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Class of 2026: Cohort 35

Esénia Bañuelos

Esénia is a junior from Chicago, Illinois, double-majoring in Linguistics and Language & Education Studies and minoring in Literature in English. As a first-generation Mexican-American student of mixed Huichol descent, she is interested in creating a collaborative TESOL elementary curriculum that can best sustain, support, and promote the love of literacy in Mexican Indigenous students in urban education who fluently speak Huichol and Zapotec through the lens of documentary linguistic justice. On campus, she is a STEMLA Fellow, Ticha Project Zapotec Language Fellow, and Research Assistant. She has previously served as the President of EnAble & the Access Services Committee, created the Students for Disability Justice Committee, and is the incoming Vice President of Mujeres*. Off-campus, she has served as an elementary educator and curriculum writer for Latino-serving institutions in South Philadelphia and Norristown. She promotes her love for literacy through her hobbies as a traveling slam poet, acting and directing positions in pro-teams in the Shakespeare Performance Troupe and the Hypotheticals & Co., and personal experience as a graphic designer and photographer. This summer, she will be performing morphological analyses on the Dizhsa dialect of Colonial Valley Zapotec, creating a Spanish dictionary for Latino users of Ticha language resources, and teaching elementary literacy at Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development.

Jackie Araujo

Jackie (she/her/ella) is a Mexican-American, First Generation junior from Houston, Texas. She is pursuing a double major in Political Science and Sociology with a minor in Latin American, Iberian, and Latina/o Studies. She is currently being advised by Professor Veronica Montes in the Sociology Department, Professor Marissa Golden in the Political Science Department, and Professor Juan Suárez Ontaneda in the Spanish Department. Growing up, Jackie spent a lot of her time surrounded by music when her father was a DJ and when she danced Ballet Folklorico with her brother. Jackie’s research revolves around the role of music in the Latinx Community and uses ethnomusicology as a form of understanding this music. The research questions she wants to investigate are: How is music used as a political tool to mobilize the Latinx Migrant Community? To what extent is it also used as a tool to appeal to our emotions? And, to what extent is it used to cope and deal with experiences in our lives? She envisions doing this research by conducting participant observations in events where people listen to music and conducting interviews in which she looks at how music plays a role in the lives of immigrants as a cultural production. In addition, she will conduct content analysis of lyrics and music videos of specific artists like Los Tigres Del Norte, who have played an important role in resisting immigration laws and being the voice of the migrant community. This summer, Jackie will spend her time interning in London, and in the fall, she will participate in the study abroad program SIT Morocco: Migration and Transnational Identity.

Jasmine Marshall

Jasmine (she/her) is a junior from the Bay Area, California majoring in both Anthropology and Classical Languages. Her research focuses on how race and ethnicity were understood in the Late Roman Republic, and the ways in which modern-day racism has created bias in the study of classics. By using theories and methods of linguistic and cultural anthropology as well as the literature, material culture, and history of Ancient Rome, she intends to answer these research questions. This summer, she will be spending a month in Pompeii as an excavator on the Pompeii I.14 Project where she will kick-start her research by examining a site on the outskirts of the city and the underrepresented groups that lived there. Outside of academics, you can often find her hiking with her twin sister, going to the gym, and listening to Hozier songs on repeat. Around campus she is also a tour guide for Black at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥, and this year will be a co-coordinator of the program with fellow MMUF fellow Daniella Jacob.

Daniella Jacob

Daniella is a second-year Indian American from Houston, TX. Her work focuses on the interplay between religious practice and American politics. Daniella’s Mellon project will focus on the practice of the Sabbath and how it is influenced by and persisting through Western Capitalism. Along with this, Daniella will be exploring the formation of Asian American ethnic churches and their role in identity formation for first vs. second-generation immigrants. In her scholarship, she hopes to engage with ethnographic techniques while redefining how they have been used historically in the field of anthropology. Another commitment Daniella has is to promote public access to her work along with municipal and community organizations to turn theory into application. Daniella’s work is an ode to her first-generation immigrant family and Indian Pentecostal upbringing– spaces in which she still finds fulfillment. Faithful to her inner Texan, you will often find Daniella wherever the sun is shining.

Nyla McNeil

Nyla (she/her) is a third-year Anthropology major and Africana Studies minor from Odenton, Maryland. As a Black academic, she is invested in facilitating decolonial practices in educational spaces. Her Mellon Mays research project focuses on Black history education in public high schools and will examine how local factors, such as the political atmosphere and cultural makeup of individual regions, influence this curriculum. Furthermore, she will analyze the school curriculums' usage or nonuse of Afrocentric perspectives in class materials and the framing of Black narratives. In addition, she will evaluate the integration of diasporic perspectives into discussions of Black history. Further, she will conduct this research through ethical anthropological research methods such as interviews and observations of classroom conversations. Nyla's passion for educational reform stems from her love for teaching. For instance, this summer, she has an internship at Sitar Arts in Washington, D.C., mentoring BIPOC teens through their internships in creative industries and providing guidance and resources about career readiness and college preparation. Outside of MMUF research, Nyla is a ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ Writing Center peer tutor. In her free time, she loves reading fiction, checking out the Philadelphia museum scene, spending time in nature, and working on her creative projects.

Class of 2025: Cohort 34

Sabrina Gray

Sabrina Gray (She/Her) is a Growth and Structure of Cities major with an interest in film and comparative literature. She is originally from Montgomery, Ohio, but has spent most of her life between Atlanta, Georgia, and Nairobi, Kenya. Her experiences in both Atlanta and Nairobi ground her research into the systems that support and hinder the integration of various African immigrants into Atlanta's modern urban and social fold. She will explore these relations while raising questions about the complicated relationship between identity and space. In her free time, Sabrina enjoys singing in her a cappella group, The Acabellas, reading any fantasy book she can get her hands on, and spending time immersed in nature.

Eryn Peritz

Eryn (they/them) is a queer Chinese American adoptee born in Fengcheng, Jiangxi and raised in New York. Their work delves into the intersectionality between queer kinship formation and adoptive family structures with a focus on identity formation and childhood development. In understanding the colonial origins and implications of transracial/-national adoption, they hope to deconstruct the dominant - and thereby default - narratives of adoption informed largely by the white gaze. Outside of academia, Eryn is passionate about their arts nonprofit work in the Philly area with Monument Lab and Asian Arts Initiative. They are the co-founder of Bi-Co Asian Adoptees, a group dedicated to fostering connection and community amongst the many adoptees at their college.

Roshan Perry

Roshan is an English major from Champaign, Illinois, with an interest in trans studies from postcolonial perspectives. His research examines transness and gender variance in moments of colonial interaction using transhistorical and comparative approaches. He plans to focus on transhistorical patterns that emerge in the kinds of genders that are allowed and disallowed by both the colonizers and the colonized. They hope to explore the ways in which transness is condensed or expanded through the process of colonization, as well as how it can become complicit in colonialism and whiteness. Roshan hopes to incorporate his interests in ethnomusicology and dance anthropology into his research to explore gendered embodiment in movement and art. Outside of academics, Roshan loves dancing in the student group Afreen, playing flute in the Bi-College Orchestra and Chamber Music, and playing piano, guitar, and tabla with their family. He enjoys leadership positions at the Carpenter-Collier Libraries and in the ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ South Asian Students organization and the BIPOC-centered theater troupe, Hypotheticals & Co.

Juliana Reyes

Juliana (She/They) is a Mexican American Houstonian majoring in Sociology with a Minor in Latin America Studies. Their research interests lie in Race and Ethnic Studies, Indigenous Studies, Latina/o/x Studies, and Human Rights. Her research focuses on Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous communities from the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, who reside in Los Angeles, California. She looks to study these communities’ specific relationship with racial identities and the Mexican nation-state. Their study will capture oral histories of and scholarship on Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, and non-Indigenous communities, thus furthering our understanding of the silencing and violence faced by Indigenous peoples in Mexico and the diaspora. Juliana hopes to start conversations on the matter of race within Mexico and the varying experiences that people face because of their proximity to whiteness, indigeneity, blackness, mestizaje, etc. In their free time, Juliana dedicates her time to reading scholarly archives, researching decoloniality, and finding ways to be involved in the community's efforts to create inclusive environments. She is in student organizations like Mujeres* and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice and is the President of Zami+, the queer BIPOC group on campus!

Peyton Roberson

Peyton (she/they) is a native Houstonian who loves to soak up the sun. They are an Anthropology major with an intended minor in Africana studies and a concentration in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights. Her research explores the complicated relationship between the Houston Police Department (HPD) and a historically Black community in Houston, Third Ward. Taking an ethnographic approach, they intend to call attention to the ways in which the HPD’s method of policing in Third Ward engages in and enables passive oppression to establish job security by increasing and/or maintaining HPD profit through the exploitation of community violence. In non-academic settings, Peyton enjoys crocheting, long-distance running, and spending time with her cat!