Daniel Armin Miehling

Germanic Studies Affiliate

Daniel has been working on the ISCA social media project since fall  2018. He is a Ph.D. candidate in General Linguistics at the Technical University of Berlin at the Institute for Language and Communication. His dissertation focuses on online Antisemitism in social media, comparing mainstream platforms and fringe communities. Daniel is a fellow of the Hans Böckler Foundation. He studied Social Work at OTH-Regensburg, where he also earned his M.A. in Inclusion/Exclusion. Additionally, he studied comparative linguistics and American studies at the University of Regensburg. Daniel's research is based on quantitative/qualitative methods and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

David Axelrod

Ph.D. Student

Having a background in history, David is integrating research questions from history and STS with complex systems and network science approaches. Key areas of interest include information diffusion, contagions in social networks, and the dynamics of online prejudice.

Hannah Benchik

Graduate Student

Hannah Benchik is a Master of Library Science student specializing in Archives and Records Management and Rare Books and Manuscripts. Her studies focus on books and archives from the Holocaust and WWII-era Germany. Last year, Hannah worked at the Museum of German Books and Writing and the Archive of Exiled Germans, 1933-1945 at the German National Library in Leipzig, Germany. She has also done archival work for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. This past summer, she was a 2022 Museum Director’s Laureate for the “If Not for Those Ten...” award, given to ten of the most outstanding volunteers, interns, and coordinators at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum out of a pool of nearly 500.  

Grace Bland

Program Assistant

• gcbland@iu.edu
• (812) 855-8923
• Global and International Studies Building 4004E

Grace Bland is currently pursuing an MS in Cybersecurity Risk Management at Indiana University. She joined ISCA as a Program Assistant in August 2022 and has since helped organize the 2023 Datathon/Hackathon.

Elisha Breton

Graduate Student

Elisha Breton is a first-year MA student in the Jewish Studies program. He graduated cum laude from California State University, Long Beach in 2021 with a double-major in Jewish Studies and History and a minor in Religious Studies. He is interested in Jewish religious extremism and the Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His paper, “King David’s War Crimes,” was recently published in Johns Hopkins University’s 2021 Macksey Journal. 

Kathryn Cooper

Undergraduate Student

Kathryn has been working with ISCA since fall of 2022. She is pursuing a B.A. in Religious Studies and a minor in Jewish Studies from Indiana University. In addition to her work as an annotator, she is writing a paper analyzing the nuances of transphobia on Twitter. Other research interests include open source intelligence techniques, Christian nationalism, and intersectional advocacy.

Rhonda K Fischer

Graduate Student

Rhonda is performing roles as a Research Fellow and intern as part of completing her Masters of Science in Data Science at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. Recent experience includes being a Program Manager for non-profits, leading cross-organization community teams to improve the local health and education systems.  Prior to community work, spent 18 years with Cummins Inc. in Operations Management and Business Intelligence roles, including leading supply chain optimization and business strategy project teams. Education includes a Masters In Business Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in Finance and New Ventures, and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette.

Weejeong Jeong

Ph.D. Candidate

Weejeong Jeong is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education at Indiana University. She also received M.S. in Applied Statistics, and M.S.Ed. in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education. Her research interests include quantitative research in language education, academic literacy development, and language pedagogy for English/Korean as a foreign language. She has joined ISCA since 2020 and has conducted data sampling, cleaning, descriptive, and inferential statistical analysis.

Günther Jikeli

The Erna B. Rosenfeld Professor in Jewish Studies

Associate Professor, Jewish Studies

Associate Professor, Germanic Studies

Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism

• gjikeli@indiana.edu
• (812) 856-1150
• Global and International Studies Building 4019

Sameer Karali

Research Assistant

• skarali@iu.edu

Alek Maasik

Undergraduate Student

Alek is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Hamilton Lugar School for International Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington. Alek comes to ISCA’s antisemitism & extremism analysis team bringing knowledge and experience researching the issues of foreign disinformation, malign influence, and authoritarian agendas. Alek’s concentrated area of study for these issues focuses primarily on Eastern Europe, Russia, and the near abroad. Other research interests of Alek’s include kleptocracy & strategic corruption as well as defense & military relations between the US and the Baltic States.

Sophie von Máriássy

Undergraduate Student (Potsdam University)

Sophie von Máriássy is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Potsdam University. In the past, she studied at Tel Aviv University as well as working on the project “United in Diversity” at The Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies. In 2020 she was on the winning team of the Datathon/ Hackathon of Indiana University on antisemitism on Twitter. Since fall 2020 she has been working on the Decoding Antisemitism project on English as well as German tweets.
Besides antisemitism on online platforms such as Twitter, her interests lie in the recent history of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry.

Ayush Sanghavi

Graduate Student

Ayush is from Mumbai, India, and has pursued his Bachelor’s in Engineering majoring in Information Technology. He is currently a Graduate student in Computer Science at IU. Ayush believes in perseverance and is a result-oriented individual. He is always ready to seek new challenges that come his way. Ayush’s interests include traveling, hiking, playing tennis, and cricket.

Katharina Soemer

Graduate Student (University of Bremen)

Katharina Soemer studies Sociology and Social Research MA and Computer Science BSc at University of Bremen, Germany. She has a bachelor's degree in Sociology. Her current research focuses on antisemitism and conspiracy theories. She mainly uses quantitative methods but has basic training in qualitative methods as well.

Jenna Solomon

Research Assistant

Jenna Solomon graduated from Indiana University in 2019 where she majored in Jewish Studies with a double minor in Hebrew and Israel Studies. She has been involved in the ISCA's research on antisemitism on social media since 2017 when she participated in a course on contemporary antisemitism that was a part of the US State Department's Diplomacy Lab Initiative. She has since then annotated thousands of tweets and helped organize the ISCA's 2020 summer Datathon/Hackathon. Outside of her research with the ISCA, she also manages the institute's social media pages. When she is not documenting antisemitism on social media, she spends most of her time at the local ice rink in Bloomington as the director of their Skating School and as a private coach.

Victor Tschiskale

Undergraduate Student (Potsdam University)

Victor Tschiskale is currently studying for a Bachelor's degree in History and Jewish Studies at the Universitöt Potsdam. He was on the winning team of Indiana University's hackathon on online antisemitism last year. His interests lie in the occurrence of Antisemitism in the context of Internet (sub)cultures, as well as finding ways to counter it.