Meet the IRC-Zolberg Fellows for Spring 2021
The IRC and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School are excited to announce the spring 2021 cohort of fellows. Supported by the Arnhold Foundation, master’s and doctoral students at The New School have the opportunity to contribute or lead design and research projects at the IRC, at headquarters and in the field.
Since 2017, fellows have worked at the IRC on a range of teams including policy, innovation, research, health, governance, and emergency response. Fellows have a wide range of experience, and come from the Parsons School of Design, School of Nonprofit and Public Management, and other New School departments. Learn more about the fellowship.
Sameer Jamal, MA in International Affairs
Sameer is currently pursuing his MA in International Affairs at the New School. His research interest is in examining the intersectionality between race, social justice, gender equality, media advocacy, and international development in the global south. Sameer is currently a research assistant with Slum Dwellers International (SDI-K), investigating effective ways to create local community partnerships for the provision of basic water and sanitation services for residents of the Mukuru SPA informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.
As the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy and Partnerships Fellow, Sameer will help the Airbel team continue to refine and drive our ambitious commitment to anti-racism, de-colonizing aid, and improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the sector and our work. He will work with the Research Practice Team and the Behavioral Insights Practice at Airbel Impact Lab to help develop a set of actionable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategies, with a focus on how the team works with partners and external stakeholders.
Ahad Ali, PhD in Sociology
Ahad is a PhD candidate at The New School for Social Research. His academic interests include the public sphere, research methods, sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies, and media studies. Prior to his IRC fellowship, Ahad worked as a journalist and research manager at local NGOs in Pakistan.
During his time with the IRC, Ahad will be working in the IRC’s Emergency Unit as the Signpost Fellow. Signpost is a humanitarian information and communications project that seeks to overcome common obstacles to traditional information services in order to better serve the complex needs of people in crisis. Ahad will be providing support on the design and delivery of critical COVID-19 information through the use of technology, social media, and community engagement to ensure that we are putting high quality, up to date, client-driven information in peoples’ hands.
Atul Khera, MS in Organizational Change Management, Milano School of Public Policy, Management, and Environment
Atul is a leadership development consultant with demonstrated impact working with young professionals, leveraging his program design skills to facilitate experiential journeys. Over the past six years, Atul has designed and facilitated fellowship and internship programs, residential, and non-residential workshops in rural and urban settings with adolescents and young professionals in education, non-profit, and corporations. He has coached, supervised, and engaged with more than 500 youth from India, the UK, USA, Australia, Germany, and Afghanistan on their “self-to-society” leadership journeys. Atul enthusiastically believes in forming cross-border connections, fostering compassion, and creating immersive experiences for young adults.
Atul will serve as the IRC’s Learning and Development Fellow, supporting us in developing innovative mechanisms for capacity sharing in fragile, low-resource contexts. In particular, IRC is about to launch the “Ensuring Quality Access and Learning for Mothers and Newborns in Conflict-Affected Contexts” project (EQUAL), a new research consortium focused on maternal and newborn health in conflict affected settings. Atul will play a critical role in helping the team identify and fill evidence gaps that could ultimately improve policies, programming, and outcomes for mothers and newborns.
Nada Salem, MS in Strategic Design & Management, Parsons School of Design
Nada is currently exploring “future of making” as it applies to the field of architecture and planning, and is making use of her interior design training and master studies in design strategy at Parsons. Nada’s capstone is focused on inclusivity in the workplace for employees with a multicultural background. She enjoys working at the intersection of disciplines and is always inspired by diverse expertise coming together in order to address design challenges.
Nada will be working closely with The Airbel Impact Lab’s Middle East Hub as the Exhibit Designer for Educational Minds and Hearts on Exhibits. She will support the Ahlan Simsim (Hello Sesame) project by contributing to the design of early childhood development interventions to be integrated into health centers across the Middle East. One of the solutions is designing “Play to Learn” exhibits to be installed inside health center waiting areas around Jordan. The exhibits’ learning themes will follow the Ahlan Simsim overall arching theme: social-emotional and cognitive development for children up to 8 years old.
Isaac Andino, Milano School of Public and Urban Policy
Isaac Andino is a first-year student in the Public and Urban Policy program at The New School. Prior to his time at TNS, he spent three years working at Trend.io, an enterprise SaaS company that helps brands gain targeted social media exposure. Isaac is passionate about the interplay between the public and private sectors, including social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and developing scalable solutions to the world’s problems. In his free time, he enjoys riding his bike across the five boroughs and reading a good book. He has a BA in political science from Grinnell College.
Isaac will also be working on the “Ensuring Quality Access and Learning for Mothers and Newborns in Conflict-Affected Contexts’’ project (EQUAL), serving as the IRC’s Policy and Research Uptake Fellow. He will help to examine the current policy landscape for maternal and newborn health in humanitarian settings by conducting context analyses and mapping relevant policies and guidelines. This will help our team to better understand if existing policies adequately address maternal and neonatal health needs.
Victoria Tobar Roa, MA in International Affairs
Victoria is currently pursuing her MA in International Affairs at the New School and is expected to graduate in May 2021. Her areas of interest are conflict, crime, and violence in Colombia; the relationships between state-making and violence in Latin America; and Latin America-US relations. Victoria is currently a research Intern at International Crisis Group.
As the Client Responsiveness Research Fellow, Victoria will Work closely with the Governance Research Coordinator and the Client Responsiveness Team to help advance our research priorities related to client engagement. This work will support our strategic commitment to giving our clients greater influence over program design and delivery.
Melissa Lee, MA in International Affairs
Melissa is currently pursuing her MA in International Affairs at The New School. For Melissa’s capstone, she is designing an alternative intervention to reframe why transparency matters in global garment supply chains. Her goal is to acknowledge the fundamental problem transparency seeks to address by giving too much power to the brands, and shift the focus to empower the people who make our clothes so that they are both visible and heard. Through her coursework, she has gained practical experience in connecting gender equality issues and outcomes to practical policy points that would be effective in supporting, addressing, and communicating with different audiences across different platforms.
Melissa will be working in the Airbel Impact Lab with our communications and knowledge management team, where she will capture stories and create visuals which will better communicate innovative new projects and key research findings. Melissa will assist with planning and producing creative communication campaigns across different channels and platforms with the aim of growing and engaging our audience.
Blake Roberts, MA in Theories of Urban Practice, Parsons School of Design Strategies
Blake is currently pursuing his MA in Theories of Urban Practice. His research at Parsons focuses on queer kinship, the evolution of queerness in cities, and securing a multigenerational queer futurity. He is a graphic designer, urban researcher, and community organizer.
Blake will be joining the IRC as our Protection Analysis Design Fellow. He will support our designers and experts in protection monitoring and analysis to develop a toolkit of easy-to-use tools and approaches to improve the quality of protection of frontline workers, coordination actors, and those steering broader humanitarian response strategies. This resource package will be designed for global application by frontline protection teams and protection coordination actors engaged in emergency and protracted displacement settings.
Lea Bernier-Coffineau, MA in Anthropology
Lea started her professional career as a stage performer in Paris. After earning her BA in Sociology at the Université de Strasbourg, she came to the New School for Social Research to pursue an MA in Anthropology. Lea joined the Zolberg Institute as a student fellow in 2019–2020 and worked as a research assistant for several professors. She also makes documentaries in an effort to render ethnography and anthropological knowledge accessible to a wider audience.
As the Bilingual (French/English) Humanitarian Research Fellow, Lea will be working with the IRC in countries like Mali, Chad and Niger to help the team conduct qualitative research and use those insights to develop and test tools for use by low-literacy clients across several projects. These projects cover a range of humanitarian outcomes, from reducing child malnutrition, to womens’ sexual and reproductive health, as well as improving children’s social and emotional education.
Patrick Ciaschi, Julia Wieslawa Szagdaj, Sandra Rincon, Daniel Ozoukou, Tejaswini Vavilala, and Zishan Jiwani will be continuing their Fall 2020 fellowships into Spring 2021.
