ISGRJ Early Career Faculty Fellows (Cohort III, 2023–2024)

Dr. Temidayo Adepoju is an Assistant Professor in the Supply Chain Management Department of Rutgers Business School (RBS) where she teaches Demand Planning and Fulfillment. Her research interest lies in the intersection of healthcare and operations management. Dayo obtained her PhD from Questrom Business School, Boston University. She holds an MBA from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.Sc. from University of Manchester, UK and a B.Sc. from University of Lagos, Nigeria. 

Dr. Priscilla Ferreira is an Afro-Brazilian feminist, abolitionist, and social justice educator. She is also an Assistant Professor of Geography and Latinx & Caribbean at Rutgers University- New Brunswick-USA. Her work and activism focus on Black feminist mutual-aid economies in Brazil, Black co-op movements across the African Diaspora, urban Black geographies, and community-engaged methodologies and scholarship.  

Professor Anthony Grasso's research focuses on inequality and the development of American law, with a particular focus on criminal justice. As a political scientist, he studies the law as a product of politics, and remains particularly attentive to how the contemporary legal system reflects and reinforces the inequalities prevalent in American social and economic life.

Shanna Jean-Baptiste’s research and teaching include Francophone West African and Caribbean literatures, particularly Haitian literature; identity formation and gender politics; visual art and music; and Afrofuturist aesthetics in the Francophone world. She earned a joint Ph.D. in French and African American Studies from Yale University.   

Wendell Marsh is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He received a PhD from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and from the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University in 2018. His scholarship focuses on African-Arabic textuality, the intellectual history of Islam in Africa and the African Diaspora, and religious studies. 

Amir Moosavi is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University-Newark. He holds a PhD in Middle East and Islamic studies from New York University. His research and teaching interests center around Arabic and Persian literatures, with a focus on modern and contemporary fiction. His publications have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Critique, Alif, and Iran Namag, among other venues. 

Gandalf Nicolas studies how people make sense of the social world. His research is at the intersection of social cognition and interdisciplinary quantitative methods (e.g., machine learning and natural language processing). Specific topics include spontaneous stereotyping, perceptions of individuals who belong to multiple social groups, first impressions based on facial appearance, and social biases in Artificial Intelligence. Gandalf received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. 

Sandy Placido is a historian with a Ph.D. in American Studies who specializes in the history of Latinx people, as well as the interconnected histories of the places—the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, Africa, and Europe—that over the last five hundred years have contributed to the creation of the Latinx social group.

Professor Laura Porterfield's research and work examines equity and justice practices in K-16 education by exploring how students learn about various forms of difference across the human experience through visual texts and urban space and place. Significantly, her research reveals the important role that visuality, affect, space and place play in the learning processes of youth of color in the 21st century context.

Erin M. Robinson is a political scientist in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University - Camden.  Her current research investigates the management and performance of public organizations, with a specific focus on the experiences and strategy choices of minoritized public administrators.  She works with agencies on the practical use of program evaluation techniques to achieve social equity outcomes.  Erin earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Texas A&M University.

Jameson (James) Sweet is a historian and Indigenous Studies scholar whose research examines race, law, violence, and settler colonialism in the United States. He grounds his work in recognizing the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous nations and the maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous cultures, languages, and epistemologies. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota.  

Sarah Tosh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Camden, where she teaches courses on inequality in criminal justice, drugs and society, migration and deportation, the sociology of deviance, and criminal justice research methods. Her research examines the punitive intersections between drug, crime, and immigration policy in the United States.

Alessandra Williams is an assistant professor of dance at Rutgers University-New Brunswick who researches dance, race, gender, transnationalism, and queer performance. Her fellowships include the Inclusive Excellence Fellowship with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (2018–19) and the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship with the University of California, Los Angeles (2010–14).