Azeemah Kola, a Clinical Psychology PhD candidate, has received a 2021-22 Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Doctoral Fellowship, part of the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association (APA). The fellowship will help support her as she completes her doctoral studies, and connect her to a broad network of other psychologists and psychologists-in-training who are specifically focused on working with racial and ethnic minorities.
Kola is broadly interested in how certain groups, particularly those that are marginalized, are perceived in society.
“Thus far, I have been interested in looking at this through the principle of magical contagion, which is the idea that the essence of a person or thing can be transferred through physical contact with an object,” she says. “In my MA thesis, I found that individuals were less likely to want to come into contact with objects that had been previously handled by obese individuals, suggesting that obesity is in fact wrongly viewed as communicable.”
Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Magical Contagion and Psychiatric Disorder,” uses magical contagion to look at the ways in which individuals treat those with psychiatric disorders. “Specifically, I am interested in understanding whether, and why, mental illness in particular may be seen as communicable, whether consciously or unconsciously, and whether this differs depending on the type of psychiatric disorder,” Kola shares. Her dissertation advisor is McWelling Todman, Professor of Clinical Practice.
Understanding exactly what conditions underlie stigma around mental health has a number of potential policy and practical applications, especially where attitudes toward mental health intersect with other issues, e.g. providing safe housing and support for unhoused populations, or dealing with mass trauma from catastrophic events like the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, mental health stigma and attitudes towards the individual may involve compounding prejudice, where biases and irrational beliefs about mental health collide with prejudices about race, ethnicity, legal status, chronic health conditions, or poverty.
Kola’s clinical interests center on the experiences of people of color. “I am interested in how established therapeutic models may apply (or not apply) cross-culturally, and how therapy that focuses on specific events or experiences may need to respond to or be aware of greater structural and systemic experiences of racism and inequality,” she says. This year, as an extern in the PTSD Clinic at the Brooklyn VA Medical Center, she is starting and co-facilitating a Race-Based Stress and Trauma psychotherapy group with her supervisor, also a woman of color. “We hope [this] will provide a space for veterans of color to acknowledge and process the often pervasive and repeated traumas of racism,” she shares.
“I felt incredibly fortunate [to receive this APA fellowship], not least because I felt empowered by the fellowship committee believing in my research, clinical focus, and its importance. I am also deeply grateful to the Psychology department at The New School and my mentors, in particular Dr. Todman, Dr. [Richelle] Allen, and Dr. [Daniel] Gaztambide, for their unwavering and beyond generous support of me and my application,” Kola says.
In addition to her studies, research, and externship, Kola writes a blog for Psychology Today and is a member of the APA’s Task Force on Climate Change, which she joined to help address the disproportionate impact of climate change on already vulnerable and marginalized groups.
Cailin Potami, Research Matters writer and Back Matter editor, reflects on the process ofcreating a magazine remotely with the Spring 2021 cohort of GPUB 6002:Multimedia Publishing Lab.
The Multimedia Publishing Lab course in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism (CPCJ) MA program at The New School for Social Research came highly recommended from fellow CPCJ MA student and former Research Matters writer Alexa Mauzy-Lewis, who wrote about the course last spring. But I had no intention of taking the course; it seemed like too much work during the last semester of graduate school.
But during the fall, it clicked for me. I couldn’t think of a more gratifying way to sew up my strange, Zoom-mediated graduate school experience than by building something new with a group of people equally hungry to create.
Each spring, Multimedia Publishing Lab students produce an issue of Back Matter magazine under the supervision and guidance of Jon Baskin, instructor and Associate Director of CPCJ, and founding editor of The Point, and Jesse Seegers, CPCJ and Parsons instructor, and overall design expert. Each issue of Back Matter looks at the worlds of journalism and publishing through a different lens. With the exception of that loose guideline, each class has complete creative freedom over the magazine’s vision.
Under typical circumstances, producing Back Matter is an intimidating endeavor. We had no idea how making a magazine from start to finish would go from our apartments, scattered across the country, as a pandemic raged around us.
The Multimedia Publishing Lab met over Zoom each week to create the third issue of Back Matter.
Yet from the beginning, the process went surprisingly smoothly. We built out our editorial, digital, and design teams, as well as a wonderful one-person marketing and communications department, Hannah Hightman, Bachelor’s-Master’s (BA/MA) student in the BPATS self-designed liberal arts program. I became co-editor-in-chief along with CPCJ MA student Miko Yoshida, and we worked to facilitate a vision of a magazine without rigid hierarchy or perfectionism, where we would strive to create something original and representative of each person’s interests.
“The Back Matter media lab was a great learning experience for a number of reasons. It introduced me to the world of publishing and gave me an inside look at the process. It also gave me exposure to students with a wide range of skill sets,” says Yoshida. “I enjoyed the collaborative aspect the most, which hinged on mutual trust and a common objective — to create something meaningful.”
Traditionally, Back Matter prints articles that CPCJ students draft during the fall semester and workshop during the spring. While articles cover a wide range of topics, clear themes emerged, such as identity and community. A year into the pandemic, we’ve all been asking: What does it mean to be who I am? Who am I in relation to my communities — online and offline?
“The element of virtual collaboration and community in the time of COVID became a pinnacle of the theme of this issue, so it’s only fitting that our collaborative efforts existed on platforms like Zoom, Slack, Miro, and Gmail,” says Maya Bouvier-Lyons, CPCJ MA student and Back Matter art director. “I think our thoughts on the identity of the magazine were inevitably formed by those venues and avenues for communication.”
CPCJ MA student Canon Crummey grounds the magazine in the journalism world with her piece “Remote Reporting Today: How Things are Changing (And Staying the Same).
Creative Director and CPCJ MA student Olivia Heller looks at artists using Instagram to reclaim the female form in “Window to Her Soul.”
In her piece “The Honey of the Fruit Bearers,” Eugene Lang literature student Daryn Coates asks challenging questions about the commodification of cultural and spiritual practices.
The design team commissioned the photo essay “This Is What Community Looks Like” from artist Isaiah Winters to show the often-overlooked aspects of mutual aid.
The editorial team worked with writers to help them grapple with these questions and highlight the themes already underlying their work. Jessie Mohkami, CPCJ MA student and executive editor alongside Nicole Collazo Santana, Eugene Lang Journalism + Design and CPCJ BA/MA student, reveled in this aspect of the work. “One of the best parts of being on Back Matter’s editorial team was getting to collaborate with writers on their pieces from the beginning until the end,” she says. “They brought their already strong pieces from last semester and we got to work together on how to cut down and shape the pieces. I’ve often been in classes where I’ve suggested edits or additions to a piece and I never get to find out what happens, but seeing the process through with the writers was so rewarding.”
The design team, led by Bouvier-Lyons and Olivia Heller, CPCJ MA student, represented questions of identity and community by incorporating collage as well as digital design cues into the print magazine, which Dalia Amellal, Back Matter print designer and Parsons Theories of Urban Design MA student, masterfully pieced together.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity this class granted me to be on the design side of things for a change,” says Bouvier-Lyons. “I was able to use an entirely different skill set from what I’m used to—thinking more visually about the big picture of the publication, and the smaller details that make up that whole.”
Likewise, the digital team — digital editor Sophie Lee, Journalism + Design BA student, and web designers Greg Coleman, CPCJ MA student, and Kevin Martinez, Journalism + Design BA student — brought collage to life online, thoughtfully adding analog and print notes. Together, we created something thoughtful, cohesive, and daring.
The Back Matter digital design team incorporated elements of collage and print, like in the website header (above).
It sounds cliché, but communication, compassion, and trust really made the magazine’s production possible across Zoom, Slack, and Miro. As managing editor, Christina Santi, CPCJ MA student, did the impossible — she kept everyone on task and on schedule across various time zones, on top of communicating with the printer, managing the budget, and working on her own piece for the magazine, “Can Fashion Sew Up Its Racism Problem?”. At the same time, Santi and the whole team made space for each other, listening intently to ideas and challenges, and always acknowledging the tremendous difficulty of navigating school, life, a magazine, and a pandemic. Each week in class, Yoshida took care to remind us that the magazine is a great learning experience, an opportunity to take on ambitious ideas without fear of failure, but ultimately, everyone’s wellbeing must come first.
“It takes a lot of trust and collaboration to create a magazine, and though that can be difficult to build virtually, I think the whole class was invested in making that a reality,” says Mohkami. “While there were some challenges presented by the virtual nature of the class, I think the entire team rose to the occasion and put in the time, effort, and communication to compensate for that factor,” agrees Bouvier-Lyons. “In a lot of ways, I think this would be a very different issue had we all been working on it together in a classroom.”
The print magazine — complete with thoughtful articles, an interactive online-in-print adventure, fun games, striking photos, and more — is hot off the presses, and its digital counterpart is now live. It has been an extraordinary gift to work on this magazine, and an experience I’ll carry with me forever.
Please join us at the Back Matter launch party, which will take place over Zoom on Wednesday, May 5th, at 7:00PM.
Cailin Potami is a writer, an editor, and a student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA program. They live in Queens with their cats, Linguini and Tortellini.
Tomas Lima Pimenta has received a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Long-term Research Grant Award for the 2021-2022 academic year.
A Philosophy PhD candidate, Pimenta will spend a year at Freie Universität Berlin working with faculty member Robin Celikates. In addition to finishing work on his dissertation, he plans to participate in Celikates’ seminars and research groups, as well as activities of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at Humboldt University, directed by Celikates and Rahel Jaeggi.
“I felt delighted and relieved with the award,” says Pimenta. “I am excited to work with Celikates closely, to live in Berlin, and I am also relieved with the financial support….I am looking forward to focusing solely on my research after October.”
Pimenta’s dissertation addresses the contemporary spread of conspiracy theories as a fundamental tool of right-wing extremism propaganda. It gives an account of the crisis of liberal democracy through the notion of trust and the increasing distrust in institutions. It also offers a political-psychological account of political paranoia as a mode of subjectivity.
“This research is essentially motivated by the genocidal politics promoted by the ultraliberal government in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explains Pimenta. “It ultimately attempts to understand the suicidal logic, beyond the necropolitical logic, that dominates Brazilian society and explores the fundamental role of the conspirational subject in that process.” His dissertation advisor is Jay Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.
Originally trained as an economist specializing in Marxist Economics and Dependency Theory, Pimenta is deeply interested in both German and Latin American thought. In addition to this upcoming DAAD fellowship, he has twice been a fellow of NSSR’s Janey Program in Latin American Studies. “All my research interests are guided by the relevant social, political, and philosophical problems of Brazil and Latin America,” he says.
Fania Noel has received an AAUW International Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year.
A Haitian-born French Afrofeminist organizer, thinker, and writer, Noel is a Sociology PhD student broadly interested in Africana studies, critical race theory, Black feminism, Haitian diaspora and capitalism studies. For her dissertation, she is studying Black feminism on a global scale, highlighting “tension/divergence and convergence in ideology, praxis and political agenda and organization between Black feminism movement in predominantly non-Black countries and the ones in Black countries regarding white supremacy, neo-liberalism, hetero-patriarchy, (neo)-colonialism and internationalism/panafricanism.” She is working closely on this research with Deva Woodly, Associate Professor of Politics, and Benoit Challand, Associate Professor of Sociology.
Receiving the news about the AAUW fellowship was a joyous moment for Noel amid a year of remote study; she felt “like Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyoncé’s Savage Remix,” she shares. She plans to utilize the fellowship support to do archival research and carry out interviews across Europe in Summer 2021 and in Haïti in December 2021.
In addition to her academic work at NSSR, Noel organizes with grassroots movements such as Mwasi-Collectif Afrofeminist against anti-Blackness and Black feminism in France. She is also deeply involved in writing and publishing; in 2014, she founded Revue AssiégéEs (Besieged), a political publishing project led by women, queer and trans people of color, and in 2019, Syllepse Edition, a radical French publishing house, published her book Afro-communautaire: Appartenir à nous-mêmes (Afro-Community: To Belong to Ourselves). A manifesto, Afro-communautaire presents an Afro-revolutionary and anti-imperialist utopia for the political organization of Black people in France against racial politics and neoliberalism.
“I believe in radical Black feminist futures,” says Noel. “My commitment to Black Feminism politics, and Black liberation anchored the sense of accountability by not reinforcing the ‘carceralisation’ of knowledge in academia. My goal is to use the resources in my disposition to create political collective power where Black struggles are.”
Niina Vuolajarvi began her postdoctoral fellowship at NSSR in January 2021, bringing her long background of activism and academic research “at the intersection of sex work studies and migration studies” to the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility.
Before starting her PhD in Sociology at Rutgers University, Vuolajarvi organized around migrant rights, anti-racism, feminist movements and sexual rights in Nordic countries. Later, as a doctoral student in Finland, she became aware of the debate surrounding sex work, especially one curious characteristic of the discourse: “The way feminists have been one of the main groups promoting oppression of sex workers rights and sex workers’ self-expression,” she says.
Vuolajarvi began her doctoral field work among migrant sex workers in 2013, when discussions of the “Nordic model” of legislation—which criminalizes the purchasing of sex, but not the selling of it—were increasing in Finland. As part of her organizing work with feminist networks trying to halt the promotion of these laws, Vuolajarvi compiled a research report on the effect of client criminalization on sex workers for the Finnish National Gender Studies Association.
“I noticed there actually wasn’t much empirical research done involving sex workers themselves, interviewing them to see how [they] themselves experienced this law,” Vuolajarvi says. “There was especially no research that would have included migrant sex workers.”
Eager to address this disparity for organizing work and for her dissertation, Vuolajarvi interviewed over 200 people, most of whom were sex workers, in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. “I tried to talk with people from different residence permit categories, from different ethnic groups, and also different working locations to really make an intervention in the debate,” she explains. She published her results in her dissertation, Governing in the Name of Caring: Migration, Sex Work and the ‘Nordic Model’.
Her commitment to centering the voices of directly impacted individuals in academic debates is one way that Vuolajarvi’s background in activism informs her approach as a scholar. She has thoughtfully moved between those spheres, always considering the impact her research could have on the communities it focuses on.
From 2015 to 2017, Vuolajarvi worked as the main researcher on an interdisciplinary project called Deported, which raised public awareness of the criminalization of migration’s impact on communities. The project won the 2017 Visual Journalism of the Year Award.
“You have to make sure your research doesn’t just serve you and your academic career, but that it’s really available to communities to advocate for their rights.”
-Niina Vuolajarvi
“Especially doing research with populations that have been historically mistreated by researchers, where the research has often been mobilized to initiatives that work against these communities, I think it’s very important to think about the politics of your research and what your research does,” she cautions. “You have to make sure your research doesn’t just serve you and your academic career, but that it’s really available to communities to advocate for their rights.”
“I don’t want to speak for sex workers. I think they are very capable of speaking for themselves and can voice their concerns much better than I do,” she explains. “But I also think that producing knowledge and providing tools for the movements in this ‘expert’ role can have a different impact in the debates.”
Since January, Vuolajarvi has met weekly with the Zolberg Institute, where she is developing her dissertation research into a book. “I’m really happy to be at the Zolberg Institute. I took courses there as a graduate student at Rutgers,” she says. “They nurture a very open and warm environment, so it was really easy to land even in the time of Zoom.” Vuolajarvi also hopes to collaborate with The New School’s Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute.
“Niina will expand the focus of the Institute, through her important scholarship and new courses she will add to our curriculum,” says Alex Aleinikoff, University Professor and Director of the Zolberg Institute. “We are thrilled to have her join us.”
Vuolajarvi also hopes to begin research on “the technologies of governance and policing of sex work,” analyzing the ways that technologies like social media and money transfer companies use algorithms to police sex work. “I would like to look more into these new forms of governance, how they function and how they affect the way sex workers organize their everyday working lives,” she explains. “Also, I want to research how the communities organize to resist these new forms of control.” Vuolajarvi has already published more than 20 articles, book chapters, book reviews and research reports on the policies and politics of immigration, commercial sex, and healthcare.
Vuolajarvi hopes to move to in-person work at The New School in Fall 2021. “It’s been a very positive experience so far,” she says. “I’m looking forward to getting into the everyday life of the New School.”
Cailin Potami is a writer, an editor, and a student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA program. They live in Queens with their cats, Linguini and Tortellini.
