Leadership Team
Mojan Farid ‘20 is a junior Geography major and co-leader of Vassar Refugee Solidarity. She also works with the Resettlement and Local Engagement Team. She is a member of Vice music and is studying abroad in the Fall. She was born in Iran and can speak Farsi fluently.
Zoë Zahariadis ’21 is a prospective French and French double major. She is the co-leader of Vassar Refugee Solidarity and works on communications, design, and media for the VRS website. She is also a member of Vassar Alliance for Women in Foreign Affairs and Vassar Voices for Planned Parenthood. She hopes to study abroad in France.
Matthew Brill-Carlat ’18 is a senior History major and serves as VRS’s Student Consortium Coordinator. Matthew speaks Spanish, having spent the fall semester of his junior year in Cuba, is learning Arabic, and hopes to declare correlates in Hispanic Studies and Arabic.
Sabrina Surgil ’21 is a sophomore History and French double major. She works alongside Mojan as the leader of the VRS Resettlement and Local Engagement team. In addition, she is a member of Britomartis, Vassar on Tap and the Underground. She hopes to study abroad in France.
William Zemp ‘20 is a junior prospective Independent Major, and Arabic or Hispanic Studies Correlate. He is part of the Oral Histories Team and will be doing work with the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education, which he did research for during the summer of 2017. He works at Matthew’s Bean, the coffee shop located in the library.
Student Team
Local Resettlement Project
Sasha Gopalakrishnan ’20 is a sophomore Sociology major with a possible correlate in Anthropology or Women’s Studies or both. She is a part of the Resettlement and Local Engagement Team within VRS. She is also Assistant Arts Editor for the Miscellany News as well as a member of South Asian Students Alliance (SASA) and VCTV Producers. She speaks English, Hindi and broken French, and is thinking about studying abroad in Sweden or Denmark next year.
Oral Histories Project Event Coordination
Caroline Ingram ’19 is a junior History major at Vassar with correlates in Hispanic Studies and Economics. In her role with VRS, she will primarily be working with the Oral Histories team, collecting recordings of refugee narratives locally in the Hudson Valley. She is also a Research Assistant in the History Department, as well as a CARES Listener, and will be spending the upcoming spring semester studying abroad in Madrid.
Emma Mertens ’19 is a junior Philosophy major and hopes to declare a Hispanic Studies major/correlate soon! She is a member of the oral histories team for VRS. Outside of VRS, she is also a member of Vassar College Majors Choir and a VELLOP tutor at Poughkeepsie High School. She is currently studying abroad for the fall of 2017 with the Vassar-Wesleyan Madrid program. She speaks Spanish conversationally and hopes to improve it while she is in Spain.
Event Coordination
Joan Krickellas ’19 is a junior Environmental Studies major with concentrations in Biology and Sociology. She is the Vice President of Prohealth, a student organization that works to raise awareness for local and global public health issues. Joan is also involved in Vassar’s Exploring Science program, where she helps lead activities for local Poughkeepsie elementary students at the ecological preserve. This past summer, she had an eye-opening experience as a volunteer at a refugee camp in Greece, working with UNHCR, Samaritan’s Purse, and Greek government officials.
Faculty Director
Maria Höhn is the Marion Musser Lloyd ’32 Chair of History and International Studies. She is a German historian and scholar of the American military presence in Germany after WWII, with a special focus on the interaction between African American GIs and German society. Together with Anish Kanoria, she founded Vassar Refugee Solidarity to get the Vassar College community involved in findings ways to help with the unprecedented global movements of people and the resulting crises in states responses.
Ex-Officio Advisor
Sam Speers is director of the Office of Religious & Spiritual Life and assistant dean for Campus Life and Diversity. He is past president of the Association of College and University Religious Affairs (ACURA). He recently completed an eight-year project as director of Secularity and the Liberal Arts, a Teagle Foundation working group of faculty and chaplains that asked what higher education leaders really mean when we call ourselves “secular.” He is an ordained Presbyterian minister.
He advises Vassar Refugee Solidarity in the Mid-Hudson Refugee Solidarity Alliance.
