Archives: Affiliates

Taylor Danielson is a Research Manager in the Department of Social and Health Services Research and Data Analysis Division for Washington State.

Dr. Waithaka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at George Mason University. His research focuses on intergenerational social and economic mobility during young adults’ transitions to adulthood, with a particular focus on the role of family capital (resources & processes) and public policies influence on young adults’ life outcomes. His research on young adults, both in the United States and in East Africa, focuses on educational attainment, economic engagement and asset development. He has taught a variety of courses including research methods, macro practice, poverty and inequality, human behavior and the social environment, and social work for social justice. He has practice experience in various capacities including non-profit consulting, survey research, program evaluation and being a community support worker for individuals living with disabilities. Dr. Waithaka is a graduate of Daystar University Kenya (BA), Washington University in St. Louis (MSW) and the University of Washington Seattle (PhD, MPA).

Michelle Lee is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations at Queen’s University. Michelle’s research involves studying top executives and CEOs of public companies and involves large panel datasets including data from the Census Bureau. Her dissertation research studies how the social class background of executives affects their promotion likelihood and career outcomes. In doing so, Michelle’s dissertation research tries to understand whether inequalities from childhood may be perpetuated and affect later career outcomes. Michelle’s current projects include her dissertation projects, a study on how shareholder activism influences a CEO’s CSR policies at their next firm, and a project studying how pro bono at law firms affects employee retention.

Bridget Pavelle is a demographer and Senior Research Manager with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), Research and Data Analysis Division (RDA). She received her PhD in public policy and sociology from the University of Michigan in 2013 and her MS in statistics from Iowa State University in 2008. In her current role, she works primarily with administrative data on projects relating to child and family well-being, food and cash assistance, and mental health and substance use disorder services. Her work involves program monitoring and quasi-experimental evaluation of a range of health and social policy interventions for clients receiving publicly funded services. She shares the results of her work through direct consultation with program leaders and policy makers, published research briefs, and presentations to research and policy conferences as well as various workgroups. Her work aims to support the welfare of and improve services for Washington’s most vulnerable populations.

Technology has an impact on our health. But what impact does it have on healthcare? This is the question that Youngjun seeks to explore in his dissertation. On the one hand, Youngjun sees the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) as an advanced means in the social service delivery system. But on the other hand, he understands that many caregivers will not benefit from such services because they lack internet access and computer skills.

To carry out his research, Youngjun draws upon theories on the digital divide, social support, and cognitive enrichment to examine the impacts of ICT’s on health and psychological well-being among older Americans. Specifically, he hopes to identify the influential factors in the digital divide among older adults, the benefits of the digital life on psychological outcomes, and the impact of cognitive stimulating activity on older adults participating in digital life.

For having been part of the Aging with Pride Study, the first nationally funded longitudinal study to examine the health and well-being of LGBT older adults, Youngjun hopes to push his research forward, so that it will contribute to the Grand Challenges for Social Work by harnessing technologies for social good.

Magda Boutros is a sociologist who studies social movements against policing and the criminal justice system. Her book project examines contemporary French mobilizations organizing against racialized policing practices. It analyzes how movement actors overcome opacity around police actions and the French race-blind ideology to produce knowledge about the practices they denounce, and how different modes of knowledge production matter for the movement’s outcomes. She previously studied anti-sexual violence movements that emerged in Egypt during the 2011 revolution.

Magda’s work appeared in Theory and Society, Law and Society Review, Lien Social et Politiques, and Mouvements. She has also published in non-academic publications such as La Vie des Idées and AOC. She received her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University in 2020.

Gregory Bratman is an Associate Professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences; Adjunct Associate Professor in the  Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences; Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, as well as the Director of the Environment and Well-Being Lab. His work takes place at the nexus of psychology, public health and ecology, and is focused on investigating the ways in which the environment is associated with human well-being. He takes both empirical and theoretical approaches to understand how nature experience impacts human mental well-being, specifically cognitive function, mood and emotion regulation, with an emphasis on people living in urban environments. He is also working to inform the ways that the mental health effects of nature can be incorporated into ecosystem service studies, and in efforts to address health inequities. Gregory is a JPB Harvard Environmental Health Fellow and the Doug Walker Endowed Professor.

I am an urban geographer/planner whose interdisciplinary research focused on developing new ways of critical, qualitative, and creative possibilities of Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) and geographic visualization in understanding socio-spatial processes and politics of urban space and community. On the one hand, I continuously explore the importance of power and politics as well as the complexities of race, class, gender and sexualities in cities, and ask how the shaping of these categories effectively complicates urban geographical knowledge. On the other hand, my research offers epistemological and methodological innovations in digital spatial technologies that expand the critical and qualitative capabilities of GIS and geographic visualization. I have tried to integrate various forms of data and representation, and analysis often considered as incompatible in GIS environments: quantitative and qualitative, visuality and numeracy, maps and text, artistic and scientific, and real and digital. Applying digital innovations grounded in the community-based research, I show how this integrated approach generates stronger and more ‘nuanced’ urban geographical insights than are possible within singular epistemological/methodological framework.

I also demonstrate how the substantive insights made possible through the intermingling of these (different) data and methods, when applied in researches on people’s conceptualization of urban space and community, spatial inequality and urban poverty, smart urbanism, and imagining the critical and creative in/with GIS and geographic visualization. Much of these works have drawn on researches I conducted in inner city Buffalo, NY, and more recently from community-based engaged researches in Seattle, WA. Recently, I am also interested in further implementing the qualitative aspects of GIS and geovisualization complementing current Big Data and digital social/spatial research. It will help us to see a deeper contextual meaning, drawn from diverse socio-spatial, cultural, political and technological boundaries of knowledge in a hybrid (both real and digital) space we live now.