GWS Alumni (2020-Present)
About Dr. Ash Stephens (2021) Heading link
Name: Ash Stephens (He/Him & They/Them)
Current Title: Bridge to Faculty Postdoc in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice
GWS Affiliation: GWS Graduate Concentrator
UIC Degree: PhD in Criminology, Law and Justice, and M.A. in Criminology, Law and Justice (2021)
Bio: Ash Stephens (he/they) is Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice (CLJ) at UIC. He received his PhD in CLJ from UIC with concentrations in Black Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. His dissertation focused on transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people’s experiences of policing and surveillance from four sites: the family, the Department of Motor Vehicles, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and from police. Their dissertation also highlighted participants’ resistance strategies, from an abolitionist framework. During his graduate studies, he also worked as a Manager of Policy and Strategy for the Transgender Law Center, focusing on community-driven public policy priorities that prioritized trans people, and as the Director of Bail Operations for the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund (now the Envision Freedom Fund) where he worked with New York City public defender agencies to post bail for people who were incarcerated in borough jails who could not afford to post bond. He has also been a part of numerous groups to support people impacted by incarceration, such as Love and Protect, the Chicago Community Bond Fund, the NYC chapter of Survived and Punished, Prison Neighborhood Arts Project (PNAP), and Transformative Justice Law Project.
About Ren Encinas (2021) Heading link
Name: Ren Encinas (they/them)
Current Title: Co-Director of Organizing at Dissenters
GWS Affiliation: Undergraduate Major
UIC Degree: BA, GWS (2021)
Bio: Ren Encinas (they/them) is a queer Filipino community organizer based in Chicago. They are deeply committed to internationalist abolitionist organizing to dismantle militarism domestically & globally, while building life-affirming institutions and networks of care. For the past 10 years, they have organized towards collective liberation with various movements including labor, land, migrant, and climate justice, anti-imperialism, to abolition and demilitarization. As a GWS student at UIC, Ren organized with Anakbayan and Abolition at UIC to defund policing and militarism on-campus and reinvest in life-giving resources for students. Off-campus, Ren has organized to remove US troops and bases from their homeland, and to pass the Philippine Human Rights Act to end all US military aid towards the Philippine police and military. Recently, they helped launch #BoeingArmsGenocide, a Chicago-based Dissenters campaign which targeted the City of Chicago’s contract with Boeing’s HQ and blocked $2 million of public resources from going to the war-profiteer. Now, as Dissenters Co-Director of Organizing, Ren has the honor of helping grow and nourish a transformative, joyful, and leaderful anti-militarist youth movement by supporting 25+ Dissenters chapters across Turtle Island in launching and winning local direct action campaigns to reclaim power and resources away from the war industry.