Danielle Cosmes
Return migration is often considered the end of a migration story. However, returning to one’s community of origin after living in diaspora implies emotional processes of reunification and estrangement that are rarely examined. Danielle’s research and documentary film will explore how Indigenous Oaxacan migrants view themselves and their communities after returning to their ancestral homelands in Oaxaca, Mexico. In Oaxaca, where they currently live, Danielle will conduct interviews with migrants who have returned after living in the United States for several years, as well as with representatives of transnational hometown […]
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 […]
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 […]
Kimberly Salyers
Extensive work has been done on the civic centers of Classic Maya culture. However, archaeological study of Maya commoners has been scarce until recent years. Kimberly’s research will focus on the artifacts uncovered in an excavated household at Chinikih, Mexico. Through a catchment analysis using GIS mapping, she will assess the economic resource basis for settlement. A catchment is the zone from which residents of a place drew their resources. This research will allow Kimberly to consider Chinikih within a larger context: she will look at the relation of commoner […]
Jonathan Wang
At the edge of the city, beyond the stadiums newly built to house South Africa’s 2010 World Cup, are clusters of temporary relocation areas that have come to house tens of thousands of South Africa’s internally displaced urban peoples. Jonathan will travel to South Africa to visually document and map the dialectic relationships between these distinct spaces of exception through photography, video, and open-source mapping technologies. He will also be working with Ikamva Youth to teach mapping and photography workshops designed to create open-source maps of neighborhoods of the Delft […]
Humberto Ortiz
Humbertos project will examine how Latino/a undocumented migrant youth negotiate migrant illegality in their everyday lives through relationships of love, kinship, and companionship. While a growing literature has examined how this population navigates public contexts of higher education and civic engagement, no scholarship has analyzed how these youth negotiate their undocumented status in their private, personal lives. In order to investigate how undocumented young adults develop unique attitudes, beliefs, and experiences with respect to friendships, dating, and marriage, I will interview 20 self-identified Latina/o undocumented young adults from the Bay […]
Tawny Tsang
Contrary to previously held beliefs, the cerebellum is not restricted to activities involving motor control. It participates in a variety of cognitive functions from attention to verbal working memory. This can be attributed to its connectivity with regions of the cortex that are involved in learning and memory. Previous research suggests that the cerebellum may be more involved in metric-based rather than rule-based or categorical learning. Tawny’s project will examine that hypothesis and investigate the cerebellums contribution to specific types of learning as well as the role of feedback on […]
Kristen Norman
In an effort to narrow the gap in gender equality and improve public health, microfinance institutions are increasingly creating products for women in developing countries. Experts caution against assuming that women’s empowerment is an automatic outcome of microfinance, and call for accompanying soft services such as health education, literacy training, and discussion groups on domestic violence. Organizations offering such services have had great results. However, the majority of micro lending institutions are for-profit entities uninterested in offering these expensive social services. Kristen’s project investigates the dynamics of group lending and […]
Jessica Pizzagoni
John Muir once stated, Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. California’s National Parks, renowned for their beauty and history, draw visitors from around the world and reflect John Muirs sentiment. Yet, each person has their own ideas and perceptions about the parks and their personal definitions of wilderness. Can Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”, or preferences associated with class differences, help explain these distinctions? With the use of ethnographic interviews, Jessica will connect […]
Gabriela Monico
An estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants live in the U.S. 2.1 million youth may attempt to legalize through the DREAM Act, if enacted. An activist movement led by eligible youth has mobilized around this legislation, which has given rise to a narrative that casts eligible youth as deserving, othering the 67% that would not qualify. Through interviews and participant observation of two support groups, Rising Immigrant Scholars through Education and 67 Sueos, Gabriela will explore how the DREAM Act narrative has triggered a divergent process of oppositional consciousness among ineligible […]