HRI Inquiry Research Blog

Ilaria Strocchia (Spanish and Portuguese) is a 2025–2026 HRI Graduate Student Fellow. Her current research project, “Flowing Histories: Examining the Role of Water in Shaping Urban Spaces and Identities Across Cultures,” investigates how bodies of water—rivers, lakes, and the sea—have historically shaped urban places in Valencia, Mexico City, and Naples while simultaneously forging their stories. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship… Read more: Stories in Water: “Hydro-Social” Transformation of Urban Spaces

Serouj Aprahamian (Dance) is a 2025–2026 HRI Faculty Fellow. His current research project, “‘Showtime!’: Dancing in the New York City UnderGround,” investigates community-based hip-hop dance forms in everyday spaces, including the New York City subway, and the complex relationships between place, performance, and power. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a… Read more: Place, Performance, and Power: Hip-Hop Dance in Everyday Spaces

Priyanka Zylstra (History) is a 2025–2026 HRI Graduate Fellow. Her current research project, “‘It was called Liberation’: South Asian Women’s Activism in Multi-Racial Britain, 1979–1994,” examines how South Asian women in Britain during the 1970s–80s resisted racialized and gendered state violence. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a year of dedicated… Read more: Solidarity and Resistance: South Asian Women’s Activism in Multi-Racial Britain

Mirelsie Velázquez (Latina/Latino Studies and Education Policy, Organization & Leadership) is a 2025–2026 HRI Faculty Fellow. Her current research project, “Genealogies of Empowerment and the Makings of Home: Latina/o Activism at the University of Illinois, 1970–1992,” shows us the ways Latina/os have been instrumental in radically transforming educational spaces amidst the contentious socio-political culture of the era. Learn more about HRI’s… Read more: Centering Latine Voices in the History of Education at Illinois

Debayudh Chatterjee (English) is a 2025–2026 HRI Graduate Fellow. His dissertation, which examines progressive Indian literature and cinema from the late 1980s to 2014, raises the questions: What stories emerge from places rapidly transformed after the global collapse of socialism? Is there a lingering sense of mourning and melancholy for a lost world or a sustained interest in reconstructing progressive… Read more: Specters of Communism at the End of History