Postdoctoral Fellows

Ruth E. Toulson is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on overseas Chinese populations in Southeast Asia. Broadly, her research examines the relation between religion and politics in Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore. She focuses on processes of religious transformation: why are some ritual practices discarded, seemingly without regret, while others become orthopraxy? And why do state measures designed to transform citizens’ religious beliefs so often fail?

Gina Rivera is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the Penn Humanities Forum of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard University, with a dissertation on operatic singers and dancers in early modern Paris. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in violin performance from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she played both baroque and modern string instruments.