CACI Spring 2025 Fellows

Teaching Fellows

  • Silvina (Bibi) Calderaro

    Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro is a Lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Studies and the Environmental Justice and Sustainability Programs at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She specializes in urban education’s role in magnifying climate action and environmental justice through situated pedagogies. She has designed and implemented a week-long pedagogical experience for educators in the lower Hudson River estuary, gaining access to remote areas by kayak, facilitated workshops, and designed and conducted semi-formal interviews with communities across NYC about environmental issues. Her expertise, networks, and collaborative experiences as artist and educator are key for mentoring community leadership, integrating academic and non-academic knowledge generation, and building relationships across constituencies and sectors. Her recent scholarship includes “Playing with Conscientizaçao: A Collectividual Project for a World We Wish to See” in Cultural Praxis and “Walking the Land where Fountain Avenue Begins” in CSPA Quarterly. Calderaro is a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center where she has earned an MPhil and an MA; she holds an MFA from Queens College and a BA from Wesleyan University.

  • Tyler Crown

    Tyler Crown is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center, a lecturer at Queens College and Baruch College, and a member of the Graduate Center’s Political Theory Workshop, which he formerly co-chaired. His research interests include global political thought, imperialism, state capitalism, and the politics of development. This spring he will again be teaching a course on the US and globalization. As a CACI fellow, he hopes to enhance his teaching on two topics that are central to the course: China’s rapid economic growth—often narrated as globalization’s greatest success—and the shifting terms of the relationship between the US and China. To that end, he looks forward to receiving assistance on his syllabus, and hosting a guest speaker from CACI in his course.

  • Jun Yoo

    Jun Yoo is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Economics at CUNY’s Graduate Center and a graduate teaching fellow at Queens College. His courses integrate case studies on small business credit challenges, emphasizing China’s economic landscape—notable for its evolving credit markets and policy innovations in small business financing. Jun’s research examines small business lending, analyzing how credit demand intersects with market competition, regulatory frameworks, and financial inclusion. He investigates barriers to loan accessibility, such as collateral constraints, information gaps, and interest rate sensitivity, while exploring how Fintech and digital platforms—particularly in China—transform access to capital. By studying China’s blend of state policies and private-sector innovation, he aims to inform global solutions for equitable credit ecosystems. Through the CACI fellowship, Jun seeks to deepen his expertise in China’s Fintech-driven credit models and their implications for small businesses. This experience will enrich his teaching with practical insights into small business finance while advancing cross-disciplinary research on credit demand dynamics, ultimately fostering collaborations that address real-world financial challenges.

  • John Frank

    John Frank is a PhD student in Political Science at CUNY’s Graduate Center and has taught sociology as an Adjunct Lecturer for overly twenty years at Lehman College and LaGuardia Community College. His research focuses on identity formation theories and political identity. He holds a BA from Columbia, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard, an MFA from City College of New York. As an CACI Fellow, John is excited to compare the finer dimensions of how urbanization and urbanism impact cities in China and the US differently.

  • Sumeja Tulic

    Sumeja Tulić is a Libyan-born Bosnian visual anthropologist and writer whose work delves into the intersection of visuality, history, conflict, and everything else that lies in between. Her career began with human rights advocacy in the former Yugoslavia, where she worked on issues like hate crimes, discrimination, and wartime sexual violence before transitioning to academic and creative explorations of cultural dynamics of illegibility in post-socialist conflict zones. Sumeja’s academic path includes a BA in Law and an MA in Human Rights and Democracy from the University of Sarajevo, an MA in Journalism from CUNY, and an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts. She is currently a PhD student of Cultural Anthropology at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Seminar Fellows

  • Bret Windhauser

    I am a third-year PhD student in the History Department, focusing on the British Mandate of Iraq. My current work examines smuggling and illicit movement around the region of the Persian Gulf. More broadly, I am interested in the intersection of criminality, health, and religion during periods of European colonization and imperialism. I hope the CACI fellowship will develop my ability to conceptualize interactive in-class activities on Chinese history.

  • Carmen Melillo

    I am an Adjunct Lecturer in Political Science teaching Intro to American Government. I am also a PhD Student in Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. I expect the CACI fellowship will allow me to develop my curriculum in order to give my students a firmer foundation in understanding US-China relations, US Foreign Policy towards China, and the emerging role that China plays on the world state and in the global market.

  • Qiyao Pan

    Qiyao Pan is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the Graduate Center. She is also a CUNY Institute for Demographic Research Fellow and a teaching assistant for the QMSS program and Ph.D. in sociology program. Previously she was a Junior Scholar at the Stone Center for 2023-2024 and a Graduate Editorial Assistant for City & Community journal in 2024. She received her B.A. from Beijing Foreign Studies University in China and her M.A. in European and Mediterranean Studies from New York University. She look forward to incorporating China scholarship into her classroom knowledge building at the Graduate Center.

  • Ryan Hitch

    Ryan Hitch is a PhD student in the Political Science program at the CUNY Graduate Center, specializing in international security and foreign policy. His research focuses on alliance politics and the strategic behavior of middle powers in a shifting global order. He holds a B.A. from Hampshire College (2016), an M.Sc. from the Technical University of Munich (2020), and an M.A. in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center (2023). He currently teaches undergraduate courses on international relations, international political economy, and international security at the City College of New York. As a China at CUNY Teaching Fellow, Ryan is incorporating China-related content into his international security course, with a focus on the strategic implications of the Belt and Road Initiative. He has previously held writing fellowships at the Technical University of Munich and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

  • Chris Harding

    Chris Harding is a PhD student at City University of New York, Graduate Center. His work focusses on themes relating to capitalism, class, labour, and agrarian life in 19th and 20th century Palestine. In 2024 his work featured in the Biennale De Venezia, as part of South West Bank, Landworks, Collective Action and Sound exhibition. Chris will be teaching on the connections between China and the Middle East during the 19th and 20th century, regarding the history of Islam.