Dana M. Moss is a graduate student in the University of California, Irvine’s Ph.D. program in Sociology, a Podlich Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy, and a student member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding. Her research interests include state repression, social movements, comparative social change, inequality, and culture.  She is currently researching and writing about comparative trends in state repression in the Middle East and Southeast Asia under the tutelage of her adviser, Chancellor’s Professor David A. Snow, and working with Professor David John Frank on understanding why states deviate from global cultural norms shaping the criminal regulation of sex since 1945.

Dana moved to California from Philadelphia, where she worked as the Research Associate for the Department of Sociology at Villanova University.  She obtained an interdisciplinary M.A. from Villanova in Liberal Studies with an emphasis on Middle Eastern studies.  In 2009, Dana attended the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies in San’a, Yemen, for intensive summer Arabic study.  She is also a co-founding member and co-director of the Yemen Peace Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness about Yemen, cross-cultural dialogue between Yemenis and Americans, and mobilizing for peace in Yemen.

Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, Dana completed her undergraduate degree at Loyola University in Maryland (then Loyola College) in Creative Writing, Sociology and Gender Studies.  She currently resides with her husband and her two dogs in southern California.