Simone Matecna
Policy makers and developmental psychologists know that addressing the effects of poverty in adults often comes too late to be effective. Imagine a 30-year-old man named Sal who does not know whether or not he will be able to pay his rent or buy food for his family at the end of the month. It is not hard to understand why this uncertainty might cause Sal psychological stress on an ongoing basis. In fact, the ways in which financial stress impact mental health in adults have been well documented and […]
Grace Allison
Current Bio: Grace is a full-time research assistant at Columbia University. Haas Scholars Project: Emotion regulation is the process by which individuals manage their emotions. A robust set of findings suggests that certain emotion regulation strategies promote well-being whereas others undermine well-being. This project will utilize romantic relationships as the social context in which to examine the effects of various emotion regulation strategies. Work related to this topic has either not considered partner perceptions or has relied on experimental paradigms that have low ecological validity. To address these limitations, Grace […]
Kimberly Martin
Many people assume that racism is a binary dimension whereby people are either racist or not. However, over forty years of research indicates that not only are there several distinctive forms of racism, but that they exist on a continuum. Recent trends have shown that while blatant forms of racism seem to be decreasing, there are indirect forms of racism now prevailing. Through the collection of survey data, Kimberly’s research will investigate how these subtle and even unconscious forms of racism affect peoples perceptions of institutions associated with a particular […]
Jennifer Fei
Jennifer’s research will explore the impact of current International Rescue Committee (IRC) Resettlement Programs on female economic empowerment. Her working hypothesis is that the empowerment effect of the IRC on refugee women will vary depending on cultural norms, resettlement program type, and resulting employment. She will study female refugee populations lived experiences and the development of the IRC Economic Empowerment program development in New York City through regional and headquarters offices. She will focus on how IRC programs later affect refugee women’s perception of family life, self-sufficiency, and personal autonomy […]
Lupita Lúa
In 2015, Afro-Mexicans were recognized as an ethnic group in the Mexican national census for the first time in history. However, their history continues to be suppressed by the state and few studies address the role that Afro-Mexican people, especially women, played during Mexicos struggle for independence. For her History senior thesis, Lupita will travel to Mexico to conduct archival research in order to understand to what extent African-descendant peoples were active participants in the independence movement, and in what ways Afro-Mexican women embraced or resisted the ideas that the […]
Jeremy Teman
Activities like driving demand the ability to respond quickly and accurately to changes in ones environment. A fundamental scientific question concerns what neural processes determine response time (RT). A widely held assumption is that RT represents the aggregate time required to generate an accurate movement. However, recent research suggests that humans can be forced to accurately produce movements more rapidly than their fastest voluntary RTs. Inhibition of the motor system is known to be involved in motor planning processes during the performance of voluntary RT tasks, which raises the question: […]
Jorge David Mancillas
Jorge-David Mancillas will be traveling to Los Angeles to conduct research on the effectiveness of gang intervention. In Los Angeles, the so-called gang capital of the world, more than half of the yearly homicides are gang-related. Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention program located in East Los Angeles, is the most successful gang intervention program in the nation, utilized by more than 10,000 community members a year. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with gang-members and former gang-members, Jorge will be studying how Homeboy Industries operates and how/why they are successful. […]
Emma Deboncoeur
What began as an investigation into access to health care for transgender women in Montral by way of an institutional ethnography has changed into a larger query of knowledge production, preservation and dissemination. This works seeks to clarify and problematize what is research, who is the researcher, how biomedicine and transgender women are inexorably linked and how macro questions of archiving, and the lack thereof, relate to endemic patterns of burnout and knowledge loss on the micro level.
Emma Yataco
Though the term religion is frequently used, it remains difficult to define. As a result, defining religious conversion or developing a unified theory of conversion has not yet been achieved. Emma’s research will explore religion and conversion from the perspective of the religious organizations themselves. She will examine the doctrine and organizational structure of both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Identifying similarities and differences will help establish a foundation for understanding how religious participation/disaffiliation is affected by the religious environment and teachings as […]
Angela Laureano
Angelas research will analyze the institutional and personal barriers affecting formerly incarcerated people trying to pursue higher education. This study will highlight their personal narratives, as they attempt to overcome structural barriers. Previous qualitative research on formerly incarcerated people who participate in prison college programs reveals that having access to education support is crucial for their involvement in higher education post-release. Scholars, however, call for more research looking at the effects of these academic programs in prison and their impact on participants once released. Through qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated […]