on Robert Bork’s failed nomination to the Supreme Court. Before enrolling at Boston College Law School, Julie worked in political advocacy in Washington, D.C. There she worked on a campaign for D.C. statehood, and a campaign to protect and improve the Affordable Care Act. It was the work she did in D.C. that clarified her desire to become a lawyer. This summer, as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Julie is working for the Law Department of the City of Boston. The City’s Law Department serves as both the mayor’s in-house counsel and the City’s lawyer, representing the mayor, the City, and the City’s employees in court. Julie hopes that she will leave this summer’s internship having built her legal skills and learning all of the various puzzle pieces that must be put together to answer a single legal question.

Ali Shafi
Ali Shafi is a rising 2L at Boston College Law School, where he serves as the Vice President of the South Asian Law Student Association. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he completed his undergraduate education at the American University Honors Program in Washington, D.C. Ali graduated summa cum laude, majoring in both International Relations and Spanish studies. During his undergraduate career, he also interned at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., where he conducted intakes and built cases for Muslim clients alleging workplace discrimination, hate crimes, or prisoner’s rights issues. Before starting his legal education at Boston College Law, Ali worked in the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Political Advocacy Department, in which he developed campaigns, proposed policy, and drafted legislation surrounding issues related to immigration, domestic terrorism, and government surveillance. As a Clough Public Service Fellow, he is spending the summer of 2022 interning with the Military Commission Defense Organization (MCDO) within the Department of Defense. There, he is joining the defense counsel for Ammar al-Baluchi, a Pakistani citizen held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2006.

Nathaniel Shay
Nathaniel “Nate” Shay is a rising 2L at Boston College Law School. He completed his undergraduate education at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where he majored in Politics with a History minor, and focused on Political Economy and Political Philosophy. Nate wrote his undergraduate thesis, On Democracy in the Workplace, on reforms to America's current labor laws and workplace dynamics. While in college, Nate also interned with the National Labor Relations Board in the Philadelphia regional office, broadening his practical knowledge of labor law and helping to protect workers rights.This summer as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Nate is returning to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in Washington DC. Specifically, Nate is working with the NLRB’s Division of Judges, helping the organization’s Administrative Law Judges decide cases involving issues related to workers’ collective rights. Cases can range from helping to protect union organizing to protecting the right to discuss workplace conditions with coworkers. Following law school Nate plans to continue his current trajectory and work for the NLRB, a similar agency like the Department of Labor, or a plaintiff side law firm.

Theresa (Tracy) Werick
Tracy Werick is a second-year student at Boston College Law School. She is from Buffalo, NY, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Georgetown University. She also completed minors in Sociology and Spanish at Georgetown. After graduation, Tracy joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), and served as a housing and benefits advocate at Make the Road New York in New York City. She then accepted a position as an AmeriCorps member in Buffalo, NY, working with Buffalo public high school students on their college and financial aid applications. At »ĘąÚąŮÍř Law, Tracy is a member of the Public Interest Law Foundation and is the Internal Programming Committee Chair of the »ĘąÚąŮÍř Law Ambassadors. This summer, as a Clough Public Service Fellow, Tracy is thrilled to be interning in the Civil Division, Civil Rights Unit, of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. There, she is working on cases being litigated by the United States Attorney’s Office.
Undergraduate Correspondents

Mabel Bassi
Mabel Bassi is a rising senior studying Neuroscience at Boston College. With interests in both public health and the legal field, she is also on the College’s pre-law track. Mabel is specifically interested in learning about public health disparities and both domestic and international public health policy. This past year she gained neuroscience research expertise by interning in a gastroenterology wet lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. She also worked at Boston College’s Research Program on Children and Adversity, contributing to a mental health research project which tracked the well-being of Somalian and Bhutanese refugees in the New England area. As a Clough Undergraduate Correspondent for the summer of 2022, Mabel is assisting the Center with its internal operations and publicity, and overseeing the production of its new newsletter. Simultaneously, she is interning at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Environment and Health, where she is researching sustainability and environmental policy. In the future, Mabel hopes to apply her background knowledge and acquired skills to the public health or government sector.

Caroline Brewster
Caroline Brewster is a third-year student at Boston College pursuing a B.A. in Political Science and Theology. She is interested in the relationship between religion and American public life. Specifically, Caroline’s research focuses on the role of scriptural appeals in public discourse and the influence of Christian theologians on American political development. Recently, Caroline delivered a paper about populists’ misuse of scriptural appeals in their political rhetoric at an undergraduate conference on “Religious and Legal Perspectives on Migration.” Her paper, now published, suggests that Christians who seek to witness to their faith in the public square should focus on recovering faithful rhetoric in public discourse. Outside of the classroom, Caroline serves as a Class of 2024 Student Assembly Representative in the Undergraduate Government of Boston College. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Mystērion: The Theology Journal of Boston College, and formerly served as the Director of Governmental Affairs for the Boston Intercollegiate Government, a student-led advocacy organization representing 130,000+ in the Greater Boston Area. Caroline joins the Clough Center as an Undergraduate Correspondent for the fall of 2022.

Louis Gleason
Louis Gleason is an undergraduate student of the class of 2023 from Danvers, Massachusetts. He is majoring in political science and economics with minors in physics and Earth science, and is interested in science and technology policy. Louis will be spending his summer as a Clough Research Fellow researching how technology transfer agreements impact democracy and the democratization process in the developing world. Specifically, Louis will be studying how the diffusion of advanced space technology impacts governance in recipient countries. Louis also looks forward to learning about advances being made in the field of space technology today–namely Earth observation tools–by national governments. Additionally, Louis will be looking into the ways in which technology transfer agreements can be devised to protect the rights of citizens while also preserving the free flow of technology space’s status as a part of the commons with its benefits accessible to all states and peoples. Louis joins the Clough Center as an Undergraduate Correspondent for the fall of 2022.