UConn Anthropolgy would like to congratulate Dr. Zareen Thomas, Dr. Anne Kohler, and Dr. Joy Ciofi, for successfully defending their respective PhD dissertations this Spring.

Zareen’s PhD dissertation is titled “Youth Mediators: Hip-Hop, NGOs, and the Politics of Identity in Colombia and Bolivia”. She has an upcoming article in The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology called “Deploying Youth: Colombian Peacebuilding in Performance”, so keep an eye out for that! She will be joining the College of Wooster, Ohio, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Anne Kohler’s PhD dissertation is titled “Pursuing a Good Life: The Sociocultural, Experiential, and Clinical Experiences of Down Syndrome”. She will be joining the Anthropology Department at Colgate University, New York, this Fall as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Click here for a current list of Dr. Kohler’s publications, grants, and academic projects.

Joy Ciofi’s dissertation is titled “Aging and Identity in the Landscape of the Mega-Casino”. Joy will be joining the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University for a 3-year NIA-funded post-doctoral fellowship, working on meaningful engagement among institutionalized elderly patients with dementia. Furthermore, she has an upcoming publication in Surveillance & Society. It is titled “The Ambivalent Subject: Reconciling contradictory subjective experiences of surveillance”. We are looking forward to seeing it in print.

Huge congratulations to all three of our newest PhDs!