Hi!
Let’s be honest, I read Lingyu’s bio before I wrote my own and I am 100% riffing off their formatting.
Anyway. Hi!
I’m a 4th year PhD student in SILS, which means I had the unique joy of starting a PhD in Fall 2020 (do not recommend). North Carolina is the 9th state I’ve lived in, which means I am geographically confused. If you ask me where I’m from, I will give you my most recent physical location (usually ‘Trader Joes’ or ‘a bike trail’).
Pronouns: she/her
How to say my name: “Aashka” is pronounced kind of like “Oshkosh” except I am not a midwestern town and my name is not spelled like that. “Dave” is not pronounced like a person’s first name; please refer to this video if you need help. We’re probably not going to be friends if you mix up my first and last names. 🙂
Fully Booked
I read a LOT. I was the kid who would bring books to sleepovers and I am lucky that my friends stuck with me through that phase.
These days, a lot of my reading is for comprehensive exams. That means I’m looking at lots of stuff about climate models, critical data studies, and risk communication.
Outside of that, I read things that are decidedly NOT about my research. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is the best fantasy book I’ve read in recent years. I loved These Precious Days, a series of essays by Ann Patchett. I haven’t stopped thinking about The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison or A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine since I read them, and I’m currently working (cooking?) my way through The Flavor Equation by Nik Sharma.
Work Stuff
My advisor is Prof. Francesca Tripodi and my co-advisor is Prof. Arcot Rajasekar. I’m an RA in CITAP.
Prior to starting the PhD, I was a researcher on Media Cloud, a consortium research project currently housed at UMass Amherst, Northeastern University, and Harvard’s Berkman Center. I’ve also been a researcher at the Kennedy School, training journalists on best practices for covering mis/disinfo, and I’ve worked on digital projects at The Associated Press.
Community
Back in undergrad at UGA, some friends and I started an organization called The Georgia Feminist. We were trying to raise awareness of the fact that UGA didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a women’s center. During the fall 2020 part of COVID, we took what was once a niche interest and turned it into a fully-fledged community and nonprofit. These days, we raise money for voter registration projects and reproductive justice efforts in the Southeastern U.S. We also put out a newsletter about mutual aid, Southern history, and more. You can learn more about all of this on our website.
Contact
You can email me at aashkad@email.unc.edu.