Our own Matt Weatherford was recommended for membership to the University of Washington Computing Directors Group. The purpose of the Computing Directors Group is to facilitate communication and collaboration between central UW-IT teams and those at the college and unit level (distributed IT). The aim is to collaboratively specify, design, and develop central IT solutions and ensure that those solutions work not only for central campus IT teams, but also all represented entities. Matt’s teams at CSDE and the UW Data Collaborative have a focus on research and students, as well as including an IT compliance and security focus that enables his team to host regulated research data including Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).

CSDE Senior Research Scientist Deven Hamilton provides direct support for the development of survey modules to collect egocentric network data and sexual behaviour data that will be fielded as part of an upcoming RCT. These data, in conjunction with the RCT results, will serve as the empirical basis for an agent-based epidemic model to estimate the health and economic impact of scaling up WHO-recommended STI PPT and doxyPEP in Kenya. Hamilton is also responsible for building the agent-based network model and running the epidemic simulations in support of the overall project aims.

This work is part of a recently approved R01 grant (A187468) developed by CSDE Affiliate Susan M. Graham, Professor of Global Health and Medicine (PI), Hamilton, and colleagues. This study’s goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of two RCT interventions on Gonorrhea: WHO-recommended periodic presumptive treatment (PPT) and doxy-Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), compared to standard syndromic treatment for reducing STI burden among Kenyan MSM. This project will also assess the acceptability, feasibility, and safety of implementing WHO-recommended PPT and doxy-PEP compared to standard care among providers and patients.

To arrange a consulting appointment with Deven Hamilton or any of CSDE’s scientific support staff, please use the CSDE Science Core Consultation Request form.

Refugee studies research has typically identified “hosts” as being distinct and opposite from refugees, but recent scholarship has brought this typology into question. In a recent study in the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, CSDE Affiliate Rawan Arar (Law, Societies, and Justice) critically examines the ‘host’ label within refugee studies by considering multiple scales of analysis. The study shows how individuals confront the refugee/host binary in their daily lives, and introduces the concept of humanitarian fiction to explain the limits of previously used definitions. Read the study here.

When: Friday, April 25, 2025 (12:30-1:30PM)

Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom (register here)

We are looking forward to hosting Lake Lui from National Taiwan University on Friday, April 25 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies East Asia Center, Population Health Initiative, and the Jackson School Taiwan Studies Program.

Grounded in the literature on the deinstitutionalization of marriage, this presentation explores why, despite holding diverse ideologies about marriage, people in Taiwan have not widely practiced alternatives such as long-term cohabitation or singlehood. The analysis is framed within the cultural-cognitive approach of neoinstitutionalism, examining how individuals and couples renegotiate their relationship with the institution of marriage.

Drawing on love and marriage histories from 35 Taiwanese adults aged 20–40, I analyze the meanings young people ascribe to marriage and how these perspectives align with or challenge the normative and regulatory foundations of Taiwan’s marriage institution. I also investigate the structural and cultural factors that enable or hinder the realization of their marital beliefs, including conflicting logics within the institution of marriage—such as the tension between traditionalism and newer logics, such as romanticism, the value of companionship, and the aspiration for autonomy—as well as the influence of surrounding institutions, including work, intergenerational family, and legal institutions.

Finally, I examine the strategies individuals employ when their circumstances do not allow them to act on their marital beliefs, focusing on those who do not wish to marry but ultimately do, and those who wish to marry but remain single. Strategies such as challenging multigenerational obligations within marriage and adopting practices that blur the distinctions between cohabitation and traditional marriage, for example, reshape the institution of marriage in its fundamental structure and meaning.

Lake Lui is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. She is also affiliated with the Taiwan Social Resilience Center at National Taiwan University and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) at the University of Washington. Her research explores how global forces such as economic restructuring, migration, and sociocultural changes interact with national policies to shape gender relations and family dynamics in Asia. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, she examines marriage formation processes, household dynamics, and fertility decisions. Her recent work investigates the relationships among im/mobilities, political contestations, political repression, and the role of the family in weathering changes. Her major publications have appeared in Social Forces; Sociology; International Migration Review; The Sociological Review; Social Science Research; and Journal of Family Issues. She is also the author of Re-negotiating Gender: Household Division of Labor when She Earns More than He Does (Springer).