University Writing Center

Robert Cochran is the Program Director of the Writing Center. He holds a BA in International Relations from Harvard University's Extension School and both an MA and a Ph.D. in History from Brandeis. Additionally, he has received training in writing pedagogy from Brandeis. He has been an active member of the Brandeis Writing Center since 2018, serving first as a Writing Consultant, then as a Senior Writing Consultant and a Graduate Assistant Director.

At Brandeis, Dr. Cochran plans and implements all of the Writing Center's programming for undergraduate and graduate students, including one-on-one consultations, workshops, writers' workspaces, and dissertation writers' retreats. He conceives of the writing center as a vital pedagogical space in which all writers, regardless of their background or ability, can meet to engage in the tough yet rewarding process of becoming stronger, more confident writers.

As an academic writing instructor, he enjoys working with and learning from individuals of all linguistic backgrounds and skill levels. He has extensive experience in the university classroom and takes a keen interest in matters of learning experience design (LXD). Apart from his work in academic writing support, Dr. Cochran also conducts research in the field of colonial history, focusing on the modern British Empire and the Caribbean. In his 2024 dissertation, he problematizes commissions of inquiry into nineteenth-century systems of Asian indentured labor throughout the British Empire, arguing that these public spectacles largely served political and plantocratic ends rather than the subaltern Indian laborers about whom they were supposedly concerned.

Jillian is a second-year master’s student pursuing an MA in Sustainable International Development at the Heller School and holds a bachelor’s degree in Professional and Technical Writing from Youngstown State University. Currently, Jillian serves as a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) intern with USAID’s Bureau for Latin America & the Caribbean and is conducting research on ecological justice and LandBack initiatives in the renewable energy transition across the Americas. Jillian is a cross-genre writer, with essays and poetry published in the Adirondack Review and YO Magazine. Whether working on academic essays, creative projects, or application materials, Jillian is eager to support students in refining their writing voice and building confidence in their work!

Manning is a sociology & health policy doctoral student in the joint PhD program in the Department of Sociology and Heller School. She is currently working on her dissertation research on fitness organizations in Greater Boston. Manning’s mother tongue is Mandarin, and she is learning French, Cantonese, and Spanish. While her mentoring strength is helping students build up research skills (such as brainstorming ideas, critical writing, searching for information, etc.) in social sciences, Manning is welcoming everyone who is struggling with writing and seeking improvements.

Yi is a PhD student in the English department finishing up her dissertation on the New England Puritans and angels! She is a former Grad Assistant Director of the Writing Center and enjoys working with students, learning about them, and encouraging them to exercise their writing muscles. She’s taught the UWS course “The Cosmos” as well as a literature course at Brandeis. She enjoys hiking trips of different intensities, chatting with friends, and watching movie trailers.

Anna is a first-year MA student in the Classical and Early Mediterranean department. Her work primarily focuses on women’s and queer history in the ancient world, and she is interested in how people perceive and interact with the ancient world from the 18th century forward. She holds a B.A. from East Carolina University in History. She enjoys cooking, spending time outdoors, learning languages, and reading in her free time. She is excited to connect with writers to improve writing skills and habits in all disciplines!

Chelsea is a second-year Philosophy Master’s student at Brandeis University. She did her Bachelor's in Business and Cognitive Science at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. She is currently a course assistant for a philosophy course named “Philosophy and Ethics of Technology.” Her main research area is technology ethics and philosophy of social science. She loves to engage in analytical writing and interact with students. Outside of her academic study, she loves walking, traveling, meeting people, and experiencing new cultures.

Iana is a PhD student in the Department of English. Their research interests are in Victorian literature, new formalism, and philosophy and literature. Iana earned their BA in French and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Tufts University, having also spent a year studying in Paris during their time as an undergraduate. Iana looks forward to collaborating with students at the writing center and helping students feel more confident expressing themselves in whatever writing medium they are working in.

Iris Zhou is a second-year PhD student at the Department of Anthropology. Her research interests primarily lie in Science Technology Studies (STS); she works with computer scientists and their “Tech for Good” projects. She also writes about single women in China. Iris holds a BA with a double major in Anthropology and Comparative Literature from the University of Rochester. As an English-language-learner writer, Iris looks forward to sharing her experiences in research and academic writing with more writers seeking improvements.

Ishan is a first-year PhD student in the English department. His work is at the confluence of Environmental Humanities and Postcolonial Studies. In 2024, he graduated with an MA in English from Vanderbilt University, where he wrote a thesis on a translated eco-disaster novel. His experiences in critical and creative writing and his former career as a professional writer and copy editor exposed him to a multitude of writing styles. He is curious to learn more about the Brandeis student community and help them brainstorm and develop their writing. Outside of work, you will often find Ishan on the tennis courts or watching sports.

Jade is a second-year MS student studying Computational Linguistics. Topics of study include Natural Language Processing, Machine Translation, Large Language Models, and Annotation. She holds a BA in Spanish and International Studies with a minor in French from UNCW and has a passion for language learning. She also enjoys traveling and cooking. She is especially excited to see what interesting topics students will bring to the Writing Center this year!

Jarem is a first-year Master’s student studying Computer Science. He previously studied Linguistics at the University of Utah and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is interested in the intersection of Computational Linguistics and Machine Learning, and wants to study ways to make language generation tools more accurate and efficient. His published research includes studies of ways to generate portmanteaus (like “brunch” or “Barbenheimer”) and he has also worked on Natural Language Understanding tasks in the tech sphere. Jarem has taught English as a second language in Laos, Thailand, and his home state of Utah. He speaks English natively, as well as fluent Thai and Laotian, and has experience studying/speaking Spanish, German, and Mandarin.

Joseph is a fourth-year doctoral student in the History Department. He has worked as a Writing Consultant since 2022 and enjoys reading the wide range of papers that come through our doors. His experience providing feedback on writing includes working with students, peers, and mentors in other capacities at Brandeis. As a writer, he has experience working on projects intended for academic and popular audiences. When he is not in the Writing Center, Joseph is working on his dissertation about Jews’ relationship to slavery. Before he came to Brandeis, Joseph received a B.A. in history and Spanish from Haverford College.

Leon is a first-year PhD student in the English Department. He has a BA from Vassar College and a MA from Fordham University, both in English literature. His research interests are closely associated with British romanticism and love poetry, so he is especially familiar with close readings and literary critiques. He is a native Mandarin speaker and has spent a considerable amount of time studying multiple languages, including Latin, Italian and Old English, during his time as an undergrad. Before coming to Brandeis, he was an online writing tutor for three years, helping college freshmen and high school students from non-English speaking countries with all kinds of issues in academic writing. He is currently also a tutor at Brandeis's English Language Program.

Lianne is a second-year doctoral student studying transracial adoption from China to the United States. Although affiliated with the History Department, her research is interdisciplinary, bringing together fields such as Critical Adoption Studies, Asian American Studies, and Critical Race Theory. She holds a BA in English from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts as well as a joint MA in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University. In her free time, she enjoys reading poetry, playing ukulele, and spending time with her cat, Oliver. She looks forward to working with students across all stages of the writing process, from brainstorming to final drafts.

Sahid is a second-year English PhD student at Brandeis. He has a B.A. from Calcutta University and an M.A. from Jadavpur University, both in English. He studies the politics of religious pluralism and secularity among minorities in South Asia. He specifically looks into the issues of epistemic injustice, religion, caste, and gender violence through 20th- and 21st-century literature, film, and photography. Before coming to Brandeis, Sahid worked as writer, translator, and analyst at various firms. He loves to help students refine their writing as a consultant!

Sargam is a 2nd Year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis. Her work lies at the intersection of affect, kinship, religion and medical anthropology. She is interested in understanding the ways in which those who are proximate to death, attune themselves to the dead and the dying in South Asia. She holds an MPhil in Sociology from Delhi University. At the Writing Center she looks forward to sharing her enthusiasm for writing (and writers) with fellow academic researchers and writers.

Sarina is a second-year MA student in the English Department. Her work focuses primarily on Romanticism, and she is particularly interested in the interactions between poetics and politics of reform in the work of P.B. Shelley. She is also interested in Music and Literature as an interdisciplinary field, and she participates in the Brandeis Music Department. She earned her BA in Written Arts and her BM in Violin Performance from Bard College Conservatory. She is very excited to connect with the wider Brandeis community through working in the Writing Center.

Seif is a Ph.D. student in the Neuroscience program at Brandeis. He is primarily interested in brain plasticity, learning, and memory with a few research experiences at the University of Florida, Rockefeller University, and University of Copenhagen. He also worked for 3 years a writing tutor at the Sewanee Writing Center at his undergrad institution. During his free time, Seif likes kayaking, fencing, and movies. 

Sreemoyee is a first year English P.hD. student, and is interested in postcolonial poetry, elegies, children’s literature, and the significance of material culture in literary texts. She is motivated by questions about the way words loiter on the page through the line breaks in poems and the overall shapes of these poems. A question that fascinates her is: How do poems hold quietness, flow and reverie? She has a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Ashoka University (India) and a Master’s in Children’s Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Before coming to Brandeis, she used to work as a Communication Center Fellow at an undergraduate engineering college in India where she curated and taught close-reading and creative writing workshops. In her free time, she enjoys making pots and writing poems in them. She looks forward to working with students at the Writing Center!

Weichen is a first-year master’s student in the Computer Science Department. Before Brandeis, she studied at Kenyon College and then lived in Northern California. Even though she received most of her professional and academic training in STEM (first in the life sciences, now in computer science), she enjoys dabbling in many facets of writing, including fiction and memoir-style non-fiction. Chinese is Weichen’s native language; English is her second, and she also speaks a tad of Japanese. Over the years studying and working in the U.S., Weichen learned intimately the power a strong piece of writing holds for moving ahead in this country. As a writing consultant at Kenyon, she has helped many science writers and English-language learners on their writing journey: brainstorming ideas, crafting thesis, polishing resumes and cover letters, etc.. She is excited for the opportunity to continue to write and grow with the diverse student population at Brandeis University.