Announcing the 2025-26 Dissertation Fellows

CISSR is pleased to announce our Dissertation Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year. Representing four departments and disciplines, our fellows will complete their dissertations focusing on international and transnational social science research. The CISSR Dissertation Completion Grant provides funding, office space, and research support to outstanding doctoral candidates conducting innovative research on global topics. This fellowship reflects CISSR’s commitment to advancing rigorous social science scholarship at the University of Chicago. 

The Dissertation Fellows’ projects span various global regions, demonstrating the value of interdisciplinary and international research. CISSR aims to continue developing international social science research by supporting and growing an interdisciplinary community of researchers within the university and beyond. 

The CISSR Faculty Board is delighted to present this cohort of dissertation fellows: 

Hadeel Badarni (Anthropology) 

Working across environmental anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, political economy, and anti-colonial thought, Hadeel’s research explores the settler-colonial condition through its environmental and technoscientific modalities. Her dissertation investigates how Israel’s settler-colonial project deploys military-agro-industrial technoscience to shape and control environments, exploring the geopolitical, scientific, and psychosocial dynamics that drive its ecological interventions in Palestine. 

Dissertation: “Ecologies of Settler-Colonial Know-How: Israel’s Mode of Environmental Apprehension” 

Alexander Koenig (Comparative Human Development) 

Alexander’s research uses mixed methods to investigate newcomer integration and persistence in school and the impact of changing migration patterns on host-country education systems. His dissertation examines the influence of educational background, family resources, and teacher attitudes on the school access and persistence of foreign-born adolescents—especially U.S.-born youth—in Mexico’s non-traditional immigrant destinations. 

Dissertation: “Access or Exclusion: A Mixed-Methods Study of Divergent School Outcomes among Foreign-Born Adolescents in Puebla, Mexico” 

Xiaoyu Gao (History) 

Xiaoyu’s research explores the reciprocal influences between state, society, and economy, with a particular focus on the long-durée political economic transformations in East Asia that have emerged through globalization. Her dissertation focuses on how global copper trade and illicit metal flows destabilized China’s monetary system and economy between 1800 and 1862, challenging the dominant view that silver outflow alone caused the period’s economic disruption. 

Dissertation: “Empire of Copper: British and American Global Trade, Chilean Copper, and the Transformation of Chinese Monetary System (1800-1862)” 

Ari Weil (Political Science) Ari’s research focuses on political violence, with a particular focus on insurgent organizations, ideology, rhetoric, and inter-rebel competition. His dissertation delves into how the centralization of leadership and ideological socialization within rebel organizations determine their ability to escalate or moderate ideology, using case studies and computational analysis of rebel groups in the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. 

Dissertation: “Explaining Insurgent Ideological Flexibility in Civil Wars” 

We look forward to supporting these fellows as they complete their dissertation projects and contribute to the vibrant intellectual life of CISSR. Read more about the fellows and their work here.