Dr. Elizabeth Harrington is a clinician and researcher with expertise in global reproductive health, family planning, and the social and behavioral influences on contraceptive decision-making. She is a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist with subspecialty training in family planning, and her research aims at understanding women’s complex needs and desires around prevention of unintended pregnancy. As a PI, she successfully designed and implemented a behavioral clinical trial of a mobile health contraceptive decision-support intervention in Kenya. She presented this work at the International Workshop on HIV and Adolescence, and prepared a manuscript for submission as first author entitled “Spoiled” girls: Understanding the social context of contraceptive need among Kenyan adolescent girls and young women.
Dr. Harrington recently received a K12 career development award from the NICHD for research entitled, “Reproductive empowerment and contraceptive choice among adolescent girls and young women in Kenya”. The aims of this award are to examine contraceptive preferences and decision-making among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Kenya with a focus on reproductive empowerment, and to develop and pilot a tailored intervention to support AGYW’s contraceptive decision-making in community based pharmacies. This work will guide the development of a novel, person-centered approach to unintended pregnancy prevention among AGYW at high risk for poor health outcomes.
Larry Knopp is Professor Emeritus in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences on the Tacoma campus. A geographer by training, his interests are fundamentally interdisciplinary. His research concerns questions of power and place, especially as they pertain to issues of sexuality, gender, class, and other axes of difference. He also studies feminist and queer theories; the theory, politics and practice of mapping queer populations and cultures; the politics of sexual health; and North American cultural and political geographies. He is currently Principal Investigator on a CSDE-administered and National Science Foundation-funded project titled ‘Shifting Geographies of LGBTQ Space’.
Trained as a demographer and sociologist, Xinguang is now an assistant professor of sociology at Peking University of China after receiving a PhD in Sociology from UW.
Xinguang is currently working on several projects related to population dynamics, wellbeing of families and households, mainly including: 1) working with Sara Curran and other scholars. He is working on the population dynamics before and after natural disasters by constructing a new dataset; 2) he is also working on the economic insecurity of Chinese families and its consequences on family stability and child development; 3) using a network approach, his new project investigates the (in)consistency of belief systems within family members based on his publication on intra-family diffusion of discrimination feelings at Social Science Research.
Dr. Manhart’s research interests are in sexually transmitted infections (STI) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Her primary research involves defining the clinical epidemiology of emerging STI pathogens, with a focus on Mycoplasma genitalium. She led the MEGA trial evaluating the efficacy of standard therapies against M. genitalium, and is currently leading two cohort studies of men with urethritis to explore the role of the male urethral microbiome in genital tract disease. Current projects also include studies of the psychosocial implications of STI and HIV-infection, including stigma and mental health, and studies to define the social context of STI risk.
Dr. Darcy Rao is an infectious disease epidemiologist with training and experience in mathematical modeling of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and measurement of sexual behavior and healthcare utilization. Her research interests center on using mathematical models to bridge epidemiologic research and public health practice, with the goal of informing the design and implementation of effective programs and policies. Her current projects include clinical research to evaluate alternate service delivery models for cervical cancer screening among women living with HIV in Washington State, mathematical modeling of HIV and HPV co-infection dynamics to inform cervical cancer prevention in low- and middle-income countries, cost-effectiveness analyses of cervical cancer prevention strategies, and examination of changes in healthcare utilization and sexual behavior associated with COVID-19 social distancing and other mitigation strategies.
Dr. Spring is a demographer and urban sociologist whose research centers on families, communities, neighborhoods, and the environment. She joined the GSU Sociology Department in 2015 after completing her Ph.D. from the University of Washington and a research fellowship at UW’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology.
She is particularly interested in studying residential mobility and internal migration within the context of family networks. She is also interested in the geography of family networks and in family support systems over the life course. Her findings show that family networks are very influential in determining who moves and explaining racial/ethnic disparities in residential mobility. Further, she finds that familial locations play a key role in residential mobility following divorce, health problems, and other adverse life events. Her research also explores residential mobility and neighborhood context among older adults, multiracial individuals, and same-sex households, highlighting how residential experiences intersect with social statuses and identities. In current projects, she is investigating the geography of family networks for older adults with disabilities, and the influence of family locations on migration following climate-induced disasters. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Spring is Co-Director of the Center for Neighborhoods & Communities and a faculty affiliate in the Urban Studies Institute and the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University. She also serves on the editorial boards of City & Community, Demography, and Spatial Demography. Her teaching interests include urban sociology, environmental sociology, sociology of neighborhoods, statistics, and research methods.
Frank Edwards is a sociologist broadly interested in social control, the welfare state, race, and applied statistics. His work explores the causes and consequences of the social distribution of state violence through two projects.
The first draws attention to child protection systems as key sites of family disruption. This work shows that American child protection systems are tightly intertwined with carceral and welfare policy systems, and that race and colonization play a central role in explaining the spatial and social distribution of family separation.
The second provides detailed analyses of the prevalence of police-involved killings in the US. This project uses novel data and Bayesian methods to provide estimates of mortality risk by race, sex, and place. It also evaluates how institutions and politics affect the prevalence of police violence.
Edwards’ research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Public Health, and other outlets. His research has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The PBS News Hour, and other outlets.
Jasmine is a Research Associate at the Institute for Circular Economy Development (ICED) at Vietnam National University-HCMC. She received her PhD in Sociology from University of Minnesota. Jasmine’s research interests include: migration, social statistics, globalization, international education, sustainable development, and digital transformation.
Kessie Alexandre’s research organizes around questions of public health risk and ethics; environmental racism; climate justice and the social implications of climate change adaptation; Black geographies and diaspora; and the politics and ethics of infrastructure. Alexandre’s research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Princeton Environmental Institute and Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She published recent work in Geoforum and Current Anthropology.
Her first book project, “Floods and Fountains,” is an ethnographic study of water insecurity and civic participation in Newark, New Jersey, which uncovers concurrent processes of racialization and toxification in a period of industrial waterway pollution, climate change vulnerability, and tap water contamination. Looking beyond the Newark Lead Crisis, the project examines how residents have mobilized around unsafe water flows since the Black Power Movement and how water insecurity continues to shape political subjectivities and social relations in the moment of ongoing crisis.
Her other research projects include a long-term study of water and sanitation access in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak. This second project reframes water and land access for Haitians from disaster response to legacies of dispossession and ongoing infrastructural development. Lastly, she is writing on the figure of the “climate refugee” in contemporary discourse and its convergence with racialization at borders in various parts of the Americas.
Originally from Miami, Florida, Professor Alexandre attended Johns Hopkins University and completed her PhD at Princeton University. Beyond her academic life, she enjoys nature walks, herbalism, and listening to soul music and its derivatives.
Jacob (Jake) M. Grumbach is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in spring of 2018 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton.
Professor Grumbach’s research focuses broadly on the political economy of the United States. He is particularly interested in public policy, American federalism, racial capitalism, campaign finance, and statistical methods. His book project, based on his award-winning dissertation, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics since the 1970s. Additional recent projects investigate labor unions, election law, and race and gender in campaign finance. Professor Grumbach teaches courses in statistics for the social sciences and in state and local politics.
Outside of academia, Jake spends his time listening to 70s funk and soul music and 90s hip hop, and supporting the Golden State Warriors.