PARC has a group of over a dozen fellows and faculty at Northwestern who teach a variety of subjects, from political science to chemistry to journalism, and who are at your fingertips as resources throughout your time at Northwestern, and will be coming in several times over the course of the year to present their research and just chat with PARC members. A complete list of PARC’s fellows with their pictures and biographies is below.

 

 

PARC College Staff

 

 

J. Michelle Molina – Interim Faculty Chair

J. Michelle Molina is a historian of religion in colonial Latin America and early modern Europe. Her classes range from history of religion to existentialism in film. Her research has me chasing Jesuit missionaries through archives in Mexico, Italy, and Spain and, when there is no pandemic, she is usually reading, writing, or prepping for class in one of the many Evanston coffee shops. Michelle has truly enjoyed being Co-Chair at PARC. A favorite aspect of her involvement with PARCers is that she gets to know us outside of the classroom setting — whether at the cafeteria for lunch or at her home for a taco dinner. Not only does she find our wide-ranging interests fascinating, but our political commitments are inspiring, and, of course, she appreciates the varied senses of humor.  Looking forward to more!

 

Aaron Shaw – Interim Faculty Chair and Fellow

Aaron Shaw studies the organization of collective action and collaboration in online communities. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is a member of the Community Data Science Collective research group, which he co-founded together with Benjamin Mako Hill. Around Northwestern, Aaron is also affiliated with the Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D), the Sociology Department, the Institute for Policy Research, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, and the Public Affairs Residential College (PARC).

Keith Woodhouse –  Associate Chair

Keith Woodhouse is an associate professor in the History Department and director of the Environmental Policy and Culture Program. He teaches and writes about twentieth-century U.S. politics, focusing on environmental regulation and the environmental movement. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught on several campuses in Wisconsin and California before coming to Northwestern. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is slowly learning to love Lake Michigan and accept the flatness of Chicagoland. He is a movie buff and recovering political junkie

 

 

 

Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola – Assistant Chair

Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola is a performer, researcher, artist-scholar, and a multidisciplinary 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Department of Performance Studies. Also, she is a Northwestern University Council for Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) graduate fellow. Her research explores Colorism, Dance, Performance, Black women’s labor, identity politics, and the perpetuation of Euro-American beauty standards on dark-skinned female dancers. She investigates the implicit and explicit sacrifices dark-skinned female performers make to attain national and cultural belonging. Olabanke has an M.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University (USA), an MScR in Religious Studies from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), an M.A. in Anthropology of Dance under the Erasmus Mundus-Choreomundus Scholarship scheme from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway); University Clermont Auvergne (UCA, France); University of Szeged (Hungary), the University of Roehampton (U.R., United Kingdom), and a B.A in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Although born and raised in Nigeria, Olabanke has lived and studied on four continents and seven countries. She loves traveling, spending time at the gym, dancing, watching lifestyle shows, and bouldering.

 

 

PARC Fellows

Daniel Immerwahr

Daniel Immerwahr (Ph.D., Berkeley, 2011) is a professor of history, specializing in twentieth-century U.S. history within a global context. His first book, Thinking Small (Harvard, 2015), offers a critical account of grassroots development campaigns launched by the United States at home and abroad. It won the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History’s annual book award. His second book, How to Hide an Empire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), tells the history of the United States with its overseas territory included in the story. That book was a national bestseller, a New York Times critic’s choice for one of the best books of 2019, and the winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Immerwahr’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, and Slate, among other places.

 

Raquel Amorese

Raquel Amorese is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese where she teaches introductory and intermediate Spanish and Portuguese courses. Raquel currently coordinates the Portuguese Language Program. She received a M.A. in Portuguese Language and Literature from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Brazil in 2000 and a M.A. in Spanish Literature and Linguistics from Baylor University, TX in 2004. She also pursued graduate studies towards a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University, TN. Prior to teaching at Northwestern University Raquel taught courses in Portuguese and Spanish at Baylor and Vanderbilt universities, and for three years she served the College of The Albemarle in North Carolina. Raquel’s research interests are in Latin American Literature and Second Language Acquisition. She has a special interest in Latin American literature of the twentieth century, more specifically in literature written by women. Raquel is passionate about teaching Spanish and Portuguese and is always looking for professional development opportunities in the field. She enjoys traveling and watching foreign movies.

 

 

Jackie Stevens

Professor Stevens conducts research on political theories and practices of membership since antiquity.  Her current studies of deportation law enforcement engage European fantasies of conquest in the 12th to 17th centuries as well as the quotidian of government documents revealing contemporary illegalities, including practices resulting in the unlawful deportation of United States citizens from the United States. Her research on deportations has been the basis of successful lawsuits challenging government misconduct.
In 2012 Stevens established the country’s first “research clinic.” The Deportation Research Clinic supervises undergraduate and graduate students interested in scholarship that advances forensic intelligence, that is, knowledge distributed in public forums to dialectically advance law and thwarts injustice. The Clinic has filed hundreds of requests under the Freedom of Information Act and successfully litigated over 30 requests in federal court. Stevens received her PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors from Smith College.

 

 

Desiree Hanford

Desiree Hanford is a lecturer at Medill, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses that include news reporting and business and money reporting. She is the co-faculty adviser for the Northwestern Business Review and the faculty adviser for the student chapter of the Association of Women in Sports Media. In addition, Desiree is a contributing editor for a B2B publication. Outside of Medill, Desiree was an equities reporter for Dow Jones & Co. for more than 10 years, where her work appeared on Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal and other national publications. She also worked for the Associated Press and other news organizations and magazines, and she has freelanced for several publications, including The New York Times. Desiree has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a master’s degree, with an emphasis in magazine publishing, from Medill.

 

 

Rev. Julie Windsor Mitchell

Director of the University Christian Ministry
Rev. Julie Windsor Mitchell has been Campus Minister at University Christian Ministry at Northwestern for 20 years (the gray house next to Allison). She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ with full standing in the United Methodist and Presbyterian Church (USA). She loves working with young adults to explore religion, spirituality, and vocation. She is especially passionate about about queer theology and interfaith dialogue. She has a BA from Brown University in Religious Studies and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. During vacations, she loves to travel internationally with husband and two sons, learning more about other cultures and people. Contact Julie at revjulie@u.northwestern.edu.

 

 

Mesmin Destin 

Associate Professor of Psychology & SESP
Mesmin Destin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the School of Education & Social Policy, and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research. He generally studies how students develop their goals and what types of supports help them along their paths. Mesmin teaches a course on Identity & Motivation, and he enjoys taking advantage of living in Chicago, practicing his French, playing the piano, and a good game of recreational soccer. Contact him at: m-destin@northwestern.edu.

 

 

Lane Fenrich

Prof. Fenrich (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1992) is a cultural historian of the twentieth-century United States, specializing in the period since the Second World War. In recent years, he has taught primarily U.S. Gay and Lesbian History and related courses.

 

Sara Hernández-Saborit

Sara Hernández-Saborit’s research lies at the intersection of development and labor economics, with a marked gender component. She is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms that propel females into the labor force and what the consequences are of doing so for individuals, households, and, by extension, their communities. Her work has focused on the interaction between international trade and living standards, including violence, education, and fertility.

 

Nyree Zyrega

Nyree Zyrega is a professor in Plant Biology & Conservation which falls under the Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences.