CTI Appoints Social Impact Fellows in Collaboration with Princeton University
CTI has recently appointed two new Social Impact Fellows in an ongoing partnership with Princeton University’s GradFutures program.
Rachael Uwada Clifford is a writer and joint PhD candidate in the Department of English and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities at Princeton University, where she also holds a President’s Fellowship. She is currently completing her dissertation on the legacy of early modern ideas about nature in Black and Indigenous women’s literature. In it, she narrates modern tendencies and trajectories in Black and Indigenous women’s ecological thought, all of which converge on the idea of the earth as a living thing—presenting a vibrant counterpoint to the mechanistic world view that emerged from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, and that largely continues to structure interactions between human and nonhuman nature today. Before coming to Princeton, she received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from the the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she also taught creative writing.
Hasan Hameed is a historian and scholar of religion. Working with the rich literatures of the Islamic world in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, he studies how texts travel across regions and empires and shape ethical selves and communities. His writings have been published in scholarly venues such as Modern Intellectual History and Contextual Alternate. Hasan is also committed to public scholarship. He has written on the “decline” of Islamic philosophy for The Marginalia Review of Books, on the ethics of visiting the sick for The Daily Princetonian, and on the everyday challenges of Muslim students for MuslimMatters.org and The Nassau Weekly. As a fellow for the Center of Culture, Society and Religion (CCSR) at Princeton, he helped produce a youtube video on simple believers in the medieval Christian world and organized a public conversation on Islam and race. He has also lectured extensively at different mosques, community centres, and interfaith gatherings across the US. Hasan earned a Master's degree at the University of Oxford and is currently pursuing a PhD in History and Islamic Studies at Princeton University.
CTI’s Social Impact Fellows work across a range of CTI research publications, including Fresh Thinking magazine, Theology for Our Times podcast, and our Theology for Our Times Substack platform. They will be joined by Priscilla Polizzi, who is an undergraduate student of Georgian Court University’s class of 2027, pursuing a double major in Religious Studies and English, taught by the Sisters of Mercy. Prior to college, Priscilla began her Catholic academic career at Villa Victoria Academy in Ewing, NJ, where her affinity for theology and girls’ education was first fostered by the Religious Teachers Filippini. Priscilla also serves Georgian Court’s Mission & Ministry department as a cantor and lector at weekly on-campus Mass. She views music as an experienced theology, inspired by Augustine’s mantra, “He who sings prays twice.”
In 2024, Priscilla completed a semester abroad in Southern Italy where she studied European Literature and Religions of Classical Antiquity. She aspires to one day conduct research in Rome and lead a career as a college professor of theology. Through her undergraduate internship placement at CTI, Priscilla will hone her skills in writing with involvement in CTI’s Fresh Thinking magazine, and hopes to engage in ecumenical dialogue to expand her theological perspective.