2023 Fellowship on Immigrant Integration

Joaquín Sánchez Gómez is an MA candidate in economics at CUNY’s City College of New York. He received a BA in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He’s been a research assistant at CUNY’s Graduate Center and a consultant at the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Inter-American Development Bank, the Mexican Senate, and several government agencies. Previously, Sánchez Gómez was a lecturer at UNAM’s School of Economics, where he taught Introduction to Economic Theory and Mexican Economy. He is a member of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Urban Economics Association. His research focuses on industrial policy, labor economics, and regional development. His most notable research was published by the ILO, UNAM, the Belisario Dominguez Institute, and one of the most prestigious economics journals in Spanish, El Trimestre Económico.

Sohee Shin is a sociology PhD student at Stony Brook University, where her research includes international migration, health disparities, life course perspectives, and social inequality. Throughout her PhD studies, Shin has focused on examining attitudes toward immigrants from the perspective of generational differences and exploring the impact of employment patterns on immigrants’ health throughout their lives. Shin worked at a local NGO in Germany, advocating for the residential rights of refugees. Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the Migration Research and Training Center (MRTC) in South Korea, concentrating on migration-related studies. Her research projects involved investigating the integration processes of diverse immigrant populations, such as refugees, labor migrants, and international students, within the European Union, South Korea, and the United States.

Currently, Shin’s research concentrates on understanding the spatial differences in the residential mobility of immigrants and the segregation experienced by Asian Americans. She aims to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that influence the settlement patterns of immigrant communities and the challenges they encounter in terms of spatial distribution and neighborhood composition.

Tsveta Dobreva is a fifth-year sociology PhD student at the University at Albany. Her research interests include immigration, immigrant integration, race, education, and belonging. As an immigrant integration fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in the summer of 2023, she researched the role of universities in providing support to refugees and immigrants, with the goal of providing policy recommendations at the institutional, state, and federal levels. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Dobreva worked at a New Jersey-based legal organization assisting Darfurian asylum seekers in navigating the immigration system to obtain refugee status, develop language skills, enroll in college, and find jobs. In her native Bulgaria, she worked with an international NGO that was actively involved on a community level in assisting asylum seekers with their economic, social, and civic integration.

Ken Silverman is a PhD student in political science at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, specializing in comparative politics and public policy. Sliverman’s current research focuses on comparative citizenship, migration politics, and international conditions’ role in migration policymaking. He has collaborated with the Center for Urban Research on voting patterns and civic engagement studies in New York City. Silverman designed and taught political science courses, including on immigrant integration, at CUNY Baruch, Hunter, and Queens Colleges. Silverman presented his original research on migration-related topics at the Japan Association of Migration Policy Studies, Midwest Political Science Association, and International Studies Association conferences. Prior to receiving his master’s of international affairs from CUNY Baruch College’s Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Silverman was an award-winning senior news producer at Japan’s largest private broadcaster, the New York Bureau of Fuji TV Network News, where he covered the United Nations as well as hundreds of international news events throughout Latin America and the US. Silverman is a recipient of the Presidential Research and Graduate Center Fellowships. He is also fluent in Japanese and Spanish.

Asha Venugopalan is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University. Her research lies at the intersection of group identities, prejudicial attitudes, and political communication. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Venugopalan was a researcher in India, where she developed large public opinion surveys to capture the sociopolitical attitudes of citizens during the inter-election period. She also holds an MSc in political science and political economy from the London School of Economics.