Graduate Students

Sinan Dogan

My research interests include anthropology of mental health and care, environmental pollution, and psychosocial impacts of environmental disasters. My current research is on the connections between community mental health issues and environmental hazards in the Mon Valley of Southwestern Pennsylvania, focusing on Clairton, PA.

My first ethnographic research project examined informal social and cultural organization of immigrants in the UK, through cognitive cultural models of solidarity and gender (2015-2016). I also conducted preliminary ethnographic research with self-employed office workers and entrepreneurs in Turkey regarding technologies of self-making (2017); and archival research on socio-cognitive development and culture change with the pervasiveness of digital technologies (2018). Meanwhile, I worked as research assistant for the ERC-funded interdisciplinary project “The New Politics of Welfare: Towards an ‘Emerging Markets’ Welfare State Regime” (2017-2018).

 

Degrees and Education

BA - Psychology - Koç University, Turkey (2018)

Jung Eun Kwon

Jung Eun Kwon is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Jung Eun received her Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at the Seoul National University. Her research interests broadly include knowledge production and experiences of mental health and care. In her dissertation project, she specifically focuses on the suicide prevention initiatives in South Korea to examine the dynamic relationships among the policies, practices, and experiences surrounding suicide and suicide prevention.

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology – Seoul National University, South Korea (2016)
BM - Korean Music – Seoul National University, South Korea (2013)

Awards

Fulbright Graduate Study Award (2018-2020)

Carolina Forgit-Knerr

Carolina Forgit-Knerr is a cultural anthropologist interested in anthropology of bureaucracy, political and legal anthropology, migration, and politics of care. Her dissertation project deals with international and national responses to displacement in the context of Colombia where Carolina is looking at the bureaucratic infrastructure evolving to organize Venezuelan migrants. She is exploring the intersection between international and local humanitarian aid, government officials, and migrants by investigating the way in which international and national interests, political ideologies, financial donors, and migrants’ own goals become bureaucratically salient.

 

Degrees and Education

BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Free University Berlin , 2017 BA thesis: “ Wir sind Einzelkämpfer!“ Administrative decision - making and boundary objects in a state - mandated bureaucratic framework Advisor: Olaf Zenker

Anna Mousouli

I am a sociocultural anthropologist, enrolled in the joint degree program Ph.D. in Anthropology/ MPH in Behavioral & Community Health Sciences. My current research interests are in migration and refugee studies, identity, gender and sexuality, medical anthropology, anthropology, and public health. I intend to conduct ethnographic fieldwork among Afghan people who live in Greece.

My interest in migration and refugee studies dates from 2001 during my undergraduate training in anthropology. My M.Sc. thesis, which was marked with distinction, examines how power relations affect and shape the positioning, discourses, and practices of Albanian immigrants in Greek society and in the health care system. I have conducted ethnographic field research among Albanian people mainly in Greece, but also in Albania. From 2007 to 2010, I participated in an oral history research program about the settlement in Kessariani (i.e. a suburb of Athens) of Greek refugees from Asia Minor in 1922, the German Occupation of Greece during World War II, and the Greek Civil War.

I have worked as a volunteer, independently and in NGOs, with migrants and refugees, in various administrative posts, and as a foreign language teacher in the private sector for more than ten years, before starting my graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh in 2017. 

I am a native speaker of Greek, and a proficient speaker of English and French. I also speak basic Albanian and I am currently learning Farsi.

Degrees and Education

M.Sc. Medical Anthropology, University College London (UCL), UK (2004)
B.A. Social Policy and Social Anthropology (Major/Specialization Social Anthropology), Panteion University, Greece (2002)

Awards

2018 Klinzing Pre-dissertation Grant (European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh)
2018 - INPAC Research Grant (Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh)
2018 REES Small Grant (Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, University of Pittsburgh)
2017-2018 Arts and Science Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh