Laura Rambo
The American mass incarceration boom, beginning in the 1970s, targeted poor rural areas, planned as a recession-proof economic development strategy to bolster local economies. While existing research fails to corroborate these claims, nothing has been published since the Great Recession of 2008. Laura’s research will close this gap. She will use a quantitative case-control approach to examine the economic impacts of carceral expansion projects in rural counties in California, Texas, and New York, through 2020. This project will use linear regression methods to identify causal relationships between building spaces of […]
Willie Joe Marquez
Current Bio: After graduation, Willie worked in customer support, marketing, operations and sales functions within various private-sector Ecommerce companies. While working, Willie completed part-time programs to earn his Masters in Public Administration at USC and a Masters in Business Administration at UCLA. He currently works as a Senior Account Manager at Zinus, a global Ecommerce Mattress Manufacturer. Haas Scolars Project: Adolescence is a pivotal period for developing friendships and identity. For chronically ill adolescents, however, this developmental period may be disrupted due to the lifestyle limitations associated with carefully managing […]
Robert R. King
Many breakthroughs have been made regarding the mental and physical challenges war veterans face. However, veterans face many other challenges when it comes to reintegrating back into civilian society. Robert will explore one aspect that helps create the social context that veterans must navigate upon their return. There is considerable evidence that news coverage can shape public opinion regarding many issues, one of which is the perception of soldiers and war veterans. Through a detailed content analysis of front-page newspaper stories about the wars, Robert will explore empirical truth of […]
Judy Schafer
My research will investigate the reported phenomenon of increasing numbers of unaccompanied Central American youth migrating to the United States from May 2011 to July 2013. I will examine these questions: Why are these children migrating alone? Will this overall trend continue? Or is there a push/pull factor that is influencing this recent surge? What can be done to make this journey safer for these children? My study begins in the detention facilities and immigration courts of Arizona and Texas, then continues as I travel southbound through Mexico and by […]
Geraldine Gomez
An estimated 65,000 undocumented students graduate from the nations high schools each year, and only 5-10% of those continue on to a two/four-year college or university (Passel, 2003 & Passel and Cohn, 2009). Their obstacles, beyond lack of federal financial aid, contribute to psychological stress and limited opportunities in higher education. Geraldine will augment the scarce research on AB540 students agency and resiliency by interviewing undocumented Latina/o UC Berkeley students and alumni, undocumented youth who either work or dropped out of college, faculty, administrators, and members of student organizations. She […]
Minda Murphy
Northern Uganda is in the early years of recovery following a twenty year civil war which devastated the region. For an entire decade of that war, nearly two million people from Acholiland were forcibly displaced from their homes and detained in internment camps, living as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), refugees in their own country. With the vast majority of the camps now closed, and the Acholi community working to rebuild villages, homes, and infrastructure, new challenges have arisen. Minda’s work in Acholiland will seek to identify the barriers of access […]
James Gabriel Eckhouse
The entertainment business dominates many people’s lives. Theorists of different stripes have been eager to understand the role it plays in modern society. However, these inquiries rarely treat entertainment as an industry. No one has thoroughly pursued the question: what kind of value is produced by the entertainment industry? Emphasizing the creation of value this project views Hollywood’s film and television industry through the lens of a Marxian Political-Economist. James’s focus will be understanding how the people who produce entertainment might create a particular type of value that is different […]
Ashwak Hauter
In the last 20 years, Yemen experienced a civil war, discontinued aid from the gulf countries, and reforms that cut spending towards health care. Ashwak’s project explores how Yemeni doctors and lay persons view foreign western medicine in comparison to Yemen’s western medicine and how they use communicative practices (Hanks 1996) to explicitly and implicitly co-construct and reproduce these views. This will give insight and space to investigate how medical discourse in Yemen influences consumption and choice of medical practices when faced with the option of local and foreign operated […]
Jenna Cavelle
The Citarum River and its drainage basin, which has been called the most polluted river in the world, spans 11,000 square kilometers, serves 378 industries, 25 million people, and supplies Jakarta with 80% of its water. With so many people and ecologies depending on this critical river, each with a different perspective and a distinct relationship to the river, there are many narratives about rights, access, and pollution being told. Jenna will travel to West Java to further explore what individual and collective claims are being made, which practices and […]
Benjamin Golder
The fact that wilderness can be literally built is a profound one, especially in this era of ecological crisis. Wild plants and animal species are rapidly being lost due to climate change and loss of habitat. What if wildlife were built into the fabric of the city? What if the city, often regarded as the antithesis of wilderness, nurtured a variety of plant and animal life in the midst of dense urban centers? Ben will produce designs for the construction of wildlife habitat at a sample urban site, incorporating Geographic […]