Interdisciplinarity and the Political Imperative of Research: An Interview with Daniela Gandorfer, Part II

Posted on by Israeli Alec
Daniela Gandorfer

Specializing in legal thought and critical theory, Daniela Gandorfer is a graduate of the doctoral program in Princeton’s Department of Comparative Literature, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Cruz, and co-director and head of research at the Logische Phantasie Lab (LoPh). LoPh, a research collective recently founded by Princeton alumni and current students, describes itself as a “comprehensive research agency that actively challenges injustices resulting from political, legal, economic, social, physical, and environmental entanglements by means of specific investigations.” I want to thank former PCUR correspondent Rafi Lehman, now the Development Coordinator at LoPh, for putting me in touch with the research collective’s team.

Over email and Zoom, I was able to talk to Daniela about the critical methods employed by LoPh, its relationship with the established academy, and the benefits and limits of an interdisciplinary research approach.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Below is part two of a two-part interview. You can read Part I here.

Daniela Gandorfer, co-director and head of research at LoPh.
Continue reading Interdisciplinarity and the Political Imperative of Research: An Interview with Daniela Gandorfer, Part II

Interdisciplinarity and the Political Imperative of Research: An Interview with Daniela Gandorfer, Part I

Posted on by Israeli Alec

Specializing in legal thought and critical theory, Daniela Gandorfer is a graduate of the doctoral program in Princeton’s Department of Comparative Literature, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Cruz, and co-director and head of research at the Logische Phantasie Lab (LoPh). LoPh, a research collective recently founded by Princeton alumni and current students, describes itself as a “comprehensive research agency that actively challenges injustices resulting from political, legal, economic, social, physical, and environmental entanglements by means of specific investigations.” I want to thank former PCUR correspondent Rafi Lehman, now the Development Coordinator at LoPh, for putting me in touch with the research collective’s team.

Over email and Zoom, I was able to talk to Daniela about the critical methods employed by LoPh, its relationship with the established academy, and the benefits and limits of an interdisciplinary research approach.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Below is part one of a two-part interview.

Daniela Gandorfer, co-director and head of research at LoPh.
Continue reading Interdisciplinarity and the Political Imperative of Research: An Interview with Daniela Gandorfer, Part I

Working as a Latino History Research Assistant: An Interview with Emily Sanchez ’22

Posted on by Soo Young Yun

While students usually choose to seek research internships over the summer, some research opportunities are also available during the semester, such as working under a professor or graduate student to aid with their academic research. However, among these choices, it may often feel like there are especially limited research opportunities available for students pursuing majors in the humanities or social sciences. We often imagine research assistants as collecting and analyzing statistical data, examining Petri dishes in a lab, developing computer programs, and so forth, and so we may be more skeptical as to what kind of research non-STEM majors could possibly partake in. 

To learn more about research opportunities during the semester in the humanities and social sciences, I interviewed Emily Sanchez ’22, who is currently working as a research assistant under Professor Rosina Lozano. Professor Lozano, an Associate Professor of History at Princeton, specializes in Latino history and the study of Latino cities in the U.S. As a research assistant, Emily has been examining 19th-century Spanish newspapers from the Southwest to understand more about the historical ties between ethnic Mexicans and indigenous communities in the region. 

Here’s what Emily shared about her experience as a research assistant: 

Continue reading Working as a Latino History Research Assistant: An Interview with Emily Sanchez ’22

Seeing the world through its study

Posted on by Zoe Sims

Bermuda is built on the backs of corals. Or it would be, if corals had backs.

Low-lying, wind-resistant vegetation thrives on the island's sandy cliffs.
Low-lying, wind-resistant vegetation thrives on the island’s sandy cliffs.

They don’t. Coral don’t have vertebrae, or heads, or eyes. An entire coral organism – a polyp – is one single, tentacle-ringed cavity, one cavern that is mouth, stomach, and anus combined. Yet these tiny animals are powerful: together, their colonies can grow meters tall, producing hard, rock-like skeletons that form the backbones of coral reefs.

Though perhaps better known for its pink-sand beaches and international banking, Bermuda is also home to spectacular coral reefs. And the low-lying rock island is a monument to the power of calcifying organisms and geological time.

Bermuda from above: the island's northern tip, with outlying patch reefs (the dark spots) visible under the water.
Bermuda from above: the island’s northern tip, with outlying patch reefs (the dark spots) visible under the water.

This is how my adviser, Anne Cohen, explained it to me when I first arrived in Bermuda. It became the way I saw the island, and changed how I saw coral: I began, like Anne and many other researchers, to see my study organisms as the center of my world. Continue reading Seeing the world through its study