Associate Professor Emiko A. Tajima’s scholarship focuses on the problem of interpersonal violence, seeking to identify points of intersection, cross-systems issues and to build knowledge regarding specialized populations to improve policies and service provision for victims and their children. Dr. Tajima is the executive director of Partners for Our Children.
Dr. Tajima is committed to enhancing violence prevention and intervention, particularly for marginalized groups such as racial and ethnic minorities and immigrant and refugee populations. Her approach to these issues is shaped by her interdisciplinary background, which includes a BA in sociology, MS in criminology and PhD in social work, as well as direct service experience with victims of family violence.
Her scholarship is also informed by her practice background as a legal advocate for victims of domestic violence in family court, where she helped clients navigate across systems to obtain mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, housing, immigration assistance and many other social services.
Dr. Tajima joined the School of Social Work faculty in 1999. She served as the School’s MSW program director from 2006 to 2011 and as the associate dean for academic affairs from 2011 to 2017.
Zack W. Almquist is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Senior Data Science Fellow at the University of Washington, where he also holds affiliation with CSDE and Urban@UW. From 2018-2020 he was a Research Scientist in the Demography and Survey Science team at Facebook, Inc; from 2017-2018 he was a Visiting Scholar in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University; and from 2013-2018 he was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of Minnesota. His research centers on the development and application of mathematical, computational, and statistical methodology to better understand the problems and theories of social networks analysis, demography, education, homelessness, and environmental action and governance. In the field of Demography Dr. Almquist’s research has been published in journals such as: Demographic Research, Mathematical Population Studies, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, Geographic Analysis, and The Journal of Gerontology: Series B.
Nora Kenworthy is a Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington, Bothell, and Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Global Health and Anthropology. At UW Bothell, she coordinates the undergraduate Minor in Global Health. Her research explores the politics of global health governance, the sociopolitical impacts of HIV initiatives in southern Africa, and the changing roles of philanthrocapitalism and corporations in shaping global health programming. Kenworthy is the author of Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho (2017, Vanderbilt University Press). She received her PhD and MA from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and her BA from Williams College.
Susan Schaffnit is an applied anthropologist and Researcher in Demography at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Schaffnit’s research is interdisciplinary, pulling on methods and theory from evolutionary anthropology, demography, and population health science. At the core of her work is a desire to understand variation in and relationships between human health, family structures, and life transitions into marriages, parenthood, and adulthood. She currently conducts research on early marriage, women’s fertility and health in Tanzania, Bangladesh, and India.
Dr. Schaffnit earned her PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
Kathie Friedman is Associate Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is on the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Friedman is former Chair of the Jewish Studies Program, and has also directed the Masters of International Studies, and the Undergraduate Honors Thesis programs in the Jackson School. Her main area of study and research has been comparative forced migrations and immigration, particularly to the United States and the EU, with a focus on ethnic and political incorporation. Publications include Memories of Migration: Gender, Ethnicity, and Work in the Lives of Jewish and Italian Women, New York 1870-1924; Creating and Transforming Households: the constraints of the world-economy (co-authored), “Performing Identities in the Classroom” (co-authored article); and “’On Halloween We Dressed Up Like KGB Agents’: Re-imagining Soviet Jewish Refugee Identities in America” (chapter). Some of her research has been funded by the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities, the UW Royalty Research Fund, and the Mellon Foundation. Currently Friedman is working on two book projects tentatively titled: The Afterlife of Ethnic Cleansing: Memory, Identity, and Belonging in America’s Bosnian Refugee Diaspora; and “Learning to Participate: Pathways to Political Socialization and Civic Engagement of Second-Generation Refugee Youth.”
Teresa’s program of research has focused on sleep health, symptom science, and health outcomes in children with and without chronic health conditions and their caregivers. Currently, Teresa is the Co-Director of the Center for Innovation in Sleep Self-Management funded by NIH, and involved in several studies that integrate community based participatory approaches that integrate technology to improve sleep health in parent-child dyads living with a chronic health condition. Her recent work has focused on sleep health in marginalized communities including caregivers of children with asthma and arthritis, and Filipino migrants. Teresa has clinical expertise as a nurse practitioner working in a pediatric sleep center and in pediatric chronic health conditions, and research expertise in leading interdisciplinary teams, conducting usability and feasibility studies in integrating technology to promote sleep, and integration of shared-management, as well as, successful recruitment and retention strategies in chronic health conditions.
Batool Zaidi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Western Washington University. She obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2019. Her research addresses gender inequality in the global South through the analysis of health outcomes, cultural norms, and development projects. Her three-article dissertation examined the relationship between gender inequality, son preference and child outcomes through analysis of family contexts. The articles focused on: 1) understanding gender differentials in child mortality through a theoretically grounded conceptualization of son preference; 2) analyzing generalized versus selective discrimination against Pakistani girls in parental health-seeking practices; and 3) assessing son preference as an explanation for the paradoxical Muslim (versus Hindu) advantage in child mortality in India. This dissertation project advanced her broader agenda of strengthening social demographic scholarship by incorporating consideration of power relations, especially across gender and within families, in international contexts. She is currently developing a South-South comparative study on violence against women in South Asia and Latin America, through the categories of honor killings and femicidios, respectively. Another project will examine the role of marriage systems on son preference and women’s position in their marital home in South Asia. Prior to completing her PhD, Batool was at the Population Council’s Islamabad office, where she worked on projects focusing on family planning, girls education, maternal health, the demographic dividend, and sex-selective abortions. She has a master’s degree in Population and Development from the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Mount Holyoke College.
Daniel Casey is an epidemiologist at Public Health- Seattle & King County (PHSKC) in the Assessment, Policy Development, and Evaluation Unit. At PHSKC he is mostly focused on creating and monitoring equitable metrics of residential displacement, local migration patterns, and neighborhood change as part of the Communities of Opportunity project. He holds a M.P.H. from the University of Washington.
Cameron T. Whitley, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Washington University with expertise in environmental sociology, human-animal studies, and sex and gender. His research is guided by a central question: how do our relationships with others inform our attitudes and behaviors? Substantively, he studies issues concerning the environment (climate change, new energy development, sustainability) and wellbeing, science and technology (geoengineering, hydraulic fracturing debates), human-animal relationships (impacts on mental health, etc.), and gender and sexuality (political engagement and environmentalism).
He is currently working on a project with National Geographic Society affiliated photographers evaluating how their images influence emotional responses and how different individuals (based on demographic characteristics) respond to distinctive images. Beyond this project, he is also exploring what demographic markers among LGBTQIA+ populations (including relationship status) lead to increases in political participation broadly and environmentalism particularly. To date, his published research has explored the sustainability practices of college students, public support for plant-based diets, individual perceptions of environmental risks, the social drivers of climate-induced migration, support for new energy technologies, the demographic and political influences of greenhouse gas emissions, the place of women in conservation networks, and the importance of imagery in eliciting empathy and promoting environmentalism. He enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration and has worked with over 30 different scholars from 20 different fields in producing over four dozen publications that have been featured in journals like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sociological Inquiry, Academic Emergency Medicine, Sociological Perspectives, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, and Clinical Chemistry. His methodological approaches include program evaluation, qualitative, and quantitative applications.