The PublicsLab Programming Panel (P3) is a group of students that collectively steers the PublicsLab’s events and other themed programming.

2022-2023 Members

Allyson Ganster (she/her) is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Broadly, her interests include abolition, Black feminism, gender, and the afterlife of slavery. In her ethnographic research, she explores fugitivity and the everyday modes of resistance to anti-Blackness, surveillance, and the carceral state among the African Diaspora in the Americas, with a focus on urban areas in Brazil and the United States. Allyson holds a BA in Anthropology and International Relations and Global Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Britt Munro (she/her) is an international PhD student in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a composition instructor at Lehman College, where she is currently teaching a course on ‘rethinking resistance’ looking at some of the varied, complex and creative ways in which people ‘resist’ the power structures that shape their lives. She loves teaching more than anything and hopes to teach forever! As a previous Open Pedagogy Fellow and intern with the PublicsLab, Britt believes deeply in the importance of open and public scholarship, and is interested in ways of connecting academic work to public conversations and interventions.

Janelle Poe (she/her/hers) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and PhD fellow in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY and has taught courses in Black Studies, composition and creative writing at City College and Lehman College. Research focuses center the Black experience, nuances of oppression and marginalized communities across diasporas in literary, visual and sonic culture. Conference chair and visionary for the Breakin’ BLACK Reachin’ Back virtual conference on Black Rhetoric, DJ and Hip Hop Scholarship, she led an inter-institutional team to host the annual ESA conference in conjunction with UNC-CH, featuring over 50 artists and academics in a convergence activating public and digital humanities. Publications include Aster(ix), Bushwick Review, Chant de la Sirene, Black & White Studies with marblist Sheryl Oppenheim, as well as a Manifold Open Educational Resources guide for English instructors. A WildSeeds and Kimbilio Fellow, “Eyes of The Tiger” was nominated for short fiction in Best of The Net (’16).

Shibanee Sivanayagam (she/they) is a third-year PhD student in the cultural anthropology program. Her research focuses on development, sustainability, and politics in Northern Sri Lanka. Outside of academia she enjoys experimenting with illustration, games nights with friends/family and is an amateur longboard enthusiast.

Joseph A. Torres-González (He/Him/His/Él) is a Ph.D. student in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds a master’s degree in Anthropology and a Certificate of Graduate Studies in Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino Studies, both from the State University of New York, University at Albany. Joseph has been a Library of Congress Junior Fellow (2021) creating a digital research guide at the Science, Technology & Business Division. He has also worked as a research assistant at the CUNY School of Public Health, and as a MAGNET Fellow with the CUNY Pipeline Program. His research interests are at the intersections of food, history and anthropology, political economy, and popular culture, focusing specifically on coffee culture (baristas, farmers, and consumers) among the Spanish-speaking Caribbean diasporas. Joseph currently teaches at the Department of Anthropology at Brooklyn College and Queens College.

Robert Yates is a PhD student in the Department of English. Robert’s research focuses on early modern literature and culture, with interests in drama, embodiment, and political thought. His dissertation analyzes the concept of care in early modern literary culture. Before arriving at The Graduate Center, Robert worked as a Graduate Associate at Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), as well as a curriculum designer of English courses at D.C. Public Schools. Robert holds an M.Phil. in Education from the University of Cambridge and a M.A. in English from Georgetown University. He is an adjunct lecturer at City College, where he teaches courses on Black contemporary drama and world humanities.

2021-2022 Members

Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, and English Literature PhD candidate. Her research focuses on women’s embroidery and life writing as forms of public and private resistance in early modern England and present-day America, with attention to the ways that women’s testimonies are circulated, discredited, and suppressed. Through her internship at the Morgan Library & Museum, she works with Senior Cataloguer Sandra Carpenter to research and catalog nineteenth-century women’s letters, including letters related to one of Scotland’s most infamous murder trials. She aims to improve access to women’s letters by enhancing their descriptions in a sensitive, respectful, and accurate manner. Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, Madeleine is dedicated to showcasing the work of underrepresented groups within and outside of academia, dissolving boundaries between art and scholarship. Her debut poetry collection was published by Trio House Press in 2020, and she has taught creative writing and humanities research at Brooklyn College and NYU, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

Ashley “Ash” Marinaccio is a theatre artist and scholar who creates work to challenge the status quo. She is dedicated to documenting the socio-political issues that define our times. Currently, Ash is working on her Ph.D. in the Department of Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center, where her research is focusing on the intersections of theatre and war. Ash is a member of the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program, a New Media Lab fellow, contributor to Visible Pedagogy and a NY Public Humanities Fellow. She is the founding Artistic Director of the theatre company and United Nations NGO Girl Be Heard, where she received numerous accolades, including LPTW’s Lucille Lortel Visionary Award. She is a co-founder of Co-Op Theatre East and creator/host of the new web series Stage Left. Learn more: ashley-marinaccio.com.

Jeremiah Perez-Torres is a PhD student in the Department of Criminal Justice. His research interests center around terrorism and war. Jay is currently examining the impact of propaganda on radicalization, group sustainability, and group ideology. He uses his work to highlight the power of narratives by groups and states on the public. Before arriving at The Graduate Center, Jay was trained in Intelligence Analysis and utilized this training for NYS Police and the Erie County Crime Analysis Center in Buffalo, NY.

Queenie Sukhadia is a student in the English PhD program. Her research is focused on questions of secondary witness—how we receive the narratives of those testifying to atrocities—in global human rights literature. She is interested in thinking through the ways in which we can read testimonial narratives outside of the frames made common-sense by liberal structures such as the courtroom. A firm believer in the idea that the university is only one of many valuable spaces of knowledge production, Queenie is committed to working at the intersection of academia and external publics to facilitate public good. Apart from being a scholar, she is also a creative writer and published a collection of short stories, A City of Sungazers, in 2017. Queenie holds a BA in English (with high honors) and Psychology from Dartmouth College and an MA in English (with distinction) from Georgetown University.

Cameron Rasmussen is a social worker, educator and facilitator, and the Program Director at the Center for Justice at Columbia University  At the Center for Justice, his work is focused on ending the punishment paradigm and advancing approaches to justice rooted in prevention, healing, and accountability. Cameron is currently a PhD student in the Social Welfare program and a senior lecturer at Columbia School of Social Work. Cameron is also a Collaborator with the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW).  The NAASW engages in political education, research and advocacy efforts to dismantle carceral social work while transforming our field to see abolition as a central framework for just social work practice.

Andrew Viñales was born and raised in the Bronx, New York by proud Puerto Rican and Dominican families. He is a recent initiate in the Lukumí Afro-Cuban Orisha tradition, as well as an oral historian and cultural worker passionate about highlighting the experiences of queer Afro-Latinx politics, culture, and spirituality. Currently, he is a PhD student in cultural anthropology. He hopes to develop his skills in digital storytelling and facilitation as tools to take his work outside of traditional academic settings and put it in service to Afro-Latinxs in the US and in Latin America.

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