Graduate Policy Fellows

Muhammad Amasha is a sociology PhD candidate at Yale University. His research interests include politics, culture, theory, and religion. Muhammad’s doctoral dissertation examines political polarization and investigates how political competition can devolve into violent conflict, especially during unsettled times. His research uses archival, interview, and computational methods. 

Bruce Liang is a PhD student in Sociology. His main research interest concerns examining the role of culture in facilitating social reproduction—and conversely, social mobility—with a focus on these mechanisms in educational institutions. He uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. Bruce’s current project draws on 70 in-depth interviews with students at a large research university to explore class-based disparities in how students engage with their professors. He holds an Honors Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Toronto.

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.

Yanitza Rodriguez is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology at Yale University, working in Dr. Rachel J. Perry’s lab. Her research examines how obesity-driven metabolic dysregulation affects ovarian function, fertility, and women’s reproductive health, with a particular interest in translating basic metabolic physiology into clinical and policy-relevant insights.