Hi! My name is Phoebe and I was lucky enough to grow up in New Orleans, LA. Now, I live in New York City, where I have spent the past few years working as a paralegal at the New York Legal Assistance Group in the Immigrant Protection Unit.
Before moving to NYC, I graduated from Colgate University in 2023 with a double major in Peace and Conflict Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I developed deep interests in both Soviet political history and the global history of internment, concentration, labor, and refugee camps. As a senior, I was able to combine these interests in my thesis, entitled “Stalin’s Gulag: A Place of Necropolitics or Biopolitics?” This project examined the case of the Soviet Gulag as a paradigm of sovereign power through the lens of various political theories on camps, biopolitics, and necropolitics.
At Colgate, my focus on spaces of internment led me to think critically about forced displacement, borders, and the international refugee regime in the 20th century. After exploring forced migration in an academic setting, I began working directly with migrants and refugees in New York City. From guiding clients through the asylum application process to preparing applications for naturalization, I assisted clients at nearly all stages of their immigration processes. While I am proud of this work, I could not be more excited to earn my MA/MSc from Columbia University and LSE. I can’t wait to return to school and explore the modern history of camp systems and the populations displaced within them.
