Malia Sayad graduated from Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in political science with a concentration in International Relations.
During her junior year, Malia was dismayed to see a sharp rise in antisemitism and enrolled in Dr. Eugene M. Avrutin’s Jewish history course. She says Dr. Avrutin’s passion for the subject left her taken with how beautiful and diverse she found Jewish history and culture to be. It was his class, in addition to seeing those around her be radicalized, that led her to want to understand how history informs contemporary hate.
Malia’s senior thesis studied online rhetoric as users were deplatformed and migrated from mainstream to alternative platforms. Her thesis directly led to an internship at the Anti-Defamation League, where she researched online conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies. Upon the completion of her internship, she became a corporate recruiter for Amazon Pharmacy.
While working, Malia realized she wanted to continue her research and accepted a predoctoral fellowship in the Empirical Studies of Conflict lab at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The purpose of the fellowship is to give aspiring social science researchers from underrepresented backgrounds familiarity with the skills necessary to conduct empirical research: econometric methods, statistics, data science, and coding. She currently works under professors specializing in political economy, international trade, U.S. diplomacy, conflict, and migration.
Following the completion of her fellowship this fall, Malia is looking forward to matriculating at the University of Oxford at Green Templeton College. She will pursue her research utilizing quantitative methods and text-as-data to understand online echo chambers, communities, and hate speech.
Malia fondly recalls taking an overcrowded train from Oxford to London, where she struck up a conversation with a three-generation Illinois alumnus who was with her when she received her Oxford acceptance letter. This serendipitous moment remains one of her favorite Illinois memories. She is extremely grateful for the education and opportunities that Illinois provided to her which continue to inspire her both in and outside of the classroom.