Alumni

People who have graduated from the program

Elizabeth Gilbert

Folklore

Elizabeth Gilbert Kaetzel began her career focused on community engagement and cultural context as a graduate student in anthropology and folklore. Her studies fostered an interest in socially and environmentally responsible investment and its community impact. While in graduate school, she entered the field of philanthropy as a Communications Intern at the Global Philanthropy Forum and following graduation, she spent two years as a Membership Manager at Confluence Philanthropy, convening impact investors with philanthropic institutions and individuals.

Originally hailing from...

Cameron Girvin

Folklore, Slavic

Cammeron Girvin received a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore (2016). His research centers around the intersection of South Slavic linguistics and folklore studies; he is particularly interested in how speakers of Bulgarian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian use linguistic forms to construct and display local and national identities. Cammeron’s dissertation ties together his background in synchronic and diachronic Slavic linguistics with contemporary folklore theory to explore how elements of “folkloric” language-both small-scale linguistic features...

Ruth Goldstein

Folklore

Ruth Goldstein received her Masters in Folklore from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009 and her PhD from the joint medical anthropology program at the Universities of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco in 2015. Her scholarly interests stem from over ten years of examining human rights and environmental issues. Her Master research examined ethnobotanical practices in Costa Rica related to pharmaceutical development and biopiracy. Her doctoral research analyzed the socio-environmental consequences of transnational infrastructure projects and climate change along Latin...

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Folklore, Scandinavian

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein is a Professor of Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Iceland. He received his MA in folklore in 1999 and his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Alan Dundes and John Lindow. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, the Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam, and the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, as well as a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at New York University....

Okechukwu Iroegbu

Folklore

Oke (MA 2024) studies proverbs, ecology and African traditions.

Ross Jackson

Folklore

Ross Jackson received his MA in Folklore in May 2013. Prior to entering the Folklore program, Ross received an MD degree from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and completed a Residency in Dermatology at Tulane University School of Medicine. Ross practiced Dermatology for 30 years. It was in this clinical setting that his curiosity about tattoos began. For his thesis, entitled The Tattooed Body: Embodied Narratives, Ross undertook a project where he interviewed subjects at tattoo parlors about what meaning their tattoos had for them. His research...

Cameron Johnson

Folklore

Cameron Johnson (MA 2020): Having previously worked on collections at U.C. Berkeley’s Folklore Archive as well as those at the Minidoka National Historic Site and the Densho: Japanese American Legacy Project, Cameron’s interests are centered on the preservation and presentation of narratives in historically underrepresented communities. His current research within the Folklore program is concerned with the concept of archival authority and indigenous representation, specifically regarding the efforts to provide access to musical recordings produced and restricted in South Africa’s...

Sarah Levin

Lecturer
Folklore, Center for Jewish Studies

Sarah Frances Levin received her PhD in Jewish Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore from UC Berkeley in 2017. Her current book project, “Poetry Duels, Tales, and Jokes: Moroccan Atlas Mountain Muslims and Jews Remember Each Other,” examines 20th-century Jewish-Muslim relations through 21st-century memories (from Muslims in Morocco and Jews who had immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s) of Amazigh (Berbe) oral traditions. These traditions, once integral to the daily lives of Atlas Mountain villagers, offer a unique framework for addressing issues of boundaries and...

Justin Limoges

Folklore

Justin (MA 2024) came to the folklore program with a background in contemporary art, having held a range of positions at various museums and art spaces in the Bay Area and New York, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Most recently he was the Director of Exhibitions at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. His undergraduate study was at the now-defunct Corcoran College of Art and Design, and he maintains an art practice, though it now mostly revolves around projects connected to friends and family. He is interested in aspects of...

Julia Mckeown

Folklore

Julia (MA 2022) is the Othering and Belonging Institute's Campus Bridging Project Specialist. A non-binary former Peace Corps Volunteer who lived and worked with Youth in Development in Morocco, they received their Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and minor in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2016. While there, they wrote a senior thesis on the community of vulnerability and positive youth development that occurs within the Triangle’s spoken word and slam poetry community (of which they are a proud member). In May of...