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Braden Russell
Braden Russell (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in Germanic Studies in the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies. His dissertation research focuses on queer Jewish literary production in contemporary Germany, and how authors negotiate concepts of "being-Jewish enough" in their works. Looking at novels written by self identifying Jewish, queer and non-queer authors, Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Olga Grjasnowa, Braden contends that these work offer ways for Jews in Germany to counter antisemitic, philosemitic, Islamophobic, and queerphobic logics. Moreover, these cultural products become a milieu for kinship and community building that resist and lay outside heteronormative and ethno-national frameworks.
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Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon
Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon (she/her) is a first-year PhD student in History at the University of British Columbia. Her doctoral research examines ideas and experiences of disability in Bosnia and Serbia at the turn of the twentieth century. Isabelle’s work engages with a wide range of subdisciplines, including disability history, history of the body, history of medicine, and history of everyday life. Isabelle is the convener of the Bodies, Minds, and Disabilities research cluster based in the Department of History. In addition to her historical research, Isabelle is interested in Canadian disability policy, global disability studies, and current affairs in the Balkans. Isabelle is the research assistant for the PROUD Project, a research initiative based in the Department of Political Science at University of Toronto Scarborough, that studies disability and employment.
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