Benjamin Chabot-Hanowell

Benjamin’s research interests range broadly from migration and remittance behaviors in the Caribbean, to the rise and fall of ancient Mayan polities. His current collaborative projects include: an empirical critique of fluctuating asymmetry studies, which uses performance data from professional athletes (collaborator: Ben Trumble, UW Anthropology, CSDE); an application of economic bargaining theory to the geographic distribution of Mayan polity emergence and collapse (collaborator: Lisa Lucero, Urbana-Champaign Anthropology); developing agent-based and analytical models of emergent social inequality in small scale societies (collaborator: Eric Smith, UW Anthropology, CSDE); and extending economic bargaining models to address genetic relatedness effects and intergenerational transfers (collaborator: Donna Leonetti, UW Anthropology, CSDE). Benjamin is also planning a year-long dissertation field project on the behavioral ecology of migration, remittances, and kinship in rural Dominica, an East Caribbean island. His methodological interests encompass simulation and analytical modeling, social network modeling and analysis, mixed methods field research, and clear communication of scientific results to the public. A synthesis of economic, evolutionary, and ecological approaches is the theoretical thread running through Benjamin’s research. His pursuits are bereft without the support, inspiration, and love of his wife Malyse and daughter Alice.

DEPT : Anthropology
OFFICE : 431 Denny Hall
EMAIL : click here
WEB : http://www.hanowell.info/
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Mandy Ching

Mandy’s main interests currently involve the intersection of parental investment, socioeconomic status and the Demographic Transition. More broadly, she is interested in human behavioral ecology and human reproductive ecology. Her current research project examines the effects of socioeconomic status and the sex of one’s children in determining total family size in the United States using data from the NLSY79.

Before attending UW, she graduated from Texas A&M University in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. In addition to being a CSDE fellow, she is also a second year IPEM fellow in the biocultural anthropology department at UW.

DEPT : Anthropology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Joseph Dieleman

Joe is a second year graduate student in Economics of University of Washington. His primary academic interests are both the micro and macro issues surrounding development and transition economies. More specifically related to CSDE he is interested in determinants of immigration, demographics associated with development and growth, the spatial components related population economics, and labor markets within transition economies. Prior to being in Seattle, Joe worked and lived in Michigan and Honduras.

DEPT : Economics
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Amanda Guyton

Amanda is a PhD student in biocultural anthropology. She is interested in the ways in which migration affects health both within and between generations. Her interests also include fetal/developmental origins of disease, human reproductive endocrinology and a mixed methods approach.

DEPT : Biocultural Anthropology
OFFICE : 439 Denny Hall
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Tara Hayes

Tara is a first-year graduate student in Anthropology. Her research interests include migration, stress, chronic disease, biomarkers and evolutionary medicine, especially as applied to public and global health. She plans to use the tools of anthropology, demography and epidemiology to address issues of health inequality and generate a better understanding of the social determinants of those imbalances. Before coming to the UW Tara worked as a journalist, with a writing emphasis on women’s health.

DEPT : Anthropology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Mary King

Mary is a first-year graduate student in biocultural anthropology. Her research interests include human behavioral ecology and economic anthropology. Previously, she worked on a project reconstructing life histories of 19th century migrants to the American frontier. In the future, she is interested in continuing to look at aspects of socioeconomic mobility and fertility in migrants. Historical studies provide a unique opportunity to reconstruct demographic patterns over multiple generations within an evolutionary and ecological framework.

DEPT : Anthropology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Momoe Makino

My research interest lies in the fields of Labor Economics, Population Economics, and Health Economics. I am particularly interested in female bargaining power and intra household resource allocation and its impacts. Another specific interest is the determinants of individuals’ health outcomes such as health augmenting behaviors. Currently, I am working on the determinants of dowries in India, the relationship between the amount of dowries and female bargaining power and its impacts on children’s health status.

DEPT : Economics
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Yu-hsuan Su

Yu-hsuan is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics. Her research interests focus on economic issues in developing countries, including poverty, labor, population, labor, population, trade, financial institutions and in particular, microfinance. Before coming to the University of Washington, Yu-hsuan worked for the Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission, the financial regulatory body of Taiwan, and completed her MA in International and Development Economics at Yale University. During her time at Yale, she also visited Shanghai and Beijing, China to work on a Chinese economic development project as a research assistant.

DEPT : Economics
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2009-2010

Elizabeth Ackert

Liz’s research interests focus on the intersection of immigration and social stratification. Before beginning her graduate study at the University of Washington, she completed a Master’s degree in Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her Master’s thesis examined the evolution of immigrant education policy in Spain, a relatively new country of immigration. Currently, she is working towards a Master’s thesis in Sociology. Her current research examines the implications of the recent geographic diversification of immigrant settlement in the United States for the study of immigrant incorporation. Specifically, she hopes to identify how the process of immigrant incorporation in “new destinations” of immigrant settlement in the U.S. converges or diverges with processes of immigrant incorporation in traditional communities of settlement.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Mark Anderson

I am a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics and my research is in the areas of development economics and the economics of crime. Currently, I am researching issues regarding household susceptibility to victimization in developing countries and the impact of victimization on demographic outcomes. For my studies, I have been using data from household surveys in South Africa and Guatemala. In the future, I would like to extend my research to study the collective and private provision of public goods, such as protection from criminals, at the village and community-level.

Mark's first year as a CSDE Fellow was 2008-09. He was awarded a CSDE Traineeship for 2009-10, funded by NICHD.

DEPT : Economics
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2008-09

Mike Babb

Mr. Babb is currently a second year graduate student in geography whose main interests are populations, economics, and geographic information systems; in particular, demography and segregation. His current work focuses on the spatial distribution of populations, how populations are measured, and imputation rates of demographic data in the US census. This research is using 2000 US census data at multiple scales to look at census non-response and the ramifications of non-response. Additionally, he is working on a project examining historical income inequality in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Babb has also served in a professional capacity at several Seattle based consulting firms, most recently at Community Attributes, and provided contract support to Microsoft on the Virtual Earth project.

DEPT : Geography
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Sabrina Bonaparte

Sabrina’s research interests include fertility and contraceptive use, educational attainment, and urbanization and migration in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia. Her Master’s thesis examines the effects of modernization on the determinants of contraceptive use in Indonesia from 1976-1993, using the Indonesian Family Life Survey and the Indonesian Fertility Survey (from the WFS). Specifically, she tests whether factors related to modernization, such as female educational composition, explain the increase in the contraceptive use rates over the 20-year time period, and finds that these factors only explain a fraction of the percentage. Other societal factors, and Indonesia’s family planning program, in particular, is the primary reason for the rapid rise in contraceptive use.

Prior to entering the Sociology Department, Sabrina earned an MA in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, where she studied Indonesian music and culture. The knowledge she obtained by working closely with a Balinese master musician and studying in Indonesia largely informs the quantitative research she conducts as a demographer.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Phyllis Fletcher

I'm a Master's student in the Department of Communication, and a reporter for KUOW Public Radio--a member station of National Public Radio and a service of the UW. I joined the CSDE Fellowship program to learn how to analyze demographic data, and to incorporate that knowledge into my reporting and my thesis. I have studied African American history, urban history, sociology, and photography to support my thesis, which will be a radio documentary.

DEPT : Communication
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Amy Fuhrman

Amy’s research interests include community and urban sociology, social inequality, poverty, and spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems. Her master’s thesis studies the relationships between family type, residential segregation, and living in disadvantaged neighborhoods for families in Seattle and the surrounding urban area. Additionally, she works on the Community Vitality Project with Rachel Kleit, exploring key ways to reduce poverty in communities that vary by urban-rural location, in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, and with regard to the local economic environment.

DEPT : Sociology
OFFICE : Condon 223D
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

David Hsu

DEPT : Urban Planning
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Molly Jenkins

My academic interests include study of the family, aging, global health, inequality, and mixed methods. For my MA thesis, I examined the reciprocal support systems between young adults and their parents in determining expectations of future parental caretaking. I am currently part of a research team working on a cross-national comparison of U.S. and Canadian middle-income families and their financial stability, using mixed methods. In the future, I hope to explore intergenerational wealth flows and caretaking among families residing in this country as well as others.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Jennifer Laird

Jenn is a first-year graduate student in Sociology. Her research interests include demography and stratification. She is currently working with Jake Rosenfeld on a project that examines the relationship between inequality and voter behavior. Jenn is also working with Stew Tolnay on research related to the Great Migration and lynching in the American South. Before coming to UW, Jenn was the Associate Director of the NSF ADVANCE program for women scientists at Columbia University.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Katrina Leupp

Katrina's research interests include the family, stratification, gender roles, and poverty. She is particularly interested in how households manage the competing demands of employment and family care. Her MA thesis examines the impact of family finances, identity, and cultural ideas about mothering on women's return to employment after childbirth.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Kerry MacQuarrie

Kerry's research interests include fertility, family demography, gender and reproductive health in low-income countries. She is particularly interested in developing and applying mixed methods and life course approaches to the study of transitions to adulthood, early marriage and childbearing, household and community influences on contraceptive and abortion decision-making, HIV stigma, and male participation in reproductive health.

Her master's thesis examines the determinants of women's empowerment upon marriage and the family formation factors that influence variations in empowerment over the life course in a North Central state of India. Other work explores the role of son preference and women's agency in timing of pregnancies, lifetime measures of unmet need for fertility regulation, and spousal and intergenerational support and barriers to young women's achievement of non-normative life aspirations.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Cara Margherio

Cara’s research interests include fertility, reproductive healthcare, methods and feminist theory. Her current project analyzes statistical definitions of stalling fertility declines. Specifically, she examines the relationship between fertility and HIV/AIDS in rural Agincourt, South Africa. She is also interested in applying feminist postcolonial theory to a critique of demographic methodology.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Greg Matthews

My research interests include morbidity and mortality, social inequality, public health, global health, and methods. My master's thesis studies the implications of the prison expansion for race inequalities in health in the United States, focusing on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. I am currently working on projects with Sam Clark and Adrian Raftery that include modeling mortality and AIDS in developing countries with data from demographic surveillance sites, and probabilistic projections of populations using the Bayesian melding approach. Before entering graduate school I worked at Child Trends in Washington, DC, with projects on fatherhood, marriage, evaluations of afterschool and early childhood programs, and survey design. I recently conducted a brief analysis of inequalities in access to health care and health outcomes across demographic groups of children in Washington state using National Survey of Children's Health data.

DEPT : Sociology
OFFICE : Raitt 218G
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2008-09

Lori Miller

Lori is a second year Ph.D. student in the School of Nursing. Overall, her research interests are in examining the effects of school health policy on child health behaviors and/or outcomes. She is specifically interested in examining the impact of school physical activity policy on childhood overweight/obesity prevalence in school-aged children exposed to ‘obesogenic’ or ‘toxic’ school environments.

DEPT : School of Nursing
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Jongjit Rittirong

My research interests are the elderly, health care services, longitudinal study, and research methodology, especially spatial analysis. Before studying at the University of Washington, I worked for the Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University in Thailand. I developed a database system for a longitudinal project, Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System (KDSS). Using the KDSS dataset for my Master thesis, I focused on the elderly and examined geographical factors and their effects on the rate of health care accessibility. The effects were compared between urban and rural areas in order to locate the area needing supplemental health care services.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

David Sharrow

Dave's interests include ecology, stratification, residential segregation and inequality in health and mortality. His previous research includes a study of the spatial location of banks and payday lenders in King County, Washington. He currently works with Sam Clark and Adrian Raftery in the probabilistic population projection group using parametric methods to model HIV/AIDS-related mortality in Africa.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Emi Tamaki

Emi's research interests include immigration, fertility, social change, comparative sociology, and research methodology. Her current project explores the effect of globalization on movements of people. Specifically, she examines the determinants and consequences of immigrants' continued ties with their countries of origin. She also compares the different mechanisms of home country engagement among Latino and Asian Americans.

DEPT : Sociology
OFFICE : Raitt 218G
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : Shanahan Endowment
START YEAR : 2008-09

Matthew Townley

Matt’s research interests generally concern how slow, sea changes in population composition are intertwined with cultural and economic outcomes. Before coming to the University of Washington, Matt finished an MS in Geography at Texas State University in which he examined the cultural construction of health and fitness as a process of subject formation among very low fertility populations. His current interests continue with the theme of very low fertility populations and how they normatively construct the ideals of urban life in post-transition societies.

DEPT : Geography
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : CSDE
START YEAR : 2008-09

Ben Trumble

Ben is a third year graduate student in Biocultural Anthropology. He is interested in using interdisciplinary biodemograpic approaches to study men’s health; combining aspects of reproductive endocrinology and human behavioral ecology. His research focuses on the relationship between testosterone and immune function, and the implications this has for male life histories. He is currently developing a population level testosterone assay designed to withstand rigorous field conditions. His other research interests include risk taking behavior, costly signaling, variations in sex-ratio at birth, and the development of population level biomarker tests.

DEPT : Anthropology
OFFICE : 439 Denny Hall and 218G Raitt Hall
EMAIL : click here
WEB : http://students.washington.edu/btrumble/index.shtml
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2008-09

Eric Waithaka

Eric’s scholarly interest broadly stated revolves around young adults’ transition into adulthood both in the U.S. in and Sub-Saharan African. He is interested in the ways in which young adults (18-34 years) go about building a variety of assets (including wealth). Specifically, his research focuses on how structural factors and individual human agency shapes life transitions for many young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. His current research projects include: an examination of the mechanisms through which young adults desist or persist in their substance use and crime involvement. He is also conducting exploratory research on how young adults’ housing and living situations influence their thoughts and actions about their “possible future” in issues such as obtaining an education, working, operating a business and owing a home.

Eric's first year as a CSDE Fellow was 2008-09. He was awarded a CSDE Traineeship for 2009-10, funded by the Shanahan Endowment.

DEPT : School of Social Work
OFFICE : 218F Raitt
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : Shanahan Endowment
START YEAR : 2008-09

Brian Houle

While pursuing his Master of Public Health degree at Boston University, Brian worked for a behavioral health science company researching and designing technology-based interventions for prescription drug abusers. During his studies, he also worked with a team of medical professionals to improve health systems delivery in the rural Philippines. Afterwards, he completed a US Department of Energy fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His work there largely consisted of developing systematic reviews and meta-analyses of obesity interventions for the Community Guide to Preventive Services. Presently, Brian is a CSDE fellow in sociology. His interests include policy analyses of health disparities in marginalized populations, and modeling the emergence of complex social phenomena.

DEPT : Sociology
OFFICE : Raitt 218F
EMAIL : click here
WEB : https://students.washington.edu/bhoule/wordpress/
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2007-08

Tricia Ruiz

Tricia's research interests focus on the relationship between demography, housing and school quality in the U.S. During this first year in the Geography Ph.D. program, her work synthesizes ideas from spatial demography, political geography and the history of education to construct a theoretical framework for her research. Earlier this year, for her thesis, Tricia merged data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data with Census data tabulated at the district level to model the relationship between school segregation and residential segregation.

In a recent project with Suzanne Withers (UW Geography) and William A.V. Clark (UCLA Geography), they have used data from the Census and PUMS (2000) to study the effects of housing affordability on the size, direction and demography of inter-metropolitan migration. This work has resulted in a paper which has been invited to be part of a special issue in the journal Population, Space and Place. Currently, the team is extending this analysis to examine Latino migration and housing status, and to consider what these results might suggest for Latino assimilation within the housing market. Also underway is a collaborative project with Mark Ellis (UW Geography) focusing on the use of scale in measuring school quality in the U.S.

DEPT : Geography
OFFICE : Raitt 218F
EMAIL : click here
WEB : http://students.washington.edu/truiz/
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2007-08

Nalina Varanasi

My research interests lie in the areas of Economics of the Family and Development Economics. I am interested in working on issues related to household decision making and its impact on demographic outcomes. Currently, I am working on developing a measure for female bargaining power within households and studying its impact on fertility using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). I would also like to research the impact of changes in household structure on intra-household allocation in low-income groups.

DEPT : Economics
OFFICE : Raitt 218F
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : Shanahan Endowment
START YEAR : 2007-08

Suzanne Eichenlaub

As a sociology graduate student, my major area of study is demography. My research interests include race and ethnicity, stratification, inequality and health disparities. My master's thesis explores the relationship between income inequality and health. Additionally, I work with Stewart Tolnay on a project that investigates the migration of African-Americans to the western United States.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : William and Flora Hewlett Foundation /Shanahan Endowment
START YEAR : 2006-07

Anna McCall-Taylor

My focus is on women's experiences in paid labor and on the unique healthcare and health insurance systems of the United States. I am interested in how geography, gender, and economic structures influence populations' pursuit and maintenance of health insurance coverage, and how disparities in access to health insurance affect population health.

DEPT : Geography
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : NICHD
START YEAR : 2005-06

Jerusha Achterberg

Jerusha Achterberg received her Masters in 2006 after her research project on the "Distribution and spread of tuberculosis within a generalized population." She is currently working at the University of Washington as a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Anthropology.

Ratna Maya Magarati

I am a PhD candidate in sociology, writing my dissertation on 'Bilingualism in the US: language loss, maintenance and consequences'. My major is demography and minor is quantitative methods. I am expecting to complete my dissertation this summer.

My active research works include (in addition to my dissertation) infant mortality in Vietnam and health of adolescents in the U.S. With the CSDE funding last year, I worked with Gunnar Almgren (social work) on a quantitative paper titled 'Subjective health among adolescents in the North West'. CSDE funding this year has allowed me an opportunity to work with Bettina Shell-Duncan (anthropology) on a qualitative work on female genital cutting in Gambia and Senegal.

Population health particularly children and women's health, immigration, gender and race and ethnicity are my major research and teaching areas. I value and actively use multi-disciplinary approach in both my teaching and research practices.

DEPT : Sociology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : Hewlett Foundation
START YEAR : 2003-04

Susan Cassels

My principle area of interest is demographic and health outcomes of interactions between social and environmental change, human behavior, and disease transmission. I completed my doctorate in demography from the Office of Population Research at Princeton University in 2005. My dissertation modeled the process of labor migration and disease transmission to see which behavioral aspects were the most important determinants of disease transmission. While at CSDE, I will also be working with the sociobehavioral and prevention research core at the Center for AIDS Research. My work will focus on models of behavioral processes and population-level transmission dynamics of HIV.

DEPT : Center for AIDS Research
EMAIL : click here

Shoko Konishi

I have conducted several studies on Tongans in the South Pacific, exploring demographic change associated with international migration and diet, with a focus on obesity. My current research project examines the impact of nutritional status (including under-weight, over weight, and diet composition) on reproduction, and the validation of biomarkers to study nutrition-reproduction relationships. For this research I compare Japanese women in Japan with those who recently migrated to the US.

DEPT : Anthropology
EMAIL : click here
SPONSOR : Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Bryan Sykes

My research focuses on the intersection of demography, incarceration/crime, and inequality. I am a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow, and I completed a joint Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California-Berkeley in 2007. My current projects and collaborations examine the causal nature of residential segregation and crime; the causal effects of incarceration on male fertility; the demographic implications of the prison boom; and the effects of racial misclassification on women's earnings.

DEPT : Sociology
OFFICE : Savery 238
EMAIL : click here