Faith Cardoza received her BA in Journalism and Political Science at UMass Amherst and is excited to be back in the department. After living in Washington, DC she realized she wanted to return to academia to learn how to use democratic theory to understand polarization and information dissemination. Holistically, Faith wants to study America’s rapidly evolving socio-economic landscape and how technological advancements will continue to influence American participation in democracy. She enjoys cooking, jamming on guitar, science fiction, animated shows, and video games.
Before coming to UMass, Ellen Currie was first a psychology major at the University of Reading, then an American Studies major at the University of Sussex before graduating from Reed College with a B.A. in Political Science in 2024, with a particular research interest in American elections and voting behavior among Republican voters. Outside of academia, she mainly spends time training and playing with her puppy Eddie, a 15 month old Airedale terrier or playing the piano.
Sierra Darwin’s scholarship is in judicial behavior and legal institutions. Her research focuses on legal innovation in the broad context of conservative legal interests. A California native, she received both her B.A. and M.A. from CSU Long Beach, where she is a member of the Rho Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and a Graduate Dean’s List Scholar.
Sungyeon Kim holds an M.A. in Political Science from Ewha Womans University, an M.A. in Global Economy and Strategy from Yonsei University, and a B.S. in Public Affairs from Indiana University Bloomington. Her research focuses on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches in U.S. politics, with particular attention to how institutional and individual-level factors influence presidential unilateral actions. Her recent work, published in the Korean journal American Studies, examines how political conflict shapes modes of unilateral action in immigration policy.
Suzie Kim plans to focus on political theory and the history of political thought. She earned her MA in Political Science from Seoul National University, where her thesis examined Jean Bodin’s political concept of sovereignty and its intersections with metaphysics, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Her research explores the porous nature of sovereignty in early modern Europe and its implications for contemporary political theory. She works with primary sources in early modern French and Latin and is broadly interested in the intersections of political theory, intellectual history, and the history of science.
Carlos Paredes plans to study political theory and comparative politics. He earned my first MA in Education and Social Change at the University of Miami in 2022 while teaching reading and history at the middle and high school levels. In 2025, Carlos graduated from the University of Florida with an MA in Latin American Studies with joint specializations in Latin American History and Politics and Culture, Theory, and Society. His current research interests include colonialism and imperialism, Marxism and critical theory, Latin American and Caribbean politics and thought, the study of populism, fascism, and authoritarianism, and the philosophy and politics of education.
Julien Sobel earned his undergraduate degree from Ithaca College in Politics and Documentary film production. He will focus on the political theory subfield with work in comparative politics. His interests include: Marxist political economy, the philosophy of history/progress, psychoanalysis, and continental philosophy. Julien is currently working on the structure of temporality within Hegel’s dialectic, as it is taken up by/critiqued by later theorists, including Marx, Kojève, Fanon, Ashis Nandy, and decolonial theory. He loves film and filmmaking and completed two short documentary films.