Selena Valdez
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has been an engine of social mobility by negotiating high-paying jobs for its workers. But what happens when that social mobility is reserved for men? Nationally, of the 1.7 million full-time longshore workers, only 15.2% are women. Selena’s intention with studying the question, “What are the barriers women face in achieving upward mobility as longshore workers, and how can the ILWU better protect women?”, is to help labor organizers understand the underlying barriers and create solutions to improve women representation and upward mobility […]
Simran Kaur
The ongoing farmer demonstrations in India that erupted in late 2020 in protest of agriculture reforms passed by the Modi administration have become some of the largest seen in modern history. However, agrarian unrest in the Punjab region has been a persistent issue since the partition of India, with external pressures such as debt, water shortage, and expensive inputs forcing its farmers to consider suicide as the only option. Simran will be conducting a meta-analysis of economic research in Punjab to determine policy factors that have contributed to the ongoing […]
Jae Manion
Jae’s project will study how the shift to home and Zoom learning affected educational accessibility for UC Berkeley students with disabilities. She seeks to pinpoint some ways that the intersectionality of womanhood and disability has made this shift different for female-identifying students with disabilities. Jae will also focus on the differing experiences of students with disabilities of the body and those with disabilities of the mind. Jae will conduct two quality of life surveys and a round of interviews that seek to allow students with disabilities to use their own […]
Johnny Smith
The era of mass incarceration is a well-studied product of discriminatory policies and practices. Less emphasized are the cumulative effects of the ‘War on Drugs’ and ‘Tough on Crime’ ideologies among those charged with facilitating and supervising post-release reentry efforts. Addressing this underdeveloped scholarship, Johnny’s research examines the attitudinal consequences of foundational mass incarceration ideologies among community corrections officers, and their effects on client revocation outcomes. By conducting in-depth interviews with probation and parole officers of Sonoma County, California, his qualitative approach will explore variation in supervisory strategies to analyze […]
Desi Carrasco
Contemporary leisure studies research has broadened social and political understandings of leisure, particularly the meanings participants attach towards such activities. Discussions within the field suggest ways in which leisure activities, specifically sports, may promote political development among disempowered groups. Desi’s project and American Studies honors thesis aims to critically examine homeless children’s experiences in sports, specifically experiences of political development through youth sport in the California Bay Area. Through semi-structured virtual interviews, a Critical Race Theory framework will be used to investigate the ways racial identity shapes their sports involvement, […]
Tonatiuh Beltrán
It is now common knowledge that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world. Many of the incarcerated population are parents. As the number of children affected by parental incarceration has risen, so too have the challenges in their everyday lives. Incarceration impacts both parent and child. It is the hardships that the children must endure that are ultimately the collateral consequences of incarceration. Tonatiuh’s research will focus on investigating what resources can best support children of incarcerated parents. She will conduct both surveys and qualitative interviews […]
Hari Srinivasan
Hari wants to draw on the new science of awe to help autistics thrive and grow, rather than be viewed only in terms of deficits. His research seeks to begin an understanding of the role of awe, an emotion shown to have transformative effects, in autism. More specifically, he wants to see how autistics, who are considered neurodiverse (as opposed to the neurotypical or non-autistic population), view and experience awe, and how these dimensions of emotion may diverge from what has been written from a neurotypical lens. His hope is […]
Violet Henderson
Imagine going to bed at night in your neighborhood, and slowly, over weeks, you witness your community being transformed into a scene that resembles a third-world country. Critical research examines the psychological and physical consequences of people living in urban centers where illegal waste dumping is a condition of everyday life. Oakland’s city streets have been overrun with illegally dumped trash. Before 2008, the dumping was confined to the backstreets of low-income neighborhoods of East and West Oakland. Today, middle-income communities are waking up to piles of debris on the […]
Kevin McCarthy
Kevin is committed to researching the experiences of other formerly incarcerated adults who were persecuted under California’s draconian gang sentencing laws. Particularly, he seeks to research the traumatic experiences of people accused of gang affiliation, and whether the court, California Department of Corrections and parole department ever considered their trauma or provided psychological and rehabilitative resources. Kevin will also examine if gang sentencing laws impede access to resources during incarceration and post incarceration, and if this had any effect upon recidivism. To conduct his research, Kevin will travel to Southern […]
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 […]