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.
Research Assistant
Rhonda provides data science support after completing graduate research with ISCA. She is a Data Scientist and Project Manager within the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering and a member of the Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab.
Research Assistant
Daniel C. Freitag (Mag. theol.) is a PhD student and research assistant at the “Institute for Ethics and Related Social Sciences” at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Münster (Germany). He studied Protestant Theology in Münster, Jerusalem and Heidelberg. He was also a member of the Graduate School of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster and worked for the interdisciplinary “Centre for Religion and Modernity”. Now Mr. Freitag is a visiting affiliate of IU’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. His dissertation project investigates contemporary manifestations of Christian antisemitism on the social media platform Facebook. Please find his contact details and more information here.
Research Assistant
I am a researcher working at the intersection of machine learning, graph network science, and learning theory. My recent work includes applying transfer learning to tasks in Computer Vision, NLP, and Bioinformatics, as well as developing semantic search systems using graph-based models. I’ve built scalable solutions for intrusion detection and currently working on speech analysis leveraging large-scale social media data. My goal is to create robust, ethical AI systems that address complex societal challenges.
Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
Erna B. Rosenfeld Associate Professor for the Study of Antisemitism
Associate Professor in the Borns Jewish Studies Program and Germanic Studies
Research Assistant
Hi, I’m Bharath Varma Kantheti — a data scientist who’s genuinely passionate about the world of AI. I love diving deep into everything from large language models and natural language processing to machine learning pipelines and real-world problem solving. Whether it's building chatbots, fine-tuning models, or exploring new AI tools, I’m always curious and excited to learn more. For me, AI isn’t just a field — it’s something I truly enjoy exploring, experimenting with, and growing in every day.
Graduate Student
Kayden Poindexter graduated from Indiana University in 2023 with degrees in Criminal Justice and French, and she is currently pursuing her JD. She has been involved in ISCA's research on antisemitism on social media since 2021, having joined with a background in studying cyber crimes against children. She has now assisted ISCA in analyzing thousands of tweets and has given numerous presentations across IU's campus about antisemitic hate speech on social media.
Project Manager
Katharina Soemer holds an MA in Sociology and Social Research with a focus on quantitative methods from the University of Bremen, Germany, where she also studied Computer Science. She joined the research team in 2020 and has worked in different areas of the team since then. She started with Tweet annotation, was then responsible for statistical analysis, and now manages the project which still includes data analysis and research data management. Drawing on her methodological background, Katharina's academic research focuses on questions at the intersection of machine learning and antisemitism/hate speech. For her master's thesis, she explored ways to ensure annotation reliability for social data such as online antisemitism and analyzed methodological approaches to classify borderline cases. In 2022, she was invited to Bloomington as a visiting scholar and became familiar with Indiana and the Midwest. She currently lives in Berlin, Germany. In addition to her academic work on the topic, she gives lectures and workshops on antisemitism on social media to teachers, students, and the general public. Read more...
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.
Graduate Student (Center for the Research of Antisemitism in Berlin)
Victor Tschiskale is a graduate student at the Center for the Research of Antisemitism in Berlin. In addition to his involvement with the Research Lab, he is working on the research project Decoding Antisemitism. His interests lie in the occurrence of Antisemitism in the context of Internet (sub)cultures, as well as finding ways to counter it.
The College of Arts