2026-27 Graduate Fellows
Esther M. Franke
Esther M. Franke is a PhD candidate in the Politics department at The New School for Social Research working at the intersection of global politics, transnational feminisms and queer/trans theories. In their dissertation, they develop trans as a perspective for global politics in conversation with three instances of feminist queer and trans as well as mobility organizing in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Berlin arguing that anti-trans and anti-migrant politics have been used as laboratories for the global right. They teach widely on feminisms, queer and trans studies and (global) politics. They hold an MA in Political Theory from the University of Frankfurt, a Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from The New School and were previously visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at CUNY. Outside of academia, they organize as part of the transnational feminist collective and NGO “Discover Football” working on sports and gender justice.
Mauricio Vargas-Sosa
Mauricio Vargas-Sosa is a PhD student in Politics at NSSR. His research examines the political subjectivities of the lower classes in Latin America.
This year he traces the synchronized turn toward the radical right in recent Latin American elections, asking how this political turn has come to organize the political imagination of the region’s poorest sectors. He situates this conjuncture historically: against earlier moments in which political subjectivities across Latin America synchronized instead around counter-hegemonic agendas, and against the longer history of colonization and dispossession through which poverty in the region was produced. The project asks why, under comparable conditions of economic precarity, divergent political subjectivities emerge—some vertical and exclusionary, others horizontal and solidaristic—and what that divergence reveals about contemporary capitalism’s erosion of democratic life.
Danielle Twiss
Danielle Twiss is a third-year PhD student in Economics. Her dissertation poses two central questions: How do capitalist labor markets function as sites in the production and reproduction of racial categories? Moreover, how does race mediate the material interests of differently-racialized workers? This year, she will zoom into particular historical conjunctures to ask how difference is encoded and racialized in struggles over land and labor. Through her research, she hopes to challenge universalist conceptions of the nature of capitalist labor relations and produce scholarship that can grapple with capitalism, not in the abstract, but in the multiple ways in which it is lived. She holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) from the University of Oxford. She is currently co-chair of SENS-UAW, the union for academic student workers at The New School.
2025-26 Graduate Fellows
Fernanda Rebelato
Fernanda’s research aims to engage with feminist critiques of capitalism’s organization of production and social reproduction, particularly the ongoing crisis of care, neoliberal structures and welfare systems. By mapping the territorialization of care policies, her project examines the reframing of paid and unpaid work, interactions with informality, and state structures of social protection in Latin America.
Nakshi Shah
Nakshi Shah is a designer and an aspiring strategist pursuing her Master’s in Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design. With a background in architecture and graphic design, her work explores cultural and creative strategy, asking how design can connect ideas, people, and stories in meaningful ways. As a Robert L. Heilbroner Fellow, she is co-developing two research projects. One investigates how streaming platforms commodify waiting and attention, while the other examines how Gen Z consumes through symbols, moods, and spectacle instead of ownership. Together, these projects trace the shifting ways capitalism reinvents itself through what we buy, how we feel, and the rhythms by which we pace and perform our lives.
Vidhi Shah
Vidhi Shah is a graduate student at Parsons School of Design, majoring in Design Strategies, a space where systems thinking meets hands-on creativity. She is also looking to minor in Anthropology, which helps her bring a critical lens to how people live, consume, and create meaning. Her work moves across branding, cultural research, and impact strategy, often at the crossroads of storytelling and problem framing. Lately, she has been exploring how design can challenge patterns of overconsumption. At the same time, she is working toward building consulting practices that support the social justice space.
Florian Zhang
Project Description:
Chiang Mai, a northern Thai city, is a global knot where multinational capital and people intersect and are differentiated, shaping a complex economic, political, and cultural ecosystem. This project examines the experiences of different migrant groups, particularly Chinese and Burmese, as they integrate into, negotiate with, and at times escape from the local manifestations of global capitalism in Chiang Mai as well as in their home countries.