About
Two graduate and three undergraduate students are serving as ISH Student Fellows this year. These students conduct their own personal research addressing hate, participate in research hub meetings, and act as ISH ambassadors to the public.
Felicia Graham
Graduate
Felicia is a fifth year PhD student in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education where her teaching and scholarship focus on youth civic engagement, Global Studies, and Indigenous/Decolonizing pedagogies and epistemologies of the Americas. Guided by chicana feminist theory, her current research engages youth in a political and economic critique of media to become advocates for culturally, historically, and politically responsive education based on human dignity, earthly respect, and rooted in the practice of love. She is a Student Fellow for the Initiative to Study Hate and a recipient of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement’s VOICE initiative. Felicia received her Master’s in Global and International Studies from UCSB, and her BA in Political Science and History from UCSD. Felicia values being immersed in the rich cultural and environmental offerings of California with her daughter.
Jacob Townsend
Graduate
Jacob Townsend is a third year PhD student studying Political Science with a focus on American Politics. His current research focuses on how the local partisan context in which individuals live influences hate for out-partisans along with other political attitudes and behaviors. Jacob graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Economics. Prior to coming to UCLA, he served in the Peace Corps in Botswana and Oregon.
Alexia Armstrong
Undergraduate
Alexia is a third-year undergraduate student at UCLA pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Spanish. She has prior research experience in the Language and Cognitive Development lab at UCLA as a research assistant, but is excited to lead her first independent research project as a Student Fellow for the Initiative to Study Hate. Her research for the initiative centers around the psychological motivations for hate, and how these motivations may differ across different types of intergroup hate.
Anjana Shriram
Undergraduate
Hi! My name is Anjana, and I’m a sophomore studying neuroscience and education at UCLA. As a fellow, I would love to join a project that bridges hate and the brain through imaging or other quantitative methods, but I am open and excited to see where this journey takes me! At UCLA, I’m part of a neurology lab studying epilepsy and a research group studying doctor-patient interactions to improve care. Thank you to ISH for this opportunity, I am incredibly grateful and honored!
Maryama Balde
Undergraduate
Maryama is a fourth-year African-American Studies Major, focusing on gender-based violence and labor studies. She served as A Mellon Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Summer Collaboratory in 2021, researching communal loss through the lens of gentrification, gang violence, and its portrayal in the media. Her current research seeks to understand how online alt-right groups radicalize minorities, those particularly harmed and targeted by these groups’ violent rhetoric.