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 […]
Matthew Grigorieff
In the spring of 2009, UC Berkeley (UCB) offered 98 courses in their Physical Education Department– none designed for disabled students. Forty years after UCB helped forge a civil rights movement for people with disabilities, neither Berkeley nor any UC has a plan or program for addressing the fitness needs of the disabled. Matthew hopes to address that deficiency. He will create and evaluate a pilot program to create boxing opportunities for the disabled, and travel to learn the successes and limitations of several other California adaptive fitness programs, creating […]
Ernest Honya
Susu is a traditional microfinance scheme in Ghana that has been ignored by commercial banks and microfinance institutions in the country. Ernest’s research asks why Ghana does not have an institutionally acceptable microfinance model that is specifically designed to fit the socio-economic and cultural needs of Ghanaians. His project will first investigate the susu model to find out what makes it institutionally unacceptable. Second, Ernest will survey the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of Wale and Ewe communities in northern and southern Ghana respectively. Ernest’s goal is to propose a new […]
Niku T’arhechu T’arhesi
The vintage anthropological enterprise typically derived from the researchers gaze on a non-Western society, in turn, producing the simultaneous exoticism and denigration of the so-called primitive. An anthropological production of knowledge relied on the holistic gathering of dataa process many times resulting in the researcher’s, the museum’s, or the universitys claim to ownership of material and immaterial cultural heritage. Contemporary anthropologists seek to exorcise the vintage specter by engaging in collaborative repatriation projects with indigenous communities. One such collaborative repatriation project developed when the Warao indigenous inhabitants of Mariusa, Venezuela […]
Morty Diamond
Morty’s research begins by asking how access to public health care has changed social conditions for the transgender community in San Francisco within the last 10 years. He will explore how current medical and mental health access challenges affect the physical, social and mental gender transition of transgender individuals. Beyond the importance of this research study as means of understanding the historical transgender community in San Francisco, the goal of this study is to record cultural and social differences within a nontraditionally gendered minority group. Morty will research policy changes, […]
Joseph Root
Since the onset of the financial crisis, many European countries have seen the financial base of their economies dissipate. Fueled largely by high levels of debt and market malaise, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and others have been forced to implement excruciating austerity measures to prevent financial collapse. Despite the ubiquity of bond markets, academic economists continue to speculate about the various forces that govern the fluctuation in market evaluation of risk. Joseph’s research will attempt to clarify the role that market sentiment plays in determining interest rates by looking at data […]
Nicholas Calderon
Nicholas Calderon’s project, Campesinos Voice the Discourse of Fair Trade, will take place in the Altiplano region of Bolivia, where he will investigate the degree to which Fairtrades purported benefits are met. He will examine the extent of grower knowledge regarding Fairtrade entitlements, and their use of the Fairtrade social premium. His methods will combine an examination of discourses about the benefits of Fairtrade, digitally interactive participant observation, and interviews conducted with small-scale growers (those producing less than 2 hectares). The significance of this research is to enlarge the consumers […]
Sandra Núñez Portocarrero
Vast academic attention characterized by a search for causality and consequences has been given to the internal conflict in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. However, little attention has been given to women, the main victims of the conflict. Seeking to understand the redefinition of gender roles after the internal conflict, Sandra will travel to Ayacucho, a province in the Peruvian Andes considered the region most affected by the conflict. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews as her methods, Sandra will examine what roles women had to take on in […]
Godwin (Ife) Aka
Haas Scholar Program: The struggle of the Niger Delta people has been widely documented. The years of oil spills, unequal distribution of oil wealth, and marginalization of the people of this region both by the Nigerian state and the multinational oil companies, is known very well to those interested in this area. Because of the documentation of these conditions, academics who study this region often attribute the uprising that have emerged in the Niger Delta to some form of deprivation without studying these movements. My research explores why the Ogoni […]
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 […]