Marie Varghese

Marie Varghese is a doctoral student in the department of Anthropology at Columbia University and currently serves as the Scholar Selection Coordinator for the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Scholarship. She is pursuing her graduate certification in Feminist Scholarship through the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia and holds a graduate certificate in sexuality studies from the University of Amsterdam. Before coming to Columbia, Marie worked for several prominent social justice organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the Indian American Political Awareness Council, and The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. In 2003, Marie was awarded the Lionel Cuffie Award for Activism and Excellence at Rutgers University. Her poetry, articles and short stories been featured in publications as wide-ranging as Kerala Deepam, $pread Magazine, The Journal of Black Poetry, and Beyond Polarities. Most recently, Marie has taken an interest in studying international sexual rights advocacy movements and her intellectual pursuits integrate law and culture, queer theory, transnational feminist organizing and South Asian diasporic studies.