Interdisciplinary

Birikti Kahsai

ISPS Director's Fellow, 2026

Birikti Kahsai is a junior in Branford double majoring in Black Studies and History. She is interested in housing policy and particularly in the creation of more robust tenant protections at the local and federal level. On campus, Birikti serves on the boards of the Black Student Alliance, Branford College Council, and Urban Improvement Corps.

Stephen Latham

Director Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics; Senior Lecturer Political Science; Lecturer School of Management

Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., is director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. A graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the University of California, Berkeley’s doctoral program in jurisprudence, Latham is a former health care business and regulatory attorney and served as director of ethics standards at the American Medical Association before entering academia full-time.

Alessandra Pappalardi

ISPS Director's Fellow, 2026

Alessandra Pappalardi is a junior studying Political Science (B.A./MA.) and the History of Science, Medicine and Public Health (B.A.). Passionate about community-building, Alessandra’s time as a Director’s Fellow will be spent in preparation for her internship this summer at the New Haven Democracy Fund.

Alessandra Pappalardi

Dahl Scholar, 2025-2026

Alessandra Pappalardi is a junior studying Political Science and the History of Science, Medicine and Public Health. Passionate about community-building, Alessandra’s time as a Dahl Scholar will be spent alongside her research partner Sabbi Gale-Donnelly studying discussion as a means to achieve social cohesion. The pair will investigate the efficacy of two kinds of dialogue structures – the mock citizen assembly and the pluralist lab – in shaping ideological trust and openness.

Shirin Purkayastha

ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow, 2026

Shirin Purkayastha is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Departments of Black Studies and Sociology. Her research examines the consequences of financialization for the popular music industry. She is currently researching how firm-level changes following the Telecommunications Act of 1996 shaped the discursive labor of hip-hop journalism.

As an ISPS Fellow, she will examine how platform economies organize the work and subjectivities of cultural workers. Prior to Yale, she worked as a policy researcher at UCSF and the Vera Institute of Justice.

Marah Rigaud

ISPS Director's Fellow, 2026

Marah Rigaud is a sophomore from Long Island, New York, majoring in Political Science and African American Studies. Her academic interests center on law and public service, with a focus on race, governance, and public policy and how institutions shape access and equity.

Doug Rogers

Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Director of the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Douglas Rogers is Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Director of the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Yale University. His research and teaching interests in political and economic anthropology; natural resources (especially oil) and energy; corporations; the anthropology of religion and ethics; historical anthropology; and socialist societies and their postsocialist trajectories.

Jennifer Rosas

Dahl Scholar, 2025-2026

Jennifer (she/her) is a third-year student originally from Houston, Texas, pursuing a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a language certificate in Spanish. Her broader academic interests span biological studies, including mutated-protein analysis and chemical properties of molecular compounds. Furthermore, she began her research experience as a Herb-Scarf scholar the summer of 2025, where she first collaborated with Dr. Xi Chen. As a Dahl Scholar working under the mentorship of Dr.

Ian Shapiro

Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale University. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice, and the methods of social inquiry. A native of South Africa, he received his J.D. from the Yale Law School and his Ph.D. from the Yale Political Science Department where he has taught since 1984 and served as chair from 1999 to 2004. Shapiro also served as Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies from 2004-2019.

Stephen Skowronek

Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political & Social Science

Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. In 2019, he served as the Wynant Visiting Professor at the Rothermere American Institute, Balliol College Oxford. He has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and he has held the Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Institution for Social and Policy Studies

Advancing Research • Shaping Policy • Developing Leaders

Interdisciplinary