Chana is a PhD candidate in Sociology and an Academy Graduate Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her BA in Sociology and Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa (2000); her MA in Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel (2004) and her AM in Sociology at Harvard University (2009).

Her research focuses on how historical representations of racial and ethnic conflict impact on contemporary race and ethnic relations. Her dissertation examines how the history of apartheid is being taught to -- and understood by -- South African high school students, and further interrogates whether and how these understandings are consequential for students' racial identities and attitudes in the present. Her dissertation is based on 18 months of field-work in two racially and socioeconomically diverse South African high schools that included observations in classrooms, in-depth interviews with teachers and students (N=170), and content analysis of textbooks and written materials used in class. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard's Committee on African Studies, and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has published in Social Forces and Symbolic Interaction.