Fellowship Recipients 2024-25

Mackenzie Daly is a first-year Ph.D. student in the English Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Syracuse University and her M.A. in English from the University of Virginia. Her research interests include Early American literature, politics, and culture, affect theory, material culture, and bibliography. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Mackenzie is broadly interested in the ways in which affect and politics intersect. She hopes to continue the work she did as a master’s student, which included examining how texts and other forms of media localize and individualize national culture, thus shaping our understanding about what it means to be a citizen. She will also consider the phenomenon of mass mourning as a political or (to use Lauren Berlant’s term) juxtapolitical act.

Luke Brown is a third-year doctoral student in Higher Education at Boston College. His research focuses on the problems, practices, and possibilities of intergroup dialogue in higher education institutions. He is especially interested in how dialogue is taken up within a variety of institutional contexts and its role in transformational learning experiences. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Luke will explore the essential role of dialogue in pluralistic democracies and investigate a variety of frameworks for generating greater civic engagement, perspective taking, and alliance building. Luke continues to invest in learning environments where individuals can engage through, not despite, differences and grapple with the complexity of sharing power amidst ongoing inequities. Before joining the BC academic community, he earned his BA and MA in English Literature from Georgetown University and taught as an instructor at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and Howard University in Washington, DC.

Stephen de Riel is a second-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College. He received his B.A. in History from Hampshire College in 2022. Stephen’s interest is in 19th and 20th century American history, with a focus on industry, transportation, and the environment. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, he is exploring how industries wield social and cultural power, and how this power is asserted through both physical and conceptual environments. Stephen is particularly interested in how industrial power is asserted and held through the wide-scale environmental change brought on by cycles of development and abandonment. By examining these ideas, Stephen aims to understand how to approach historic and modern environmental injustices, as well as how current industrial policy makers and planners can better plan for equitable and sustainable futures.

Akash Chopra is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Political Science concentrating on the field of Comparative Politics, with a specific focus on South Asia. He earned a Bachelor's degree from Boston University in 2020, where he majored in Economics and International Relations, and subsequently obtained his Master's degree in Political Economy from Duke University in 2022. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Akash will focus on how minoritarian religions function in majoritarian settings. By focusing on how places of worship can be politicized, he will investigate how public goods provision is leveraged in minority communities in exchange for votes.

Kelvin (Ka Ho) Li is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Philosophy Department. He received his B.A and M.Phil in Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he concentrated in the field of phenomenology. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Kelvin’s research explores the multiple layers of attachment-formation through human and inter-human vulnerability in the lived experience of diaspora, particularly by those facing political atrocities and displacement. While vulnerability is an integral part in the constitution of communal identities, it also embodies an essential ambiguity: though it can be employed to support generosity and hospitality to others, it can also promote violence and xenophobia in the name of self-defense. Kelvin’s aim is to better articulate the ethical significance of vulnerability and its implications in the debate between nationalism and globalism.

Julia Mahoney is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department at Boston College. She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from Davidson College in 2023. Julia’s undergraduate thesis compared Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of the tutelary state with Hannah Arendt’s description of the totalitarian regime, with particular focus on the role of isolation and equality in the rise of despotic regimes, social versus political life, the balance between equality and freedom, the re-establishment of authority in politics, and the solutions associated with the revival of the political sphere. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Julia’s research explores democracy’s inherent tensions surrounding equality, freedom, plurality, and atomization, with particular focus on the thinkers Hannah Arendt, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Ndiaye is a Boston College LL.M. Candidate specializing in Investment Disputes. Originally from Senegal, he lived in Burkina Faso for seven years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Government Studies from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and four Master’s degrees: in Business Law (Panthéon Assas– Panthéon Sorbonne); Economic Litigation and International Arbitration (Sciences Po); Public Law and Public Financial Management (École nationale d’administration and Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, magna cum laude); and Communication Policies and Organization Development (Paris-Saclay, magna cum laude). Author of a dozen collections of poetry and a soon-to-be-published novel, he writes in Wolof and French. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, he will study how the redistribution of Senegal’s wealth, and the governance of its natural resources, has become a major issue in Senegalese democracy.

Betul Ozturan is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at Boston College. She earned a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Political Science from Bogazici University with Dean’s Honor. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Conflict Management from Konstanz University and International Security from Charles University. Betul’s master’s thesis focused on developing novel methods to understand the dynamic relation between terrorism and civil wars. Betul’s research interests lie at the intersection of peace and conflict studies, with a particular emphasis on intrastate conflicts, civil wars, and terrorism. She has had the privilege of presenting her work at several esteemed workshops and conferences such as ISA, APSA, MPSA, and the Harvard Political Violence Workshop. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Betul aims to understand the impact of alliance choices in shaping the trajectory of post-conflict democratization in the aftermath of civil wars.

Andrew Palella is a first-year Ph.D. student at in the History Department at Boston College whose research examines political extremism and the security state in the 20th Century United States. A former Army officer, Andrew holds a B.S. in American History from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an M.A. in History from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. In the Journal for the Study of Radicalism (Fall 2018), he has published original research on the Black Legion, an inter-war fascistic movement that sought to overthrow the Roosevelt Administration in 1936, and documented J. Edgar Hoover’s personal role in preventing federal action against the group. Andrew has a second article forthcoming in JSR (Fall 2024) on accelerationism and the political extremism of a modern international esoteric tradition called the Order of Nine Angles. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, he aims to further advance this line of research, and explore its implications for the future of our democracy today.

Byeongju Ryu is a second-year Ph.D. student in social work at Boston College. Byeongju completed his undergraduate studies in Health Administration and Social Welfare in South Korea and received his Master’s degree in Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. After graduating with his Master's degree in 2020, Byeongju worked as a frontline social worker in South Korea to advocate for the social and civic participation of socially marginalized populations living in public housing, such as older people with low income or disabilities. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Byeongju's research aims to investigate the mechanisms and benefits of civic participation among socially marginalized older adults. His research touches on a crucial democratic principle: ensuring that citizens, especially those with fewer resources or lower health and functional status, have opportunities to engage in their communities through civic activities.

Emily Turner is a fourth-year doctoral candidate studying Historical Theology at Boston College.  Emily earned a B.A. in History at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon in 2017, and an M.A. in Religion, with a concentration in Theology, from Yale Divinity School in 2021. Emily's primary research focus is the co-emergence of Christian legal and theological traditions in Late Antiquity; she is also increasingly interested in the development and application of contemporary canon law, especially since its codification in 1917.  As a Clough Doctoral Fellow for the 2024-25 year, Emily is particularly interested in two questions. First, in what ways does the history of Christian reflection on the human person and the nature of law contribute to visions of the reaches, limits, aims, and possibilities for democratic futures? Second, what is the influence of non-democratic entities (especially those engaged in the work of human formation) on democratic citizenship?

Aidan Vick (he/him) is a first-year PhD student in the English Department at Boston College. Prior to attending BC, he received his Bachelor’s degree from Emory University and his Master’s degree from the University of Virginia. He is interested in the 20th- and 21st-century novel, critical theory, and the politics of narrative. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Aidan aims to explore how contemporary information technologies, and particularly online spaces, influence political ideology. More specifically, he will research how narrative functions in a hyper-technological era, both in the sense of narrativizing histories and through novel forms of fictional storytelling like cybertext. Outside of school, Aidan enjoys watching basketball, attending local arts events, and spending time with his cat, Beaker. 

Helen Huiting Zheng is a first-year Psychology PhD student at Boston College. She received her Master’s degree in Psychology from Harvard Extension School and a Bachelor’s degree in Management from Fudan University. Her research focuses on improving our understanding of how people evaluate what is true, with a keen interest in exploring different ways to help people recalibrate what they think is true if their truth assessment has been based on “alternative facts” that are believed to be true only because they support their respective group's priors. As a Clough Doctoral Fellow, Helen hopes to advance the Center’s mission by demonstrating how technology can facilitate more inclusive and informed democratic dialogues based on objective truth and shared reality. She envisions contributing to democratic futures where people are free to make decisions that benefit the collective good rather than conforming to partisan biases.