Braden Storytelling Grants - 2026 Cohort

2026 Braden Grant Projects

We are thrilled to announce our 2026 Braden Storytelling Grantees. They will conduct research over the course of summer 2026 and their finished pieces will be released in early 2027.

Aliza Kato

Aliza Kato is a first year student who expresses her love for music on campus as a KZSU DJ, sound technician for Arbor Live, and bassist in bands on campus. While living in Reykjavík and participating in its music scene, she grew a deep appreciation for its strong, community-centered values and inspiring, creative atmosphere. She hopes to share the joy of Icelandic DIY and “Do-It-Together” arts through her project.

 

Ariana Lalehparvar

Ariana Lalehparvar is from San Jose, California. She is a sophomore studying International Relations and Iranian Studies. She grew up in a multiracial household with an Iranian father and an American mother of German, Chinese, and Mexican heritage, but always felt closest to her Persian culture. Since transferring to Stanford this past fall, she has become deeply interested in Iranian history and politics--drawn in by Stanford's robust Iranian Studies department and by the historic regime change unfolding in Iran. Her audio documentary will explore the Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles' Westwood neighborhood, tracing how a community born from exile in 1979 has evolved into an active political force, and asking what it truly means to fight for a country you were forced to leave, or one you've never lived in and can only love from afar.

Arielle Kouyoumdjian

Arielle Kouyoumdjian is a freshman studying Environmental Communication and audio reporting, focused on unearthing the human stories behind climate statistics and centering the voices of frontline communities often excluded from dominant climate narratives. She lives on the border of Maine’s Acadia National Park, the ancestral homeland of the Wabanaki people. Her project explores how colonial and contemporary conservation practices, the Wabanaki Nation’s ongoing struggle for sovereignty, and the intensifying pressures of climate change intersect in Acadia.
 

Bolu Aminu

Bolu Aminu is a Junior studying Computer Science and minoring in African Studies. Born and raised between Nigeria and Middletown, Delaware, Bolu spent years in Black-owned styling chairs but hardly ever saw Black hair store owners. Her story will explore the relationships inside Black beauty supply stores, and what the dynamic between African-American customers and Korean-American owners reveals about community and commerce across cultural lines.

Gauri Kathula

Gauri is a freshman hoping to pursue a career at the intersection of ocean science, sustainable governance, and human rights. She is telling the story of the Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities of the Chocó-Darién Rainforest and the organization--Roots & Routes Intercultural Collaberations--committed to its liberation in the wake of exploitation by palm oil companies.

Imani Dennison

Imani Dennison (she/they) is an MFA candidate in Art Practice at Stanford University and a graduate of Howard University. Her project, Segregated Landscapes: Black Ecologies in Louisville, KY, is an audio documentary examining how systemic racism and decades of municipal disinvestment have shaped the physical environment of Louisville’s West End. Through conversations with longtime residents, the story explores how segregation continues to shape ecological conditions and the landscape of historically Black neighborhoods.

Leah Everist

Leah is a Masters student in the MS Design program at Stanford’s d.school, focused on how the design of objects, places, and experiences can enhance social cohesion. Her interest in endangered languages began while working on the Transcaucasian Trail in the Svaneti province of Georgia, where the Svan language is designated ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO, and later observing the threats to and revitalization efforts for Newari (Nepal) and Māori (New Zealand). Leah will tell the story of two critically endangered languages spoken by a few hundred people each in rural Taiwan. Her work will explore how Rukai-Mantauran, the oldest surviving offshoot of the language family that spread from Taiwan to cover half the globe, and Tao, a Malayo-Polynesian language hiding an entire marine epistemology, expose unique worldviews and philosophies— and what it takes to bring a language back from the brink.

London San Luis

London San Luis (she/her) is a junior from Orange County, California studying human biology with a concentration in addiction neurobiology. Through her storytelling, London aims to bridge science and art to amplify compassionate, human-centered narratives of addiction and recovery.

Pate Jessop

Pate Jessop (he/him) is a junior majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Human Rights. He’s interested in investigating how legal and criminal justice systems both reflect and reinforce social hierarchies produced by dominant norms and narratives, and which social and cultural changes could help dismantle these dynamics. Driven by his deep reverence for human dignity, experiences in immigration advocacy and organizing, and future plans to become a doctor practicing in immigrant communities, Pate hopes to harness the power of personal narratives to create an engaging and mobilizing documentary that amplifies the voices of the borderlands to understand how immigration enforcement actions impact cultural practices related to health, illness, and dying on the U.S.–Mexico border, and what can be done to address these disruptions.

Questions? Contact SSP Director Jonah Willihnganz.

Listen to previous Braden grant projects  Get details about applying