Dechen Albero, Political Science
Grassroots Justice? Gacaca and the Trauma of Memory in Rwanda

Dechen Albero is a PhD student in Political Science at the New School for Social Research. He previously served in the United States Peace Corps to Moldova where he directed the Gender, Youth and Development program and was a consultant for non-governmental organizations. His current research focuses on gender and citizenship in post-genocide Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region.

Kenneth Anderson, Media Studies
Canon Fall 2009 Cover Design

Kenneth Anderson is a Media Studies graduate student at The New School. He has created and designed websites since 2003, and now works with canon. His portfolio website is www.andersonenvy.com

Mischa Carlson, Psychology
Who and how? The Propagation of Myths Surrounding Counterterrorism in the U.S.

Mischa Carlson is a graduate student in Psychology at the New School for Social Research. His academic interests include political psychology, cultural psychology, neuroscience, and nation-building. He earned a bachelor's in psychology at Princeton University with a thesis entitled “Audiomotor Integration in Music.” He has also interned as a policy analyst, and received an offer from the Department of Justice to work as a Deputy U.S. Marshal post-graduation.

Boris Heersink, Political Science
THE VP CARD
Judging The Performance of Vice-Presidential Nominees

Boris Heersink is a Ph.D. student in the Politics Department of the New School for Social Research. His research topics include vice-presidential selection, the power debate and the historical development of the American presidential primary system. 

Justin Humphreys, canon editor, Philosophy
What I Learned in Grad School

Justin Humphreys is a graduate student in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His academic interests include ancient ethics and political philosophy, the philosophy of science and mathematics, and the theoretical grounds of the social sciences. As an undergraduate, he studied science and mathematics but ultimately earned a bachelors degree in the Classics from Reed College. He worked in finance before enrolling at the New School. He enjoys traveling, writing, and playing chess.

Samuel Mueller, Political Science
Religion in Modern Societies as Challenge for Critical Theory

Samuel Mueller is a PhD student in the Politics Department of New School for Social Research. His areas of interest include religion, secularism, as well as conceptualizations of modernity and the modern. His regional focus areas are Turkey and the Middle East. 

Neil Russell, Political Science
Religion in Modern Societies as Challenge for Critical Theory

Neil Russell is a graduate student in political science at the New School for Social Research. After gaining a degree in journalism at Stirling University in Scotland, he worked as a reporter for a year in print and television in Glasgow. Neil’s research interests include media framing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle Eastern history, and he is currently learning Arabic. He is also a regular contributor to pulsemedia.org, a political blog consisting of academics, journalists and activists, devoted to global issues which is rated by Le Monde Diplomatique as one of their five favorite websites and is also linked to by the London Review of Books blog.

Rachel Signer, canon editor, Anthropology
walls.

As co-editor of Canon, Rachel is proud to provide a public window into the various projects, writing styles, and ideas that NSSR students are working on. Her own research focuses on cultural activism, with special attention to context-based conceptual art. In her spare time, Rachel can be found painting on cardboard boxes on the Williamsburg Bridge (however, she has yet to find a gallery to represent her, so until then she'll stick with studying anthropology). 

Emily Sogn, Anthropology
Internal Frontiers: Protecting Against a Post-Traumatic Future in a Time of War

Tristan Thibodeau and Justin Myers
Repeasantization: The Geographical Imaginary for a Post-Industrial Future

Justin Myers is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he is currently writing his dissertation on the revitalization of indigenous food economies within the U.S. as a tactic of decolonization. His present research interests revolve around environmental justice movements, food movements, the commons, autonomous marxism and the neoliberal university. He enjoys riding his bicycle around Brooklyn and spends far too little time away from books and computers.

Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau is an M.A. student in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is interested in the critical social and political theory, psychoanalysis, and ethics. He also works on food, agriculture, and development issues when he is not a student.

Hans E. Tokke, Sociology
Football Fridays: An Ethnography of Suburban Village Life

Hans Tokke is an urban sociologist and activist interested in issues of social justice. A PhD student in Sociology at The New School For Social Research, he is interested in the relationships between consumerism and religion in American society. Having worked for 23 years in various leadership roles in the non-profit sector, he is currently teaching sociology and social justice at CUNY City Tech, SUNY Rockland, Nyack College, and Eastern University in Philadelphia. An Estonian refugee’s kid, born in Sweden, raised in Vancouver, Canada, and living for the past decade in New York City, he is a true cosmopolitan transnational that feels most at home with his wife Cheryl (also a PhD student!) and his two teenage sons.

Alexios Tsigkas, Anthropology
No, But if You Insist, Yes: The Art and Fetishes of Lucas Samaras

Alexios Tsigkas was asked to write a brief bio for Canon mag but felt really uncomfortable about it. He is not exactly sure how he ended up at the New School, but at the moment he is a graduate student in anthropology. When his childhood plan to become an artist failed, he decided to deal with art through anthropology, a project that signified the gradual loss of his few remaining functional brain cells.

Barbara Umrath, Sociology
Critical Theory as ‘Weberian Marxism’?

Barbara Umrath is a student in the Department of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. She holds a degree in pedagogy, has worked with feminist organizations in Germany and Mexico and is interested in how questions of gender and race/ethnicity can be integrated in the theoretical framework of the Frankfurt School.