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2021-2022 Fellows
2021-2022 Fellows
Carm Almonor (Africology and African American Studies)
Graduate Fellow
Carm Almonor is a PhD student in the Department of Africology and African American studies at Temple University. His research focuses on race, education, and the law.
Project Statement My project argues for a cultural nexus in all categories of urban middle school conflict. I utilize personal participant-observer classroom ethnography along with multiple methods, theories and analytical devices from intersecting fields of public policy, cultural studies, law and education, etc. The cultural lens is used to reframe various patterned conflicts, from current debates over broadly termed critical race theory and segregation, to the disproportionate behavioral special education placement of Black boys and the fastest growing “Pushed Out” mistreatment of Black girls. Ultimately, my project surveys alternative cultural solutions from the literature and classroom observations to inform a proposed African American Children’s Learning Style Curriculum, tailored to the empirical contours of the conflict problem and its causes.
Courtney Berne (Geography and Urban Studies)
Graduate Fellow
Courtney Berne is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Her research focuses on human-equine relationships within urban environments as they pertain to racialized mobilities, bodily agencies, and re-imaginings of spatial sovereignty.
Project Statement By integrating ethnography with historical archives, my work seeks to link the history of Philadelphia’s horse drawn streetcar rail lines (1858-1897) to the current community of black horsemen who reside blocks away from an historic Horse Car Depot (1875) in north Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion. I hypothesize that the geographic location of the current stables occupied by the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club (2607-2611 West Fletcher Street) is a remnant of those associated with Philadelphia’s horse drawn streetcar railway system, and therefore an historical legacy that deserves recognition, preservation, and state sanctioned protection. This research is particularly timely in nature due to the already accomplished racialized dispossession of horse-grazing land on West Susquehanna Avenue, which the Riding Club had been using for decades. Current members of the Fletcher Street cowboy community live with the understanding that additional future zoning permits could be posted by the city, rendering their horses unable to remain in a neighborhood they have most likely occupied for over one hundred years (Jones, 2020). My research aims to help tell the broader story of this community to contextualize the unique and invaluable contribution of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club by situating them within an academically supported context while connecting the community to their localized origins.
Nicole Cochran (Sociology)
Graduate Fellow
Nicole Cohran is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Temple University. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, the economy, and multi-level marketing schemes .
Project Statement My project focuses on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) failure to adequately protect consumers, specifically regarding Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) businesses. Using data from interviews with both current and former multi-level marketing participants, my work centers on network marketing companies that target women who are underemployed and seeking work opportunities and financial independence. MLM companies often utilize traditional ideas of gender and labor in order to recruit women, emphasizing one’s ability to work from home, spend time with their children, and set their own schedule. Although multi-level marketing has existed since the 1920s, little literature has documented the challenges of women recruited by these companies. 6.8 million Americans were involved in multi-level marketing in 2019, 74% of which were women, a figure that is projected to rise with the ongoing economic downturn amidst the coronavirus pandemic. The FTC estimates that 99% of network marketing participants lose money. Despite these overwhelming loss rates, FTC guidelines and consumer protection policies attempting to classify multi-level marketing companies as pyramid schemes have repeatedly been met by opposition from powerful lobbying groups.
Nyron Crawford (Assistant Professor, Political Science)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Nyron N. Crawford is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. His teaching and research focus on the racial dynamics of public policy in American politics. He has additional interests in culturally responsive and equitable evaluation of programs designed to promote the well-being of children, families and communities. Professor Crawford received his doctorate in Political Science from The Ohio State University and has held academic appointments at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Project Statement Too few people eligible for clearing of their criminal record take-up the program. In Michigan, Prescott and Star (2019) estimate that only 6 percent of eligible record-bearers petitioned for expunction. Elsewhere, local jurisdictions report similarly low levels of participation in public expungement events. Much of the existing literature emphasizes the ways in which justice-involved individuals, or record-bearers, are socially and economically punished well beyond the penalty imposed by the state. For example, Pager (2003) finds that applicants who had contact with the criminal justice system, particularly Black Americans, were less likely to receive a call-back from potential employers. Advocates recommend criminal record clearance as a policy option to help mitigate these kinds of collateral consequences. Previous research to date suggests expungements can boost employment rates and wages while reducing re-offending (Presscott and Star 2019; Selbin, Mccrary, and Epstein 2017; Schlosberg et al. 2014). Despite this evidence, take-up by eligible individuals remains low. What explain variation in participating in expungement programs? This project explores how administrative burdens produce barriers for record-bearers seeking to clear their criminal record.
Cheryl A. Hyde (Associate Professor, Social Work—College of Public Health)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Cheryl A. Hyde is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work (College of Public Health) at Temple University. Her areas of scholarship include community capacity building and civic engagement, multicultural education, feminist theory and practice, organizational transformation, diversity in human service organizations, social movements and social change, socioeconomic power and privilege, and macro practice ethics.
Johanna Jarcho (Assistant Professor, Psychology)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Johanna Jarcho is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University. She has a joint appointment in the Cognition and Neurosciences Area and the Social Area, for which she is currently Director. Dr. Jarcho’s research bridges the areas of social, developmental, and cognitive neuroscience to study how social processes evolve during adolescence and change across the lifespan.
Project Statement Annual public health costs associated with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (ADRD) are expected to increase from $305 billion to $1 trillion over the next three decades. Common genetic factors, such as being one of the 27% of Americans who carry the APOE e4 allele, are a non-modifiable risk for AD/ADRD that are associated with a 2-22-fold increase in susceptibility. Given the lack of a cure for AD/ADRD, there is a critical public health need to identify modifiable risk factors that may delay or prevent its onset. Initial evidence suggests that psychosocial factors, such as social disconnectedness, chronic rejection, and loneliness, may potentiate the relationship between genetic risk for AD/ADRD and expression of cognitive deficits. As such, psychosocial factors are promising modifiable risk factors to target via interventions. Because almost nothing is known about the mechanisms by which these psychosocial factors may buffer against risk for cognitive decline, progress towards developing effective interventions has been hampered. A critical first step towards developing novel interventions for AD/ADRD is to isolate features of social interactions with the greatest impact on self-reported affective responding and neural function. A multimodal approach is vital given that neural responses combined with APOE e4 carrier status are a better predictor of cognitive decline in older adults than behavioral or self-report measures. I propose to conduct a study in which older adults at high and low risk for AD/ADRD (due to APOE e4 carrier status) undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while rating their affective response to social interactions that vary on a number of dimensions (e.g., identity of interaction partner, domain of feedback, valence of feedback). We will assay distinct temporal phases of the social interaction to pinpoint whether neural response during the anticipation or receipt of feedback varies across high and low risk participants. Finally, because memory of social experiences may influence perceptions of social disconnectedness and loneliness, we will link neural response to subsequent memory for the type of feedback received. Neural and behavioral responses will be related to well-established measures of social disconnectedness, chronic rejection, loneliness, and cognitive function at the time of fMRI and at a 1-year follow-up session.
Rhiannon Jerch (Assistant Professor, Economics)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Rhiannon Jerch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Temple University. Her research uses applied methods in microeconomics to understand the relationship between urban growth dynamics, public goods provision, and environmental regulation.
Project Statement Are man-made investments—like infrastructure—or natural advantages—like ports—more predictive of where economic activity clusters across space? My project will explore whether the initial siting of an urban sewage system is predictive of where economic activity clusters within the city of Philadelphia. I use historic maps of Philadelphia's earliest sewer lines from 1838 to test whether neighborhoods connected to these initial sewer lines are persistently wealthier, attract more businesses, and other major public investments (like public schools) today relative to neighborhoods that received sewer lines several decades later following centralized efforts by the city to expand the sewer system. A second component of this project will explore how early decisions about urban sewerage infrastructure affect health disparities today. I will test whether combined sewer systems—a vestige of nineteenth century engineering pervasive across over 700 US cities in the Northeast—lead to costly illnesses in local populations. On days with heavy rainfall, combined sewer systems can convey untreated sewage waste into local waterways. I will test whether exposure to these outfall events lead to significant health costs and whether such exposure risk is concentrated in economically dis-advantaged areas of a city. Results of this research will inform how urban infrastructure creates path dependence of economic activity and how such infrastructure affects health disparities.
Kevin Loughran (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Kevin Loughran is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University. Dr. Loughran researches urbanization and its intersections with race, culture, knowledge, political economy, and the environment.
Project Statement My research project, “Global Warming, Urban Flooding, and Racial Inequality,” critically examines new public policies and urban plans that aim to combat the social impacts of flooding. The realities of climate change have prompted calls to enact mitigation and adaptation strategies, but policy responses in the US – including newly prominent programs such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which distributes federal funds to local jurisdictions to conduct “buyouts” of flood-prone homes – have been fragmented, and their social consequences are only beginning to come into view. My project investigates the divergent trajectories of emerging urban adaptation efforts with a particular focus on what these policies mean for racial inequality, residential mobility, and the urban future.
Ajima Olaghere (Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Ajima Olaghere is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Her research focuses on advances our understanding of the interrelated nature of communities, place, policing, and reentry. She approaches her work with a strong belief that the act of research—the way researchers conduct themselves and their studies—Is critical to producing meaningful impact on policies, practices, and affected communities. In this regard, her orientation focuses on intentional, meaningful, and upfront community engagement on studies which will invariably affect the way local decision-makers implement quality of life policies at the place level.
Project Statement I am planning to explore and examine whether police mobilization of community members translates to collective efficacy and residential management of places in micro communities. Micro communities are neighborhoods on a small scale or micro level like a street block. Two realities inform this project. First, the evidence about the efficacy of community-oriented policing (COP) is mixed. Second, broader concerns about fair and just policing and democratic calls for reduced and minimal reliance on police services to address residential issues. The decades of community disenfranchisement and marginalization from social, economic, legal, and political resources also informs the purpose of this project. This historical context of places complicates resident-driven innovation and management of solutions for improved quality of life. An understudied reality is at stake here. This reality concerns actualizing a renewed approach to community policing and the extent to which police officers and police departments can harness community capacity. The potential consequence for public policy is a shifting or shifted dynamic of police-community relations. Specifically, the potential for a partnership of mutual aid and support, when activated, between police and communities, as opposed to the status quo: imposition of control, containment, and the singular focus on the reduction of crime, and at the expense of addressing root causes.
Laura A. Orrico (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. Laura A. Orrico is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University. Dr. Orrico uses qualitative and ethnographic methods to better understand everyday experiences of precarity in the urban context.
Project Statement The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruption in urban economies as well as the experience of work, layering onto preexisting vulnerabilities that workers face. Together with Ewa Protasiuk, this project examines the way "flexible" work arrangements, life circumstances, and social position may unevenly produce and distribute “precarity” during and following crisis. We use in-depth interviews with freelancers, artists, and entrepreneurs to explore the way work experiences become linked to additional arenas of life, such as childcare, health, and housing. Furthermore, we consider the development and role of innovative communities and collaborative endeavors that may have been created to fill supportive roles otherwise unmet by any social safety net. Rather than offering an economic snapshot, this qualitative focus on the challenges and opportunities people face, as well as the decisions people make, will better inform comprehensive policy suggestions that extend beyond short-term financial assistance.
Ewa Protasiuk (Sociology)
Research Team Fellow
Ewa Protasiuk is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and a research assistant in the School of Social Work at Temple University. Her research explores precarious and low-wage work, urban sociology, and policy implementation.
Project Statement The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruption in urban economies as well as the experience of work, layering onto preexisting vulnerabilities that workers face. Entrepreneurs as well as the self-employed, while not always thought of as “workers,” are among those affected. Flexibility and autonomy are attractive aspects of entrepreneurship for many people; however, entrepreneurship itself is inherently risky, and the other side of flexibility can be precarity. Additionally, entrepreneurship itself can be a response to limited opportunity within the labor market. In turn, Dr. Laura Orrico and I are conducting a study which explores the experiences of entrepreneurs, the self-employed, and freelancers during the pandemic. We are curious about how they have navigated work throughout the pandemic, impacts on work and life outside of work, potential shifts in the meaning of work, and the interplay of policy in these dynamics. Additionally, we are interested in the role that place, such as the urban context or coworking space, has played in the experience of entrepreneurship and self-employment in uncertain times. Alongside my dissertation research on ongoing changes in the restaurant industry, this research seeks to shed light on work and inequalities in the urban context.
Viviane Sanfelice (Assistant Professor, Economics)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Viviane Sanfelice is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Temple University. Her research lies on the broad field of applied microeconomics. Within this field she studies topics in urban, public, and development economics.
Project Statement Crime imposes monetary and social costs on society. Removing firearms used in the commission of crimes or in illicit possession limits the ability of criminals to reoffend. This project measures whether the seizure of firearms by the police force has an impact on future crimes. Measuring this effect is hard because firearm seizure is by definition positively associated to both crime and policing dynamics, which in turn are correlated with the trajectory of crime rates. The empirical strategy leverages longitudinal data and uses exogenous variation on police allocation within a city to account for endogeneity from time varying confounders. Findings of this project could provide support for red flag laws and help on gun control laws and law enforcement strategies.
Bohui Wang (Sociology)
Graduate Fellow
Bohui Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Temple University. Her research areas are race, immigration, sociology of education and labor market inequality.
Project Statement: My study explores the underlying mechanism of the lower returns to immigrant minorities’ foreign credentials. I investigate whether the human capital framework, which suggests a foreign education is of poorer quality, or the credentialism explanation, which implies that a foreign education has lower status, better explains why a foreign education translates into lower returns in the U.S. labor market.
2020-2021 Fellows
2020-2021 Fellows
Grace Fay Cooper (Anthropology)
Graduate Fellow
Grace Fay Cooper is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and a Graduate Research Assistant at the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. Her research interests include linguistic anthropology, medical anthropology, disability studies, immigration, and health care.
Project Statement My project is an ethnography of the intersections of immigration processes and healthcare policies as they manifest in the everyday experiences of uninsurable LatinX immigrant patients, members of the medical community, and immigration activists in Philadelphia. This research investigates how federal, state, and local policies that increasingly restrict and police the movement of immigrants (particularly those without naturalized citizenship status) also intercedes with medical professionals capacity to provide care for uninsurable LatinX patients in a self-identified “Welcoming City.” My project contributes to policy work, discourse, and debate at the institutional, municipal, state, and federal level by offering a unique, longitudinal, and underrepresented perspective developed over an extended period of observation and participation in lived experiences of the enforcement of immigration policies, processes of immigration, practices of medicine, and communicative networking of care. In collaboration with the Public Policy Lab, my project facilitates collaboration between Temple University and other local partners working to reduce inequity in medicine, redesign systems of access to healthcare, and ratify the sociopolitical position of vulnerable patient populations in Philadelphia.
Thomas P. McKeon (Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Thomas McKeon is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. His research focuses on understanding the effects of environmental exposures on population health.
Project Statement In recent years the legalization of recreational marijuana has expanded across states. This growth may lead to increasing marijuana use and, consequently, increasing marijuana-related substance use disorder. The newness of state-level recreational marijuana legalization (RML) has made nationally representative surveys on cannabis use available for novel analysis in comparing RML and non-RML states. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether the gap, or “unmet need,” between the prevalence of marijuana dependence and marijuana substance use disorder treatment increased following RML. Longitudinal data made publicly available allow for the operationalization of a difference-in-differences methodology to assess an emerging unmet public health need in addressing marijuana substance use disorder.
Jeremy Mennis (Professor, Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. Jeremy Mennis is Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Dr. Mennis’s area of expertise is geographic information systems (GIS) and science and its application to public health, population, and environment.
Project Statement Recreational marijuana legalization (RML) in the U.S. represents a seismic shift in drug policy from previous decades. Of particular public health concern is the impact of RML on marijuana use among adolescents and young adults, which may affect brain development, social functioning, and mental health, and can lead to cannabis use disorder (CUD). Marijuana advertising, the ease of acquiring marijuana, and the public acceptance of marijuana in RML states can serve as triggers for those with CUD that make abstinence from use difficult and enhance the likelihood of relapse. This research investigates whether RML in the U.S. is associated with an increase in youth and young adult readmission to treatment for marijuana. The study focuses on Colorado and Washington, the first U.S. states to enact RML, in late 2012, which thus provide the longest post-RML time period of all U.S. states.
Naida Elena Montes (Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Naida Elena Montes is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Her research interests include environmental justice, community development and the connections between housing and health.
Project Statement Many of Philadelphia’s low-income residents live in neighborhoods often exposed to environmental injustices because of neighborhood disinvestment and social determinants that also result in poor housing quality with potential exposures to toxicities such as led and mold. This research places the home within the discourse of the Environmental Justice Movement, arguing for the housing structure as an essential geography of health directly influenced by socially constructed environmental inequities. Examining the house context as an essential and underlying geography, theoretically positions the home as a critical and intersectional space of health, where the impact of social environmental inequities are experienced individually and interpersonally within. Further examining the intersectionality of housing and stress for lower to middle-income working-class families could provide a lens for understanding power dynamics and the particular forms of structural inequalities and identities that are more salient in certain communities. The research seeks to amplify resident voices around the housing environment as it relates to the discourse of environmental injustices that directly affect human health. As a part of this research, working with Dr. Christina Rosan, we are examining environmental justice in urban settings to support the mobilizing of residents in becoming more active and effective in neighborhood decision-making, particularly around urban planning.
Ariel Natalo-Lifton (History)
Graduate Fellow
Ariel Natalo-Lifton is a PhD. candidate in the Department of History at Temple University. Her research focuses on women in the United States military throughout the twentieth century.
Project Statement As the Vietnam War extended into the 1970s, concerns arose in Washington about the decreased number of men enlisting in the armed services. Conscription kept the ranks full temporarily, but the draft’s end precipitated a crisis. Due to the increased need for humanpower, the military broke with precedent and disbanded its female auxiliary organizations, admitting women as full-fledged members. This project explores the first twenty years of women’s service after integration, beginning in 1972 (the year that the last draft orders were issued) until 1992 (just after the Gulf War) to examine the experiences of American women in uniform and how they affected a gendered military structure. In doing so, it argues that servicewomen were both seen as both “ladies” and “brothers.” It will explore how these contradictory identities affected women’s military experiences.
Christina Rosan (Associate Professor, Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. Christina Rosan is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Dr. Rosan is particularly interested in how we make cities more sustainable and just.
Project Statement Many of Philadelphia’s low-income residents live in neighborhoods that lack park access, playgrounds at school, tree canopy cover, and grocery stores. These same neighborhoods often expose residents to environmental injustices because of poor housing quality with potential lead and mold exposure, inefficient and ineffective heating and cooling in homes, indoor air pollution, litter, illegal dumping, unregulated industrial uses, unmonitored construction sites, vacant buildings, brownfields, broken sidewalks and other pedestrian hazards, and underperforming schools with aging buildings. Some low-income neighborhoods are now also facing the dual challenge of feeling the pressures of gentrification and rising taxes and rents. There is also a need for large investments to maintain and upgrade the City’s aging urban infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods where we anticipate that the effects of urban heat islands and other climate change related environmental challenges will be more extreme. This research seeks to amplify resident voices in urban environmental decision-making, particularly around future land use and climate change adaptation. Purple Air monitors are a low-cost air monitor that can give people more information about their local air quality. As a part of this research, working with the Clean Air Council and the Village of Arts and Humanities, we are examining whether having access to more localized air pollution data and playing a role in data collection makes residents more likely to act with regards to environmental hazards in their neighborhoods. We are interested in whether Digital Storytelling and StoryMaps can be an important mobilizing tool that will help residents become more active and effective in neighborhood decision-making, particularly around urban planning and land use redevelopment decisions.
Michael Sances (Assistant Professor, Political Science)
Fellowship - Faculty Fellow
Dr. Michael Sances is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. Dr. Sances’s research examines the links between electoral institutions and policy outcomes, including in the areas of property taxation, health care, and criminal justice.
Project Statement The United States is the only country that elects its prosecutors. Many claim electoral incentives led past prosecutors to become “tough on crime,” winning convictions at any cost and imposing the harshest sentences possible. More recently, citizens in some cities have used elections to push current and future prosecutors to reduce incarceration. My project investigates the causes and consequences of the recent rise in reformer prosecutors, studying prosecutor elections in the 20 largest jurisdictions. First, I will classify candidates for the office as reformers or not. Second, I will examine the causes of reformist candidates running and winning. Third, I will examine the political consequences of reformist victories, specifically in the form of responses from conservative state and federal officials. Findings will shed light on the connection between political institutions and criminal justice outcomes.
Bryant Simon (Professor, History)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Bryant Simon is Professor in the Department of History and Global Studies at Temple University. Dr. Simon is the author of four books and several edited collections. His work explores the broad and deeply connected histories of food, labor, region, politics, place, and power in the long twentieth century in the United States. He currently serves as the President of the Southern Labor Studies Association and as the co-chair of the Program Committee for the Urban History Association.
Project Statement My research project, “Protected Spaces: The Rise and Fall of the Public Bathroom in the United States,” looks at the long history of the public bathroom beginning in the Progressive Era and ending with fights over trans existences to these places in recent years. It is a story of technology and the built environment, boundary making and activism, but above all, it is about policy, about how policy turns individual bodies into steadfast categories and abstract space into sites of citizenship and how these dynamics change over time.
Graduate Fellow
Eva Weiss is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Temple University. Her research centers on the delocalization and privatization of immigration governance and the lived experiences of people with nonimmigrant status, such as international students and workers.
Project Statement My research examines the nonimmigrant to immigrant adjustment process, a complex legal rite of passage in which non-state actors craft, administer, and enact local policies and narratives that render legal, national citizenship accessible to individuals otherwise prohibited from immigrating. This ethnography documents how shifts in federal immigration regulation shape how street-level bureaucrats interpret the malleability of the law to develop formal and informal policies to maximize international students' work authorization periods and employment opportunities to ultimately adjudicate national citizenship. Examination of these processes sheds light on the social, legal, and market incorporation of noncitizens and troubles the binary between legality and illegality.
Celeste Winston (Assistant Professor, Geography and Urban Studies)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Celeste Winston is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Dr. Winston’s research focuses on the social and environmental impacts of prisons in their immediate contexts and the interconnected criminal justice policies and practices that shape the places where incarcerated people come from.
Project Statement Commonly referred to as the "prison nation," the United States confines people at a higher rate than any other country in the world. Most incarcerated people come from cities and are held in state prisons, many of which are located in rural areas where prisons are touted as a growth industry. Research has shown, however, that prisons routinely fail to deliver economic benefits promised to rural towns such as employment growth, increased retail sales, and increased incomes. Prisons also expose people confined within them and living in their surroundings to a multitude of health and social issues. My research project will demonstrate the harmful impacts of the Pennsylvania State Prison system on rural and urban landscapes and populations using digital maps, photographs, experiential narratives, and analysis of criminal justice policies. My project seeks to advance policymaking focused on reducing and ending mass incarceration in the United States through an urban-rural continuum approach.
2019-2020 Fellows
2019-2020 Fellows
James Bachmeier (Associate Professor, Sociology)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. James D. Bachmeier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University. A sociologist and demographer, Dr. Bachmeier’s research focuses on international migration and patterns of social and economic integration of immigrants in western democracies, especially the United States.
Project Statement As a PPL fellow, I am working on developing a new set of demographic estimates of the unauthorized foreign-born population in the United States. Current research on the quantification of this population is plagued by a paucity of empirical data. These estimates will rely on publicly available Census survey data and commonly used statistical methods, and this research aims to open new avenues for social science and policy research to produce important knowledge about the size, characteristics, and economic position of the unauthorized immigrant population. Such research plays a vital role in informing ongoing academic and policy debates about the nation’s immigration dynamics and the future of America’s immigration policy.
Elise Chor (Assistant Professor, Political Science)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Elise Chor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. Dr. Chor’s research draws on economic and developmental perspectives to consider the interactions among families, government, and the early childhood education market.
Project Statement Preschool programs targeted towards low-income children can be effective at narrowing vast socioeconomic disparities seen in children’s cognitive, socioemotional, and executive functioning skills at kindergarten entry. Head Start is the targeted public preschool program that serves the greatest number of children in the U.S. with a single program model. Its ability to narrow socioeconomic achievement gaps is limited by wide variation in effectiveness across centers though, which may be explained by variability in per-pupil funding. School finance may have great consequences for preschool – and in particular Head Start – effectiveness as a range of structural and process quality features of the preschool classroom affect children’s development and are expensive to provide. This project investigates the influence of preschool finance policy in one of the first known studies on this subject, measuring the relationships among Head Start per-pupil funding, program quality, and child development. Findings will have implications for enhancing preschool effectiveness for young children through policy and practice in order to promote kindergarten readiness and expand opportunity through adulthood.
Stephen Dickinson (Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Stephen Dickinson is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. His research focuses on the effects of urban parks and other open space on marginalized populations, particularly as they relate to neighborhood change.
Project Statement Over the past decade, increasing academic and political attention has been paid to the role that greening plays in neighborhood change and displacement in urban environments. In order to attract new residents and increased investment, cities have been paying more attention to their ecosystem services and ensuring that their cities have enough clean parks and other green spaces for their (new) residents to enjoy while touting these features positive impacts on crime rates and health outcomes. Residents in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification have become increasingly wary of efforts by municipal governments, non-profits, and private entities calling for increased numbers and higher quality green spaces. This purpose of this research is to investigate the directionality and drivers of greening and neighborhood change, particularly those of local parks, to determine whether increased greening efforts lead to gentrification or vice versa. Particularly, the study will seek to disentangle urban greening efforts through park development and maintenance from other political, economic, and social drivers of gentrification. I will examine Philadelphia as a site to understand the ways in which greening either is or is not correlated to gentrification because Philadelphia is undergoing a resurgence of investment into parks, while simultaneously dealing with a resurgence of development investment after a long historical period of decline. I will examine the history of park development and maintenance in Philadelphia in order to understand how we might prevent green gentrification moving forward. This fellowship project will serve as preliminary research for my dissertation.
Deb Drabick (Associate Professor, Psychology)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. Deborah A.G. Drabick is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at Temple University. Dr. Drabick’s research considers conduct problems among youth using a developmental psychopathology perspective, and includes such areas as risk and resilience, comorbidity, contextual influences, prevention, and intervention.
Project Statement Evidence-based practice in psychology, which is the integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences, has garnered increased attention in the context of youth mental health interventions. Many interventions have shown efficacy in research settings; however, their effectiveness in community-based settings is mixed and evidence-based practices are infrequently used in community settings. This issue is particularly problematic among low income, urban youth. These youth are at risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties likely stemming from contextual circumstances (e.g., physical and psychosocial stressors, deviant peer groups, violence), which furthermore affect youth’s abilities to regulate emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. Accordingly, early intervention, as well as determining for whom interventions work, is an efficient, cost-effective way of intervening with contextually disadvantaged youth prior to the worsening of psychological symptoms and/or development of additional psychosocial difficulties. Our research project involves providing an adapted preventive intervention for youth behavior problems among fourth grade children who reside in low income, urban environments. Children participate in neurodevelopmental and contextual assessments prior to and after their participation in a group-based, cognitive-behavioral intervention that addresses anger management, problem solving, and coping skills. We collaborate with key stakeholders (e.g., school staff, families) in our implementation of the program. We are invested in disseminating our work in an effective way to inform policy and address calls in the field for translational research, as well as adaptations and improved implementation of evidence-based interventions among underserved, diverse youth.
Ethan Fried (Political Science)
Graduate Fellow
Ethan Fried is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. He specializes in political socialization and civic engagement, and enjoys teaching his students that learning statistics is both totally possible and totally fun.
Project Statement My dissertation project focuses on the role that formal civics education plays in the political socialization of adolescents. Although many factors influence how young people learn about politics - including family, media, and geographic environment - the effects of civic education remain an important but understudied part of political science literature. Understanding how civic educators and their classroom environments impact student political knowledge and interest in political and civic activity is of vital importance to scholars and public policymakers who seek to maximize the impact of civics-oriented curricula and imbue future generations with the skills and knowledge necessary for healthy democratic activity. A central part of the project is a survey instrument intended for distribution among Philadelphia School District high school civic educators and their students. This survey investigates the relationship between teacher quality, the learning environment, and key political outcomes for adolescents.
Dirk Kinsey (Geography and Urban Studies)
Graduate Fellow
Dirk Kinsey is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. His work is centered on the application of feminist and critical race approaches to understanding urban social and political systems, with a special emphasis on incarceration, health and wellness.
Project Statement Dirk’s current research examines the growth of community supervision outside of prison settings, and the institutions, policies and practices that shape these systems. This project seeks to understand the geographies of community supervision in Philadelphia, including the role of community supervision in producing and reinforcing specific spatial configurations at the urban scale and how these spatial configurations are experienced by those under supervision. In addition, this project focuses on health inequities experienced by supervised populations and the specific dimensions of supervision that impact individual and community health.
Lindsay Myerberg (Psychology)
Research Team Fellow
Lindsay Myerberg is a PhD candidate in Psychology at Temple University. Her research interests include individual and contextual risk and resilience factors associated with youth adjustment across developmental periods.
Project Statement Ms. Myerberg’s project is an empirical evaluation of a manualized cognitive-behavioral intervention, the Coping Power Program, which has proven effective for treating conduct problems among low income, ethnic minority youth, but has received less attention in urban, contextually disadvantaged populations. Coping Power is administered by advanced Clinical Psychology graduate students among fourth grade students at a local elementary school. This 24-session intervention is designed to teach anger management, review non-aggressive ways to interact with others, practice skills to resist peer pressure, learn perspective-taking skills and social problem-solving techniques, and make improvements toward social goals. Neurodevelopmental and psychosocial assessments are conducted before and after the intervention. Analyses will use a variable-centered approach to identify moderators of treatment outcome, as well as a person-centered approach to identify neurodevelopmental profiles and determine whether these profiles may be associated with differential treatment outcomes. Given the public health significance of youth behavior problems as well as the dearth of effective interventions among underserved and contextually disadvantaged groups, improved matching of youth to interventions could facilitate the provision of more efficacious and cost-effective dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practice in the community. Additionally, findings may help to identify types of programs in which policymakers should invest, such as programs for children who are at risk but may not meet diagnostic criteria for a disorder, or school-based aggression prevention programs in low-income, urban communities.
Hamil Pearsall (Associate Professor, Geography and Urban Studies)
Research Team Fellow
Dr. Hamil Pearsall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Dr. Pearsall’s research examines the social and environmental justice dimensions of urban sustainability.
Project Statement Dr. Pearsall and Stephen Dickinson, PhD student in Geography and Urban Studies, will work together on a Research Team to synthesize the benefits and costs of urban public spaces in North American cities. Urban public space impacts many aspects of a city’s quality of life, including sense of community, social capital, economic and community development, environmental quality, and health. While urban public space has received much attention in scholarly and policy circles, our knowledge of public space requires renewed inquiry. The nature of public space has changed over time with different economic and political dynamics and priorities. There are new models of urban space provision and management that have led towards increasing privatization of public spaces that impacts their provision, accessibility, and use. Additionally, we demand more of our public spaces, expecting them to revitalize neighborhoods, reduce crime, redress longstanding socio-economic and racial inequalities, catalyze economic development, address urban environmental issues like stormwater runoff, and public health concerns like obesity. Our project will focus on two aspects of urban public spaces: 1) the development, management and maintenance of urban public spaces, and 2) approaches to public space evaluation. During the fellowship period we will develop manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals, and our synthesis will contribute to understandings of urban public space by evaluating the state of the field and uncovering key gaps in our knowledge.
Caterina Roman (Associate Professor, Criminal Justice)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. Caterina Roman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Dr. Roman has been interested in applied research in the area of violence prevention and intervention since her undergraduate internship working in a maximum-security prison in Richmond, Virginia.
Project Statement Dr. Roman’s Fellowship project is examining the contextual, personal, and social network factors associated with the help-seeking paths of men and women (ages 18-40) from Philadelphia who have been victims of street violence. During the fellowship period, she will extend her work to understand the longer-term criminal justice and health consequences of violent injury among this population, and how the variety of help-seeking paths may be associated with continued offending and the desire for retribution, trauma and more distal health and mental health outcomes. The intent is to produce findings that can help expand the reach of victim and health services and specifically reduce barriers for the underserved.
Molly Scott (Psychology)
Graduate Fellow
Molly Scott is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Temple University. Her research interests include early childhood, vocabulary development, and learning through play.
Project Statement Research demonstrates that vocabulary knowledge is essential for children’s academic success. Unfortunately, before children reach formal schooling there is already a significant gap in word knowledge between children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and their higher SES peers. Despite efforts to redress this gap, previous interventions have made little progress. Researchers have recently suggested that the translation of knowledge from the science of word learning to literacy research may be one way to increase the effectiveness of vocabulary instruction. The current project is a vocabulary intervention for Head Start students that is informed by various principles stemming from the science of word learning. The study will compare this new theoretical approach to the method in which interventions are typically implemented in the classroom.
David Smith (Assistant Professor, Psychology)
Faculty Fellow
Dr. David Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University. Dr. Smith leads the Neuroeconomics Laboratory where his work is broadly focused on characterizing the neural mechanisms that shape our decisions for social and economic incentives.
Project Statement Dr. Smith’s core project within the Public Policy Lab seeks to extend work examining how social decisions change across the lifespan. One of the long-term goals of this line of research is to help older adults make better decisions and avoid financial exploitation. Another goal of this line of research is to understand the mechanisms that predict risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (ADRD).
Cody Spence (Sociology)
Research Team Fellow
Cody Spence researches international migration and immigration policy in the United States, focusing on the use of federal survey data to estimate the size and characteristics of the foreign born population.
Project Statement Over the past two decades, in the absence of comprehensive federal immigration reform and during the same time that the undocumented population reached its historic peak in 2007, some states and smaller localities began to assert control over immigration law policing. The shift in authority from federal to state and local levels has led to variation in interior immigration enforcement intensity across the country and over time. My research project aims to evaluate the effects of some of the most punitive state-level immigration policies in two ways. First, I will utilize an innovative statistical technique to estimate the size of undocumented immigrant populations before and after policy implementations. Second, I will assess potential consequences of increased immigration enforcement to federal survey data quality. Understanding the effects of recent shifts in immigration enforcement will be vital as legislators continue debate over federal immigration policy reform.
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