We are excited to announce the recipients of the Starr Foundation Student Fellows grant for 2020.

This is the thirteenth cohort of students who are awarded a Travel and Research Grant towards their academic engagement on India and China. Students undergo a competitive application and interview process and commit to conducting field research in India or China for a minimum of three weeks during the spring or summer.

Brief biographies of the Student Fellows can be found below. Congratulations to all of them!

2020 Student Fellows

Aditi Nair

Aditi Nair is a Community Architect and Urbanist from India. She has previously worked with non-profits on housing issues in urban and rural areas across India. She is passionate about housing rights and access in low-income neighborhoods, rental laws, housing policy, and regulations. She is currently pursuing a MS in the Design and Urban Ecologies to gain a nuanced understanding of shelter needs around the world.

Jerome Allen

Jerome Allen is a first year, Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in Acting graduate student within the School of Drama, College of Performing Arts. He is from Greenville, North Carolina, and received his undergraduate degrees in Dramatic Arts, B.A., and Environmental Studies, B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating in 2016 from Chapel Hill, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Eastern European country of Ukraine between 2016 and 2018, where he worked as a secondary school english teacher for 5th to the 11th grade students. After Peace Corps, he worked in teaching debate and politics to Central American migrant youth in D.C., before beginning studies at the New School. He is beyond excited to travel to India to study political theatre and theatre for social change in Bangalore – and cannot wait for the art, the music, and the abundance of yummy street food. Jerome also loves cooking, running, over-indulgent philosophical conversations and anime.

Yichuan Zhou

Yichuan Zhou comes from Beijing and is currently a third-year Ph.D. student in political theory at The New School for Social Research. Prior to coming to NSSR, he earned a Bachelor’s degree from Peking University and a Master’s degree from The London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include Western political theory, the intellectual history of East Asia in the twentieth century, and Inner Asian Studies. He is currently working on two research projects. The first one is a reexamination of the notion of “representation” in Carl Schmitt’s writings in comparison with early Confucian texts. The second one, supported by ICI grants, concerns a critique of Western modernity by focusing on the “Third World” consciousness among Sino-Indian intellectuals in the early twentieth century.

Dante Scaglione

My name is Dante Scaglione, I’m 21 years old and from the Philadelphia area. I’m a fashion and music fan and am interested in photography, writing, and the curation of visual arts. In years past, I created and operated an independent cassette based record label called Third Floor Tapes (2014-2016) and released two issues of a print fashion publication, ENCOUNTER Magazine (2017-2019). I’m a junior at the New School and a former Parsons student now pursuing a self-designed liberal arts major at Lang. I am a student of Chinese language and culture and will be studying in Taipei in the Spring semester where I will be conducting research on the intersection of politics and music in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Na Fu

(Bio requested)

Xia Li