I am a senior at Columbia University majoring in History and Mathematics, and an alumna of the 2021-22 Columbia Laidlaw Scholars cohort. My Laidlaw research centered on the women's movement in early twentieth-century British India, with my first summer focused on the Indian writer, educator, and activist Mahadevi Varma's 1930s essays on the status of women in Hindu marriages, and my second summer focused on networks of women from across the British empire attending the Oxford in the 1910s-30s at the Unstable Archives Project. I remain very interested in intersections of gender, religion, and legal power between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, and am currently writing a History thesis on the role of French Jesuit missionaries in shaping European knowledge of Indian religion at the turn of the eighteenth century.

Hello everyone! My name is Isabella Garcia Bernstein (she/they), and I am going into my second year at Barnard College. I study Spanish and Latin American Cultures and Archaeology. My research project involves examining the allegorical play Loa for the Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to situate her views of scholarship and education in the larger educational structure of colonial Mexico. With my research, I hope to gain an understanding of educational disenfranchisement in the country as a result of Spanish Catholic colonization. I look forward to connecting with you all.

Hello! My name is Melissa Wang and I'm an Information Science and English double major at Barnard College. I have experience in research, product development, publishing, and poetry. I care about the representation of different narratives in published literature as well as equal access to higher education.

Third-year student at Barnard College studying Medical Anthropology. Interested in reproductive justice and South Asian healing traditions. Research focused on the effects of socio-political conditions on menstrual health practices in India—specifically within the contexts of Ayurveda, goddess worship, and media representation—with particular analysis of the Kamakhya Devi and Sabarimala Ayyappa temples. 

Ana is a senior at Barnard College pursuing a combined major in religion and human rights. She is specifically interested in the relationship between religion and politics, law, and histories of empire. Her other passions include Arabic language study, vocal jazz, and coffee culture.