2012-2014 Fellows

karen_rhone Karen Rhone is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. Ms. Rhone's
research engages new and innovative questions about the political possibilities for resistance
against inequality provided by both Islamic law and Islamic finance. Most of the existing
research on Islamic law and finance fails to capture key aspects of ever-present power dynamics
and to elucidate the political consequences and possibilities for equality and justice provided by
Islamic law and finance. Rhone will highlight both by first constructing a genealogy of Islamic
law and finance and then analyzing legal cases decided by both Sharia and British courts to
provide an empirical engagement of her theoretical claims. Ms. Rhone received a Social Science
Research Council Pre-Doctoral Fellowship to support field research on Islamic finance in Dubai
and presented some of her research at the American Political Science Association annual
conference. She serves as the Coordinator of the University of Chicago Money, Markets &
Consumption Workshop.
morando Sarah Morando Lakhani is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los
Angeles. Using a variety of qualitative data sources, Lakhani's dissertation examines the
humanitarian-based legal status acquisition process for undocumented migrants in Los Angeles
who have survived violence in their home or host countries. She charts the process from the time
migrants decide they want to regularize their status and contact non-profit immigration attorneys,
through the case development phase, when migrants collaborate with lawyers to produce
compelling petitions for legal status, to the stage of application results and beyond, documenting
the consequences of approvals and rejections for migrants and their families. She also examines
the moral and political values of the immigration attorneys representing migrants, and how their
convictions may affect case outcomes. Lakhani has presented parts of her dissertation
research at both the 2010 and 2011 LSA Annual Meetings.