Post Doctoral Profiles Page

Daniela Romero-Amaya is the Dr. Bruce S. Goldberg Postdoctoral Fellow in the International and Comparative Education program. Her scholarly work is related to history and citizenship education in conflict-affected contexts, with emphasis on the interplay between education and transitional justice measures. Her research engages with youth perspectives and decisions concerning the legacies of armed conflict and their daily navigation of social life. Against the backdrop of protracted violence in Colombia, Daniela’s research gives attention to issues around memory, accountability, and civic trust. During the period of the fellowship, she will analyze the ways in which “the victim” enters the classroom and the role they play in shaping students’ understandings on the Colombian armed conflict and how young generations may partake in its transformation. In her work, Daniela considers “the victim” as a political subjectivity to which specific knowledge, emotions, imaginaries, and expectations are tied. Exploring how these aspects circulate within the school setting and how students address them is relevant to better understand the challenges and opportunities of ongoing initiatives for peacebuilding and peace education.

Email: mdr2153@tc.columbia.edu

Pieter Vanden Broeck is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Teachers College and Columbia’s Sociology Department. Drawing on organization studies, the study of European regionalization, and the sociology of education, his previous work explored how EU policy catalyzes the establishment of a distinct space for global education that cannot be grasped as the mere repetition of national patterns on a "higher" scale. Building on this line of thought, his current research project sets out to examine how online learning platforms, too, reshape education as a global affair. By way of an extended case ethnography in New York, he sets out to analyze the strategies by which digital platforms seek to create a setting for education to occur, in or beyond the classroom. A first line of research focuses on interaction, whether between two or more persons or between a person and a screen, and the question asked is how platforms, together with the algorithms, artificial intelligence, and other changes accompanying the influx of digital media, shape this interaction as educational. The second strand explores, inversely, how education shapes platforms. Observing the entry of private actors into a domain hitherto of a predominantly public character, it raises the question of how this entry affects platforms and their ways of doing business.

Email: pieter.vandenbroeck@uclouvain.be

Vidur Chopra is a Bruce S. Goldberg Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International and Comparative Education Program.  His research is at the intersection of the Sociology of Education and Migration. He draws from cross-disciplinary thinking at the intersections of education, forced migration and citizenship studies. His work focuses on examining the ways in which education enables global, local and transnational understandings of membership and belonging for youth affected and displaced by conflict. His work has two substantive strands: One focuses on the inclusion of refugee and migrant youth within national systems of education and its subsequent implications for policy and classroom-level practice, and the diffusion of this policy across different national contexts; the second strand focuses on examining marginalized and vulnerable youth and adolescents' conceptions of citizenship and membership and their strategies to navigate the deeply unequal structures that they continually confront. He has a wide range of research, policy and practice-based experiences within humanitarian and development contexts with the UN (UNHCR and UNICEF) and NGOs in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. His work has been published in Sociology of Education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, the Journal on Education in Emergencies,  and in the International Journal of Educational Development. Vidur has a Ed.D. from Harvard University, a M.A. in Development Economics from Yale, and a B.A. in Economics from University of Delhi (India). In his free time, you can find him struggling with his guitar, watching too many dog videos, and figuring out where to travel next. 

Raksha Vasudevan is currently the Bruce S. Goldberg Postdoctoral Fellow in Youth Wellbeing for the Center for Sustainable Futures at Teachers College. Working at the intersection of youth geography, spatial justice, and sustainability, she examines how young people stake claim to city spaces in the Americas, despite planning and education systems that hinder their opportunity to thrive. In her ongoing ethnographic work in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Raksha explores how the island’s history of colonialism shapes the everyday lived experiences of young people who live in river communities, or informal settlements, particularly as the government begins to prioritize climate change planning. In New York City, Raksha is beginning to examine how youth and their parents understand, frame, and negotiate climate uncertainties in the midst of other everyday challenges.  Raksha utilizes feminist, arts-based, and embodied mapping methods as a means to engage youth and other typically marginalized city stakeholders. In her work, she draws from a range of prior experiences, including her work as an intern Architect and elementary school teacher. She also managed the sustainability program for a membership organization of local elected officials.

Email: rv2451@tc.columbia.edu