Orlando Lara (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Irvine. Orlando is an anthropologist, Ethnic Studies scholar, and writer. Working with colleagues in Texas, he co-founded the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, and has most recently been involved in the creation of a high school-level course in American Indian/Native Studies.

Grounded in the Rio Grande Valley and Southeast Texas, Orlando Lara’s dissertation focuses on the growth of identity precarity and insecurity through the interrogation and denial of core state identity documents such as US birth certificates and US passports. While research on liminal non-citizen statuses has flourished in recent years, his ethnographic and archival research opens new ground in the study of the ongoing and intensifying challenges to legal citizenship and other forms of purportedly ‘legal’ status, including birthright citizenship itself.

Working with the artist Delilah Montoya, he co-created “Sed: A Trail of Thirst” and, with the Sin Huellas Artist Collective, the multimedia installation, “Detention Nation.”

Brianne Felsher (they/them) is a PhD candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at University of California, Berkeley. Their dissertation project focuses on the legal history of queer families in the United States from the early 1800s through the early 1900s. They argue that queer people deliberately navigated legal institutions to form their families, and that queer families were neither inconceivable nor presumptively illegal.

Their article, “‘Sex Changed by a Court’s Decree’: The History-and-Tradition of Gender Transitions in the United States,” is forthcoming in Georgetown Law Journal. Outside UC Berkeley, Brianne teaches free online queer history classes open to the community. They also volunteer for the Monroe County History Center’s project on the queer history of Bloomington.

Their work has been supported by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association. They have a JD from Berkeley Law and a BA from Columbia University.

Jennifer Dunn (she/her) is a lawyer and a PhD candidate in medical sociology at UCSF. Her research focuses on reproductive health, social justice, and health care systems.

Her dissertation investigates the origins and persistence of segregated pregnancy care in the U.S. Using legal and historical methods, she traces how segregation by race and class was created and sustained from Jim Crow through the Civil Rights era; how it was reconfigured through the design of the Medicaid program and reinforced through health care financing; and how medical education contributes to the normalization of segregated care.

Jennifer’s qualitative research focuses on perinatal care at two university medical centers: one using a traditional model that assigns Medicaid patients to resident-run clinics, and a second that adopted a payer-integrated model, blinding insurance at intake. Through interviews and fieldwork, she explores how providers and trainees experience these different models.

Jennifer holds a J.D. from UC Law SF and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. She co-founded the California Abortion Alliance and served as its Director from 2007 to 2021.

Cam Cannon (they/them) is a scholar working at the intersection of trans studies, history of medicine, and social movement history within the Department of American Studies at George Washington University. Their dissertation, “Standard: Trans Activism and the History of Gender-Affirming Care in the U.S.,” considers the diverse ways that trans activists have worked to improve access to gender-affirming care from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

Through oral history interviews, legal analysis, and a wide range of archival sources, “Standard” shows how these activists have both shaped and adapted to major changes in public attitudes and legal frameworks. “Standard” pays particular attention to the range of viewpoints, tactics, and political investments between various trans individuals and communities, as well as the differential availability of care along axes of race, class, ability, incarceration status, and documentation status.

Cam’s writing has appeared in Real Life magazine and Feminist Media Studies. They were a 2024-2025 ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Innovation Fellow.

Minali Aggarwal (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Departments of African American Studies and Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on identifying and interpreting the ways race is politically constructed and weaponized to serve both liberal and right-wing political projects. Her dissertation research examines how racialized data and statistical evidence generate new political challenges for racial justice movements, often subverting the radical and transformative demands of Black social movements.

Minali is also part of the editorial team for a forthcoming edited volume entitled The Politics of the Multiracial Right (NYU Press 2026), which examines the growing appeal of right-wing politics among communities of color in the U.S.

Before beginning graduate school, Minali worked as a data scientist for five years. She received her B.S. from Georgetown University in 2016.

Jasmine is a researcher and practitioner in philanthropy with a background in American politics. As a Program Associate at the Hyams Foundation she engaged in grantmaking, communications and research on youth organizing in Boston. She is a former Justice fellow with the Field Foundation of Illinois where she conducted grantmaking in the Justice Portfolio.

She is a former fellow of the Center for Engaged Scholarship and earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2020. Her research examined Black political attitudes towards police and local government officials in the City of Chicago following events of highly publicized police misconduct. Jasmine has held a number of academic fellowships including the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and the UChicago Urban Doctoral Fellowship.