2023 CUNY DSI & NSA Fellows

CUNY DSI is pleased to announced the three 2023 fellows:

Maria Victoria Abreu

Originally from Santo Domingo, and with two Masters Degrees in International Political Economy and Development (Fordham University) and International Cooperation (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Maria Victoria Abreu is a bilingual social economist with 20+ years of experience in executive positions and strategic project management. She has served as a consultant for international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Inter-American Bank (IDB), and The World Bank. Abreu has also worked for the Government of the Dominican Republic as Deputy Director of the National Competitiveness Council and for several non-profit organizations, both in the Dominican Republic and in the United States. As a CUNY DSI Fellow, she will work to enhance and expand the Dominican Landmark online site, a pioneering project that identifies and lists symbols and markers celebrating Dominican historical and cultural legacy built around the world.

Diomelca Rivas

Diomelca Rivas is a PhD student in the History Department at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research centers on the interconnection between the expansion of public education and the consolidation of nation-state formation in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo dictatorship. Her research explores the ways in which "la escuela rural dominicana" served as a mechanism to expand the regime’s control and surveillance over the rural population. Rivas is also interested in understanding the public school’s function as a propaganda machine to disseminate and institutionalize Eurocentric, anti-Black notions of Dominicanidad. As a CUNY DSI Research Fellow, Rivas will expand the history of education in the Dominican Republic by exploring the subtle, quotidian resistance methods employed by the rural, Afro-Dominican population to contest the social and political impositions of the despotic state through schools.
 

Said Saillant

Dr. Said Saillant is an interdisciplinary scholar focusing on moral epistemology and Latin American philosophy. As the 2023 NSA Fellow at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, he he will write the first annotated bibliography in English highlighting Dominican philosophical thought. Dr. Saillant serves as Executive Director of Societas Sapiens, Inc., a Santo Domingo nonprofit. In this role, he champions linguistic justice and open access to knowledge, advocating for proactive policy and technological initiatives to stimulate dialogue in the Dominican Republic on society's relationship with emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence. His research in moral epistemology presents a fresh view of traditional concepts of morality. His current book project, “Moral Megalomania: An Alternative to Moral Agency,” takes an unorthodox stance in moral philosophy by painting humans as morally obtuse or deluded apes, a departure from the conventional view of humans as moral agents. Dr. Saillant has received fellowships and given invited talks at institutions worldwide, including Oxford, Columbia, Copenhagen University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of Toronto. After earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy from MIT, he furthered his research as Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard. His career also includes a stint in the hedge fund industry, which allowed him to apply his research skills to real-world financial scenarios. In his spare time, he indulges his interests in nonfiction audiobooks, basketball, and traveling the globe.