New PhD students since September 2012
PhD students who arrived in September
We received over 30 applications for the 2 PhD studentships funded by the College of Arts and Social Sciences, and we selected the following two PhD students, who joined us at the end of September:
- Hanifi Baris: Turkish student of Kurdish background, who is undertaking an inter-disciplinary project that straddles philosophy, law and sociology in considering possible futures for the Kurdish people in Turkey. As well as holding a Masters degree from South Korea, he has worked for several years as a human rights lawyer in Turkey.
- Anna Grudzinska: Polish student who is working on the acrimonious debates in Poland between those who identify as “nationals” and those who identify as “citizens”. She has several years of experience running an NGO in Poland that focused on citizenship education (which is an area in which we are developing plans for public impact).
Hanifi and Baris join our other 4 PhD students:
- Ulisses Terto-Pereira is a human rights lawyer who is studying the implementation of the Brazilian Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders to draw global lessons about how international human rights norms can bring about real changes in domestic political behaviour.
- James King is a theologian whose thesis examines the writings of three popular contemporary theologians who discourage Christian participation in liberal politics. He focuses on their understandings of what compels one to engage in democracy and ask what we learn from their theology about what the citizen necessarily is and how we are to understand the 'secular' and 'religion.'
- Alena Thiel previously studied both anthropology and politics and is now writing her PhD on Ghanian market women’s organizations.
- Marek Szilvasi holds a joint Masters in sociology and philosophy and uses EC policy towards the Roma minority – including recognition of European Roma and Travellers’ Forum as its representatives – to reflect on social theories of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and human rights. He is currently on an EC internship as part of his research on EC policy toward a Roma policy.
10 February 2013