2019 Faculty Fellows
Seed Grants $500-$2,500
Sara Niedzwiecki, Assistant Professor , Politics
Immigrants’ Access to Social Protection in Latin America
The movement of people from one country to another is at a record high. In 2017, 258 million lived in a country different from the one they were born, representing worldwide 3.4% of the population. In Latin America this percentage is twice as high, with 6.5 million immigrants. Immigrants tend to live in worse conditions than nationals: many work in risky jobs, have less access to healthcare, pensions, and formal education. Yet, despite the high number and increasing vulnerability of immigrants in Latin America we know relatively little about the conditions of their integration into their host societies. Some receiving states provide basic access to transfers and services to immigrant populations while others are highly restrictive. How and to what extent do Latin American states provide social rights and social services to people on the move?
Lily Balloffet, Assistant Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
Cross-Border Mobility & Confinement in the Americas: An Inter-UC-CSU Migration Studies Workshop
The movement of people from one country to another is at a record high. In 2017, 258 million lived in a country different from the one they were born, representing worldwide 3.4% of the population. In Latin America this percentage is twice as high, with 6.5 million immigrants. Immigrants tend to live in worse conditions than nationals: many work in risky jobs, have less access to healthcare, pensions, and formal education. Yet, despite the high number and increasing vulnerability of immigrants in Latin America we know relatively little about the conditions of their integration into their host societies. Some receiving states provide basic access to transfers and services to immigrant populations while others are highly restrictive. How and to what extent do Latin American states provide social rights and social services to people on the move?
Savannah Shange, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
The Racial Politics of Breastfeeding
In recent years, “breast is best” has become the normative advice for middle-class mothers, even as maternal-child health programs like WIC are cash-strapped and under pressure to ameliorate the abysmal health outcomes produced by systemic poverty, particularly in southern states. Through lactation support training and intensive fieldwork with grassroots reproductive justice networks led by Black and Latina women in Southern states, this ethnographic study offers a multiscalar view of gendered inequalities and the community-based struggles against them.
Sprout Grants $2,500 to $20,000
Sylvanna Falcón, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas
The Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas will partner with legal, advocacy, and media partners in need of open source investigative work related to human rights cases. Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps will train this new generation of human rights investigators on discovery and verification methods. The lab, which will be housed at the Research Center for the Americas at UC Santa Cruz, will assist our partners using open source investigation tools and methods to verify and analyze social media information.
Adriana Manago, Assistant Professor, Psychology
Social Media, Gender, and Sexual Identity Development in Adolescence
The purpose of this mixed-methods research is to understand the role of social media in gender and sexual identity development among contemporary adolescents and the links between social media and school contexts in adolescent psychological well-being.
Steve McKay, Associate Professor, Sociology
We Belong: Collaboration for Community-Engaged Research and Immigrant Justice
This award funds the first year of the We Belong: Collaboration for Community-Engaged Research and Immigrant Justice to understand the experiences of mixed-status immigrant families in Santa Cruz County and help articulate a county-wide action agenda for inclusivity and justice. The research project is designed to generate new, locally actionable knowledge to strengthen a county-wide coalition providing social services to immigrants, while simultaneously training and mentoring first-generation undergraduate researchers.
Flora Lu, Associate Professor, Environmental Studies
Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability: Centering Community in Human-Groundwater Interactions in the Pajaro Basin
This project consists of an interdisciplinary collaboration of scholar/practitioners to address the political ecology of groundwater in the Pajaro Basin. We are committed to recognizing and integrating a diversity of knowledges and practices with respect to groundwater management, including current understandings of the basin’s hydrogeology, contemporary groundwater law and policies, land-use histories, social movements, and everyday practices and organizing. In addition to integrating diverse disciplines, our project aims to foreground voices and experiences from community members, especially those who are underrepresented in policy making.
Megan Moodie, Associate Professor, Anthropology
WELPLACE: Women’s Local Pain Learning and Advocacy Centers
Megan Moodie and Adrian Brasoveanu will begin work on a long-term project to help improve the lives of women living in chronic pain in the U.S: the establishment of a pilot WELPLACE (Women’s Local Pain Learning and Advocacy Center) at UCSC. WELPLACE will allow patients to access AI tools that will assist with diagnosis, treatment options, and political advocacy, all of which are critical for chronic pain patients and subject to delay and systemic breakdown. Sprout funding will allow them to pursue external sources of funding and collaborate with colleagues on campus and around the country on all aspects of the project design — from data scraping to user experience — as well as begin analysis of Independent Medical Review Data for the state of California, an essential component of the political advocacy plan.
Hillary Angelo, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Global problems, city solutions: Launching a mixed methods analysis of local climate adaptation plans
As cities have become the premiere climate change protagonists, sustainability efforts of high-profile “best practice” cities are increasingly well-documented and replicated. This grant funds the launch of a cross-disciplinary, collaborative project documenting urban sustainability efforts outside the superstar cities dominating global public discourse, combining machine learning (ML) techniques with qualitative case studies to analyze 629 cities’ climate action plans in Canada and California. Sprout funding will support the completion of a paper and policy report concluding a pilot study of California climate action plans, and, with David Wachsmuth (McGill University) the development of a proposal for external funding.
Saskias Casanova, Assistant Professor, Psychology
Youth Participatory Action Research, Cultural Knowledge, & Resilience for Latinx Youth
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) involves training youth to conduct research on issues related to their lived experiences and to create evidence-based change. For this pilot study, we will qualitatively examine the experiences of Latinx high school students participating in weekly YPAR sessions in order to understand how YPAR relates to these students’ resiliency and sense of school belonging. The findings will be used to provide workshops for the school staff and to apply for external grants to fund a larger YPAR, longitudinal project.
Harvest Grants $500 – $1,500
Jessica Taft, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children
This project will share practical lessons from the Peruvian movement of working children with non-profit organizations and government institutions working in the fields of children’s rights, youth civic engagement, and youth activism in the United States. Harvest funds will support the distribution of the The Kids are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, forthcoming) and the development and implementation of multiple half-day workshops on adult/child collaborations and intergenerational activism. By sharing knowledge and expertise developed in Latin America, the project will strengthen programs aimed at the political empowerment of children and youth in the United States, build transnational connections, and contribute to the more effective implementation of children’s participatory rights.
Rebecca London, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Rethinking Recess: Creating Safe and Inclusive Playtime for All Children in School
The Harvest Grant is supporting a book launch event for Rethinking Recess: Creating Safe and Inclusive Playtime for All Children in School (Harvard Education Press). The research-based book argues that access to the mental break, physical activity and social and emotional learning that recess affords is a civil right for all children, and that policies and practices to support recess or essential for ensuring that students are able to make the most of that time. The event is being held in partnership with local schools and offices of education.
Book Manuscript Accelerator
Lindsey Dillon, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Race, Waste, and Space: Urban Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco
This book examines how race makes space, through a close study of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, an industrial and residential place in the southeast corner of the city. I focus on the toxic entanglement of waste, race, and urban development at different historical conjunctures, arguing that the materialities and semiotics of waste are deeply connected with racial-spatial formations in the US. Race, Waste, and Space also foregrounds long-time struggles by Black San Franciscans over housing, health, and environmental justice, focusing on the contemporary moment of toxic cleanup, redevelopment, and urban greening in Bayview-Hunters Point.
