This semester, in our spring series, PCURs will interview a graduate student from their home department who either is currently a graduate student at Princeton, or attended Princeton as an undergraduate. In Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, interviews with graduate students shed light on the variety of paths one can take to get to graduate school and beyond, and the many insights gained along the way from research projects and mentors. Here, Taylor shares her interview with Hadiya Jones.
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Hadiya Layla Jones, 3rd Year Graduate Student in Princeton’s Sociology Ph.D. Program
What’s your research about?
As a black woman raised in a predominantly white middle-class suburb, I am intrigued, both personally and scholarly, by the diverse manifestations created by the intersection of race, gender, and class. I ultimately desire to study how black middle-class millennials, who are socialized in predominantly white spaces, navigate their identities, and I am particularly fascinated by how this process happens on the web.
This semester, in our spring series, PCURs will interview a graduate student from their home department who either is currently a graduate student at Princeton, or attended Princeton as an undergraduate. In Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, interviews with graduate students shed light on the variety of paths one can take to get to graduate school and beyond, and the many insights gained along the way from research projects and mentors. Here, Emma shares her interview.
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Alex Wheatley ’16 *20
As part of our Spring Seasonal Series, Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, I interviewed two students in the SINSI Graduate Program, Alex Wheatley ‘16 *20 and Nathan Eckstein ‘16 *20. Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI) is a scholarship program designed to prepare students to pursue careers in the U.S. government. Students in the program spend two years pursuing an MPA in the Woodrow Wilson School and two years in a SINSI fellowship with an executive branch department or agency (often, but not always, between the first and second years of the MPA program). In the first post on this two-part interview, Alex and Nathan discuss their experiences as SINSI scholars in the MPA program:
Emma: How did you decide to apply for SINSI?
Alex: I saw a SINSI advertisement hanging on a lamp post. It wasn’t quite that simple, but it wasn’t premeditated either. I had been thinking about health-related fellowships, and as I subsequently learned more about SINSI it seemed like an excellent opportunity to dabble in many different aspects of public health, to do good through public service, to be thrown into opportunities I otherwise wouldn’t have, and to complete a higher degree with students whose experiences were very different from my own. This was back when SINSI was a six year program that students applied for in the fall of their junior year– one of the toughest considerations was whether I was willing to commit the next six years of my life to a program I had learned about from a lamp post (spoiler: I made the right decision).
Nathan Eckstein ’16 *20
Nathan: I entered Princeton thinking I was interested in a career in public service. At the start of sophomore year, I spoke to Ambassador Barbara Bodine, then the SINSI director, about applying for an internship with an embassy abroad. Through some luck I wound up in Embassy La Paz, Bolivia, working in the Public Diplomacy section. In Bolivia, I assisted to plan and implement programming that engaged hundreds of Bolivians on subjects such as American civil society, volunteerism, and education. Through this work, I developed immense respect for my colleagues and bosses. That summer more or less confirmed my inkling that public service would be a good fit, and I applied for SINSI a few months after during my junior fall. Continue reading Graduate Student Reflections: An Interview with Alex Wheatley ’16 *20 and Nathan Eckstein ’16 *20 Part 1
This semester, in our spring series, PCURs will interview a graduate student who either is currently a graduate student at Princeton, or attended Princeton as an undergraduate. In Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, interviews with graduate students shed light on the variety of paths one can take to get to graduate school and beyond, and the many insights gained along the way from research projects and mentors. Here, Shanon shares his interview.
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Ole Agersnap, Ph.D. candidate in economics at Princeton.
As part of our seasonal series on graduate students, I decided to interview Ole Agersnap, a friend of mine in his first year of the Economics PhD program. Ole and I met at the beginning of this year in the Princeton Chapel Choir, where we both sing as baritones. Over the course of the year, we’ve chatted regularly about economics, school, and life in general. Ole is a dedicated scholar with a clear perspective on his academic journey, so I hope you enjoy reading his reflections! Continue reading Graduate Student Reflections: An Interview With Ole Agersnap
This semester, in our spring series, PCURs will interview a graduate student from their home department who either is currently a graduate student at Princeton, or attended Princeton as an undergraduate. In Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, interviews with graduate students shed light on the variety of paths one can take to get to graduate school and beyond, and the many insights gained along the way from research projects and mentors. Here, Rafi shares his interview.
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Jonathon Catlin, a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of History.
Jonathon Catlin is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of History, focusing on intellectual responses to the Holocaust. Before beginning at Princeton, he earned his B.A. from the University of Chicago in Jewish Studies and Fundamentals: Issues and Texts and his M.A. in philosophy from KU Leuven in Belgium. A few days ago, I sat down with him in Chancellor Green café to hear about his research journey and some of what he’s learned along the way.
How did you arrive at your current research topic?
I was a junior in high school and, for whatever reason, I decided to take a course called “The Holocaust in History, Literature, and Film” at Harvard Summer School. Why I chose it I don’t know, but the rest is history. Holocaust representation and its intersections with philosophy, religion, literature, film — all in a sort of historical context — is essentially what I’ve been working on for about eight years now, bouncing around multiple disciplines.
My dissertation is hopefully going to be on the concept of catastrophe in modern European thought – a project I’ve been working on since my first year of undergrad. I guess the newest thing for me about coming to Princeton is that I’m in a history department now, which is just totally different than the interdisciplinary humanities focus that I was used to.
This semester, in our spring series, PCURs will interview a graduate student from their home department who either is currently a graduate student at Princeton, or attended Princeton as an undergraduate. In, Graduate Student Reflections: Life in Academia, interviews with graduate students shed light on the variety of paths one can take to get to graduate school and beyond, and the many insights gained along the way from research projects and mentors. Here, Taylor shares her interview.
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Herrissa Lamothe, 3rd Year Graduate Student in the Sociology Department
What’s your research about?
During graduate school, I became interested in learning how people know what they know. It’s essentially the idea that you as a person embody or have access to very rich cultural knowledge that is passed down to you through the people that you know in very subtle ways. At any given moment in time, you are actually operating on this incredibly rich, complex body of knowledge that is not only available to you, but is also available to the people associated with you. I’m interested in figuring out how to analyze knowledge like this–how it’s distributed not just to one individual, but to a group of individuals, and how to develop methodologies to do that.
As a personal interest, I want to know how this impacts inequality–does where you live and who you have access to affect not only what information you have, but your perception of the world, the assumptions you have for how you should function in society, and this kind of stock of cultural knowledge that you use to go about doing things like choosing clothes, taking care of your body, applying for a job–these types of knowledge that look simple in implementation but are really, highly complex.
What’s the first thing you should do after your thesis is done?
More research, of course! The best kind of research. Fun research.
For me, that meant investigating the place where I’ll spend the next two years: Harvard Kennedy School. At HKS, I’ll study policy and political communications as a Master of Public Policy student. I’ll also develop leadership skills as a Sheila C. Johnson Leadership Fellow.
Fact: Signs like this exist for pictures like these.
I’m unbelievably excited about these things. I’m also eager to learn who my classmates are, where my classes will be, and what Boston is like. Thus, I figured it was time for some research — at HKS’ New Admit Day, which took place on April 7.
Here are some field notes from my journey there and back:
