Meet the New ISPS Graduate Fellows

May 28, 2015

The Institution for Social and Policy Studies is pleased to announce their new cohort of Policy Fellows. This year ISPS selected 12 highly successful fellows who will spend the next year working on research projects in areas as diverse as school integration, Congressional oversight of the NSA, police militarization, the professional ethics of prosecutors, and the implementation of Title IX.

The Graduate Fellowship program started in 2012 with the aim of bringing together scholars across campus interested in pursuing policy-relevant research on domestic issues. Over the course of the program, ISPS Policy Fellows attend seminars and bi-weekly meetings; receive training in skills such as op-ed and policy memo writing, media appearances and blogging; and present their research and receive feedback from ISPS-affiliated faculty and other graduate fellows. At the end of the program, the fellows are expected to have completed a research project. Graduate Policy Fellows must be enrolled in as a Yale graduate or professional student.

The following scholars will join the Graduate Policy Fellows program for the 2015-2016 academic year:

Eric Chung is currently a J.D. student at Yale Law School. His research focuses on the intersections between law and comparative social policy, including in the fields of education, health and welfare.

Eric Fish is a Ph.D. in Law candidate at Yale. His major areas of interest include sentencing law, criminal procedure, professional responsibility, remedies, and legislation.

Kelly Goodman is a third year history Ph.D.  She researches tax and school policy at the intersection of political economy, political history, and economic history.

Max Krahé is a third-year doctoral student in Political Science. He is pursuing a synthesist project on the dynamics of capitalism in the twenty-first century, looking among other things on the impact of technology, demographic chance, and globalization on socio-economic stability in advanced capitalist countries.

Tom Lyttelton is a second year doctoral student in the sociology department at Yale. His research focuses on demography and inequality in America, and for ISPS he is undertaking a project that examines the geography of family structure in America. Prior to coming to Yale, Tom studied history, and worked for  London non-profits doing research on health and education.

Torey McMurdo is a Ph.D. student in political science, focusing on U.S. foreign policy and international security. Her interests lie at the nexus of international relations, American politics and comparative politics.

Philip McHarris is a joint PhD student in Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University. His research interests lie at the intersection of race/ethnicity, urban sociology, inequality, and the criminal justice system.

Gautam Nair is a third-year PhD student in Political Science whose research focuses on the political economy of inequality and redistribution in a broad array of contexts.

Emily Nix is a Ph.D. candidate in the economics department. Her research explores human capital development both in and out of the labor market, and how individual human capital choices interact with existing laws, policies, and institutions.

Celene Reynolds is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests include social change, law, educational organizations, and gender and sexuality.

Gina Roussos is a third-year graduate student in Social Psychology. She is broadly interested in how prejudiced attitudes and beliefs originate, are perpetuated, and can ultimately be changed.

Nikki Springer is a joint degree student working toward a PhD at FES and a MBA at SOM.  Her research focuses on the interplay of environmental regulation, corporate incentives, and ecosystem planning in the context of national-scale infrastructure.