Keynote Speaker: Dorothy Roberts
The Graduate Division is pleased to announce that our keynote speaker for graduation 2024 will be Professor Dorothy Roberts.
Professor Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She is also Founding Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. An internationally acclaimed scholar, public intellectual, and social justice activist, Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of race, gender, and class inequities in U.S. institutions and has been a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics. She is author of the award-winning Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (1997); Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2001); Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (2011); and Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022), as well as more than 100 articles and book chapters, including “Race” in the 1619 Project book.
Roberts has served on the boards of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Center for Genetics and Society, Juvenile Law Center, and National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, and her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and American Council of Learned Societies, among others. Recent recognitions of her work include elections to the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine; Rutgers University-Newark Honorary Doctor of Law Degree; Juvenile Law Center Leadership Prize; Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award; and American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award.
Remarks from Degree Recipients: Marielle Ong, Caroline Hodge, and Daniel Morales-Armstrong
Marielle Ong is graduating with a Ph.D. in Mathematics. They study geometric objects called Higgs bundles, and their relationship to physics and representation theory. During their time at Penn, they were recognized as a Presidential Ph.D. Fellow, a Master T.A., and the Herbert Wilf Memorial Award recipient. They also coordinated multiple outreach programs, such as the Prison Teaching Initiative and Math Circles at West Philadelphia High School. They are passionate in education, outreach, and applying mathematical research skills to help their surrounding community.
Caroline Hodge is graduating with a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. Sitting at the nexus of medical anthropology, feminist and queer theory, and science and technology studies, her research explores how expertise about the reproductive body shapes American abortion politics. Her work has been supported by the Penn Museum, the Alice Paul Center, and the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She was a 2020 recipient of the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students. In addition to her doctoral training at Penn, Caroline is a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.
Daniel Morales-Armstrong is graduating with a joint Ph.D. in History and Africana Studies. He is a historian and lifelong educator from the Bronx. His research focuses on the lives and memory of formerly enslaved people in Puerto Rico after the abolition of slavery. During his time at Penn, Daniel received the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and Penn's Fontaine and Hopkinson Fellowships; he has taught courses at Penn and Rutgers University and led study abroad programming focused on Afro-Latin American history for New York City high school students. He earned a B.A. from SUNY Albany and graduate degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and Penn.