I have a PhD in Anthropology from Yale. For my anthropological fieldwork, I lived and worked in a squatters community in Amsterdam for 3.5 years. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on how a community of anarchist squatters verbally reject hierarchy and authority yet silently practice hierarchy and authority. My doctoral work was the basis of my book, The Autonomous Life? Paradoxes of hierarchy and authority in the squatters movement in Amsterdam, a peer reviewed monograph that was published by Manchester University Press in 2016.
My doctoral studies and living expenses were funded by Yale while I was in residence. Full funding for PhD students in the humanities and social sciences in elite institutions is common in the U.S. in contrast to the UK where PhD students are rarely funded, which is appalling and exploitative.
To fund my field research and writing in Amsterdam, I was awarded the following grants:
- National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
- Yale Dissertation Fellowship
- MacMillan Dissertation Research Fellowship
- Department of Anthropology Williams Fund
- John F. Enders Summer Fellowship
- Coca-Cola World Fund
- MacMillan Pre-Dissertation Mini-Grant
- Globalization and Self-Determination Grant
- Agrarian Studies program
In Amsterdam, I was affiliated with the International Institute of Social History and the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research.
Prior to beginning my fieldwork, I was also chosen to participate in the National Science Foundation Summer Institute in Research Design in Cultural Anthropology, a 3 week intensive methodological training course in Beaufort, North Carolina.
Before beginning my PhD, I taught English language in Montevideo, Uruguay for a year and spent a lot of time in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Before that, I spent a year in Nicosia, Cyprus on a Fulbright Fellowship . While in Cyprus, I traveled all over the Middle East and visited Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. This was pre-9/11, pre-Arab Spring, and pre-Syrian civil war.
I did my undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College. I was able to attend Swarthmore due to the generosity of the Phillip Evans Scholarship, which provided tuition, room, board, and a supplementary summer grant to pursue intellectual and professional interests and the Elks’ National Foundation Scholarship for Most Valuable Student from the local Elks’ Lodge in Flushing, New York (where I grew up!). While at Swarthmore, I learned Spanish in Mexico, spent a summer with the Quakers in Cuba, and a semester abroad in Chile. This enabled me to travel to Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.
I also graduated from Hunter College High School in Manhattan.
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