Kahn Institute Student Fellows 2026–27

Published April 14, 2026

The Kahn Liberal Arts Institute is delighted to announce our student fellows for 2026–27. They will be joining long-term project Foodways: Rooted, Made, Shared, Imagined, organized by Suzanne Gottschang, anthropology and East Asian studies, and Javier Puente, Latin American & Latino/a studies. Foodways, broadly construed, offer opportunities to explore the multiple registers of the material, experiential, and metaphysical aspects of the human experience.

Dina Alam ’27

Environmental Science & Policy major; Landscape Studies minor

Alam views seeds as time capsules for human connection, the birth of life, and food. She seeks to develop an understanding of ways that sustainable farming practices strengthen communities through the growing of food. Nipmuc community members at Pequoig Farm in Orange, MA have inspired her to learn about Indigenous seed‑saving practices and the use of no‑irrigation agriculture, which could lead to an experiment comparing the resiliency of traditional corn seed and USDA‑patented corn.

Clio Barrett ’27

English Language & Literature major; Government minor

Barrett will analyze the racialized and gendered love language of food preparation within Asian diasporas through a literary lens. She hopes to examine the common trope of the inscrutable Asian Mother paired with vignettes of kitchen work, where advice arrives coded with culinary lexicons and the physical labor of cooking not directly to their children but to their plates. How does this trope emphasize inescapable Asian servitude where even love is manifested through domestic labor?

Chiderah Emeakoroha ’27

Government and African Studies double major

Emeakoroha is interested in how food operates as a site of political power, inequality, and survival under conditions shaped by economic precarity and state policy. She asks: How do immigrant and refugee communities, especially in Western Massachusetts, navigate food access under rising costs, restrictive assistance policies, and corporate control of food systems? And how do communities build resilience through mutual aid, cultural practices, and everyday strategies that make food a space of both survival and resistance?

Ada Gent ’27

Environmental Science & Policy major; Education minor; Community Engagement & Social Change concentrator

Gent will explore food access as resistance to food scarcity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She will ask: Does community-based urban agriculture interrupt food scarcity and provide relief from “structural vulnerabilities and inequities” in Milwaukee? Have county-based racial equity efforts impacted community-based organizations offering fresh food, urban farming initiatives, and policy advocacy?