Building Belonging 2025-2026 Projects and Fellows

This project will design and test story-based elementary school science modules that align to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and state curriculum frameworks while reshaping classroom discourse, broadening participation, and generating new forms of collaboration between teachers, students, and communities. Undergraduate student researchers are helping with the development of lesson materials, analyzing classroom video data, coding student interactions, and contributing to the development of academic manuscripts and presentations. 

This project will explore the role of political education, in particular non-formal and informal education, in challenging the root causes of migration out of Honduras by building awareness of and resilience to the structural violence that impacts communities. Undergraduate student researchers will work to draft a literature review, translate speeches and social media archives from Honduran activists and organizations, and analyze data from social media and prior field work documentation, as well as assist with some related curriculum design.  

The research team will use electrophysiology (EEG) recordings of brain wave activity to learn more about how language is processed in the brain. This work will contribute to current theoretical models of how neural systems support high-level cognitive functions, which has a variety of applications in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry. Students will support task preparation and pilot testing for the experiment, recruit research participants, and help to collect experimental data. They’ll receive training in research technical methods and ethics.

This project uses ethnography and critical discourse analysis to study how corporate chaplaincy programs—through which companies hire clergy or laypersons to serve the spiritual, social, and emotional needs of employees— affect farmworker mental health and overall well-being. The student researcher will be doing some translation (from Spanish to English) of Facebook Live transcriptions of monthly chaplain talks given for migrant farmworkers, interviews with corporate chaplains, thematic coding of data, and analysis of emergent themes.

The team will support research at the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change by mapping critical literatures on technology and justice, co-developing a repository of community-driven design case studies, and helping prototype small-scale digital tools that embody abolitionist and adversarial design principles. The student will conduct literature and case study reviews, co-facilitate workshops, develop digital and archival resources and tools, and receive mentorship in critical research methods and participatory design practices.  

Most studies of deportation overlook that the practice predates modern nation states and their borders and citizenship practices. Deportation was ubiquitous among early Spanish and Portuguese colonial authorities as a means to police lower-class men, exile Indigenous captives, control enslaved Africans, and to punish sexual nonconformity. Student researchers will draw upon transcribed historical documents to populate a database that tracks the forced migrations of deportees in southeastern South America in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Students will work on two planned projects, one to assess how an artificial agent’s dialogue might enhance classroom learning and another to assess how personal communication styles may affect the learning of health information, or the persuasiveness of health advice. Student researchers will conduct a literature review of research related to these topics, attend research assistant meetings and research colloquia, shadow experiments, document the research experience, and gain essential training for future laboratory work. 

This project investigates the hechicerías (witchcraft) trials of mostly Afro-Caribbean/Afro-Latino brujos, who were suspected of devil worship that connected their ability to heal/harm while providing community care to sins against God. The student research will conduct a social network analysis to identify connections among community members and characterize specific forms of stigmatized indigenous knowledge. This work will culminate in the production of a co-authored article to be submitted to Colonial Latin America Review.

This project investigates how the bilingual brain monitors the environment to select the appropriate language for communication by using EEG/ERPs and eye-tracking to capture how people process language in real time. Experiments will focus on understanding code-switching and translation processes in relation to cognitive flexibility. Student fellows will assist with designing experimental materials, collecting data from bilingual participants, and processing behavioral and neural data for analysis.

To advance equitable climate action, leaders must have the capacity to represent their communities and inform climate adaptation initiatives. This project will provide comprehensive training, resources, and financial support to Pajaro residents, facilitating the creation and implementation of two resident-led projects that address specific local challenges. The student fellow will develop climate justice workshop training materials and co-author an academic publication reflecting on the process. 

The agroecological transition of agricultural systems requires building new ways to manage irrigation and water use in diverse farming environments, especially in the Californian context of water scarcity. Student fellows will assist with data acquisition, equipment installation & monitoring in different contexts, prepare workshops and outreach materials for farmers/gardeners, and test affordable low-cost technologies.

Poor water sanitation and hygiene practices introduce pathogenic bacteria and viruses to food, drinking water, and the environment, infecting the digestive tract and causing functional changes in the small intestine. This project seeks to improve child health outcomes and help support the growing body of research emphasizing the role of nutrition and the gut microbiome in mediating mucosal immunity. The student fellow will gain experience in data collection, literature reviews, basic R analyses, and experimental methodology in public health epidemiology.

Greenhouses are a growing component of the global food system in the face of climate change, but require a lot of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, and irrigation. This project seeks to build and test new systems for monitoring greenhouse conditions, using state-of-the-art sensor units and the Internet of Things. Student fellow will receive technical training in laboratory and field techniques, learning how to measure weather and climate characteristics, soil moisture and nutrients, photosynthesis, and growth.

The agroecological transition of agricultural systems requires building new ways to manage irrigation and water use in diverse farming environments, especially in the Californian context of water scarcity. Student fellows will assist with data acquisition, equipment installation & monitoring in different contexts, prepare workshops and outreach materials for farmers/gardeners, and test affordable low-cost technologies.

Where and how K-12 teachers find and use teaching resources has changed drastically in the last 20 to 30 years, thanks to digital archives and teachers’ social networks. This project will investigate two case studies about how digital technologies facilitate the dissemination and use of teaching resources, specifically focusing on the histories and stories of marginalized communities been previously underrepresented in textbooks and teacher education. Student fellows will assist with developing website content and teaching resources. 

Young workers, not more than ever, support labor unionization while also being concerned about working conditions, rent burden, civic engagement, and unpaid care work. Following two years of research, this project builds up young worker surveys to provide in-depth data about 18-34 year olds’ attitudes towards unions, their civic engagement, and housing stability/affordability in Santa Cruz County. The student fellow will assist with data coding and data analysis , report writing and layout, event outreach, and data presentation.

This project examines how children think people should feel when someone dies to create more accurate models of how children think about death and use these models to support grieving children. Children ages five to 10 years old will be interviewed to assess how they think different cartoon characters should feel based on their moral character (hero or villain), and how they believe relationships impact emotions. The student fellow will help conduct and transcribe children’s interviews and perform qualitative analyses of their responses.

This project aims to document the living history of the university’s Feminist Studies Department, the field of study as a whole, and feminist organizing in Santa Cruz. It aims to discuss the significance of feminist analytics and pedagogical practices in the United States today amid political and financial threats. Student fellows will undertake an archival study of materials from UC Santa Cruz Special Collections and the Department to create an exhibit that narrates the trajectories and significance of this field.

Although mushroom consumption is common and documented in about a quarter of all known primate species, little is known about wild chimpanzees’ and baboons’ use of mushrooms as a staple or fallback food, or about their nutritional value or isotopic profiles. This project’s findings will have significant implications for cutting-edge research in paleoanthropology investigating meat consumption in early human evolution. The student fellow will perform a literature review and analyze approximately 50 mushroom samples. 

This research will focus on uncovering the unintended consequences of higher minimum wages for hospitality and hotel workers in California and offer alternative solutions to the state’s high cost of living. The project will contrast its findings with the defeat of Proposition 32 in November 2024, which would have raised the minimum wage in California to $18. The student fellows will research price changes, employment figures, and the level of automation businesses deploy in response to wage increases.

Cannabis use among young adults is a major public health concern, with frequent use disrupting brain development and conferring risk for poorer academic performance and psychopathology. However, young adults often report using cannabis as a means of relieving stress. This project will aim to identify risk factors for cannabis use.  Students will be trained to collect and edit heart rate variability data, lead participant laboratory sessions, collect and clean electrocardiogram data, and write syntax for proposed analyses.

A common obsessive-compulsive trait is a preoccupation with order and cleanliness, which can cause significant distress. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying this preoccupation is important for informing clinical care. One possible mechanism is visual awareness. The project will use continuous flash suppression (CFS) to fully mask an image and then measure how quickly it re-enters visual awareness. The student fellow will assist in refining the study methodology and then collect and analyze data under the new study design.

This project further the development of the Right Livelihood College as a diverse, dynamic, and intergenerational epistemic community of knowledge co-production and co-mobilization. This project will aim to rebuild the main RLC global website, disseminate the network’s work via weekly updates, reorganize the video archive to be more publicly accessible, and plan online guest lectures with the 2025 Right Livelihood Laureates. The student fellow will also participate in meetings and handle communications and marketing activities. 

Farmworker communities face increasingly dire threats linked to climate change. This project aims to map where vectors of climate vulnerability intersect with the social and rapidly intensifying political vulnerabilities of farmworkers. Students will share Spanish-language resource information through the Campo-Sano map app and liaise with the project team and 12 community-based organizations, their health promoters, and farmworkers.

The project will help us understand how financial vulnerabilities propagate across economies and how shocks are amplified through bank balance sheets and macro-financial linkages, which is important for informing policies that stabilize financial systems and mitigate systemic risk globally. The student fellow will support the project by reviewing relevant literature, working with datasets, and coding to implement and solve/estimate models (using MATLAB and Python).

Cover cropping is one of the most effective strategies to reduce nitrate contamination of groundwater, an environmental justice issue disproportionately impacting rural, farm-working communities in California. However, only 5% of agricultural land is cover-cropped due to economic and biophysical factors, including perceptions of water use. This project examines the effect of cover crops on the soil water balance and nitrate loss to groundwater. The student fellow will assist with data collection, data analysis, pattern identification, and visualizations. 

Peatlands are among the most important ecosystems for Earth’s climate, storing twice as much carbon as forests. However, global assessments and models struggle to accurately incorporate peatlands and their carbon processes because globally integrated datasets are incomplete or lack needed information. This project will fill these shortcomings. The student fellow will support database construction by reviewing primary data sources to ensure completeness and accuracy, complete bibliographic entries, and view data locations on Google Earth to flag spatial errors.

Astroviruses are one of the most common causes of childhood diarrhea, but we understand little about how they replicate inside of host cells and cause disease. The goals of this project are to study the molecular mechanisms of human astrovirus replication in goblet cells to understand how these mechanisms affect health during early childhood development. The student fellow will learn laboratory techniques, including cell culture, virus quantification, and microscopy, as well as how to craft a presentation.

Farmland investors with roots in the financial sector are currently buying up farmland in the Mississippi Delta. This phenomenon poses a threat to Black farmers in the Delta, many of whom already struggle to access farmland in the face of deep inequalities and systemic discrimination. This research will raise awareness of the extent of farmland financialization, informing policies to protect small-scale, Black, and other disadvantaged farmers from dispossession. Students will conduct rigorous public records research on corporate landowning entities and record their findings in a spreadsheet.

By examining the possible causal linkages among share-based compensation, stock buybacks/dividend payouts, and wage stagnation, this project could provide another potential explanation for the slow growth of wages since 1980. Finding evidence for such a causal linkage could have significant policy implications by providing empirical support for policies that limit the corporate use of stock buybacks unless certain labor compensation standards are met. This student fellow will assist with data collection and cleaning. 

Anthropogenic disturbance and land-use change have caused a global decline in biodiversity. Ecological restoration is championed as a method to mitigate these negative impacts. However, it is unclear how habitat restoration affects “ecosystem engineers,” such as ants. This research project analyzes a snapshot of ant communities that have established after ~20 years of tropical forest restoration in southern Costa Rica. Students will work with ant specimens collected from forests restored using active and passive restoration methods, as well as from reference forests.

Chile has been at the forefront of configuring the institutional frameworks and climate-change-related financial operations. Mapping this nexus is essential for understanding the interplay between finance capital, the extraction of ‘green’ metals and minerals, global climate change abatement institutions, and the societal impacts of the ongoing energy transition. Students will help build a shared bibliography, catalogue the various green public and private finance mechanisms used during the 2018-2025 period, and trace the institutional evolution of arrangements supporting carbon markets and climate finance mechanisms.

This project seeks to understand the effects of race, gender, first-generation status, and other factors on environmental behaviors, opinions, and values. Focus groups will help generate insights into how to broaden environmental programming on campus to appeal to a wider range of students and improve retention and engagement. Students will be trained to conduct focus groups, help design script/sprompts, undertake participant outreach and recruitment, implement the focus groups, and assist with data cleaning and preliminary analysis. 

The project aims to understand how inequalities continue to persist in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, despite the existence of new, cheap, and effective biomedical technologies to end it. Despite this, Peru, a country that has hosted numerous clinical trials in support of ending the global epidemic, is experiencing a systematic shortage of antiretroviral therapy. The student will map Peru’s history with HIV/AIDS-related clinical trials and analyze how the literature theorizes social conditions, hierarchies, and inequalities.

K-12 teachers remain unequipped with the racial literacies, resources, and practices needed to develop students as critically engaged civic actors. This project will engage pre-service teachers interested in applying an ethnic studies pedagogical framework in the classroom to co-design research products that communicate teacher learning and pedagogical practices. Fellows will participate in monthly research team meetings, support the organization of team data, and attend six teacher-led inquiry sessions to observe, participate, and write field observation notes.

Beginning 3.3 million years ago, early human ancestors began making stone tools. This project will examine how specific rock types at human evolutionary sites fracture and compare the results with archaeological data from those sites, creating a model of how hominins selected rock types and shapes and how to quantify how these behaviors changed over time. Students will work in the HELEX lab, learn to use equipment, conduct analyses of stone tool assemblages, and communicate these research skills to public audiences.

This project will address intersectional systemic oppression by developing and testing a theoretical coaching framework to dismantle it and advance conceptual mathematics learning. This aims to inform the future development of tools, routines, processes, leadership, and research approaches for mathematics coaches, teachers, and scholars across different contexts, and to provide an immediate positive impact for participants. Students will support data collection, data analysis, audio file transcription, dissemination efforts, and the summer institute

This project will address intersectional systemic oppression by developing and testing a theoretical coaching framework to dismantle it and advance conceptual mathematics learning. This aims to inform the future development of tools, routines, processes, leadership, and research approaches for mathematics coaches, teachers, and scholars across different contexts, and to provide an immediate positive impact for participants. Students will support data collection, data analysis, audio file transcription, dissemination efforts, and the summer institute