Archives: Affiliates

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.

Rawan Arar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice. She completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California San Diego. Her research program begins with the refugee as a central figure of analysis. Refugee displacement is the manifestation of the breakdown of borders and citizenship rights while refugee status, as a legal construct, is delimited by the principle of sovereignty. Refugees’ lives and life chances are inextricably tied to national and global policies, which create or impede access to basic needs, education, rights, and mobility. Rawan’s research lies at the intersection of these issues and pushes forward debates about states, rights, and theories of international migration.

Clayton Aldern is an advisor, data scientist, and journalist with expertise in homelessness policy, climate change, machine learning, and neuroscience. A Rhodes Scholar and Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, he holds a master’s in neuroscience and a master’s in public policy—with a focus on climate change and security—from the University of Oxford. His journalism has been published by The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, Logic, and many others. From 2017 to 2019, he led the data analysis and program evaluation team for the homelessness programs at Pierce County, Washington.

Kivan Polimis’ interests include researching structural inequality, natural language processing, and developing programming solutions to social problems. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Università Bocconi’s Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy and postdoctoral affiliate at the Bocconi Institute for Data Science and Analytics (BIDSA) in Milan. Kivan has worked with Data Science for Social Good and Microsoft to develop programming solutions in transportation infrastructure and the legal system. His research focuses on combining computational social science approaches with large scale social media to evaluate population dynamics. Kivan is passionate about growing the community of computational social scientists.

April Sutton studies education, stratification, gender, and geographic inequalities. Her motivation is to enhance our understanding of the characteristics of schools and communities that produce inequality, and how and why critical life transitions shape inequality. Sutton is especially interested in scrutinizing the institutional and structural mechanisms that maintain or disrupt gender and racial/ethnic inequalities in education, work, and family formation. One of her projects includes research on rural-urban disparities in teen unintended childbearing. She uses nationally representative surveys and federal government data to pursue her research.

Natasha Rivers works at BECU as a social impact, sustainability, and data measurement professional. Natasha is developing a strategic framework around social impact by measuring BECU’s commitment to philanthropy, financial health and education, member engagement, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In her previous role as Demographer for the Seattle School District, Natasha provided data required for Facilities and Capital Levy planning. She conducted scientific research and evaluation studies to measure the impact of Seattle’s affordability crisis, including the rise of K-12 homeless youth. Natasha is civically engaged and has served on several community boards including The Seattle Children’s Theatre, 4Culture, the Urban League and Treehouse for Kids. Natasha earned her PhD in Geography (Population Demography) from UCLA where she studied black identity and contemporary sub-Saharan African migration to and within the U.S.

 

 

 

Katherine Nesse’s research is at the intersection of people and the economy. She is interested in metrics of measuring people and the economy and how those metrics are used to inform policy. Her current research project is creating a new method for estimating demographic characteristics based on the residential environment. She is particularly concerned with methods that produce data for small or sparsely populated areas. She has also researched how people cause the economy to grow, including the different roles that traditional location factors, regulatory factors, labor market and competition factors, and quality of life factors play in business location decisions.

Ryan Petros seeks to improve the lives of people with serious mental illness. As a clinical social worker, he witnessed the pervasive exclusion clients faced from the community around them, health disparities resulting in early mortality, and pathologizing from providers who had not yet adopted service delivery models reflective of the emerging focus on recovery. He obtained a doctoral degree to impact the field on a macro scale and contribute to mental health services research. His work continues to be informed by his practice experience and clinical training in motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapies, and psychiatric rehabilitation. Petros’ research focuses on understanding and promoting recovery, community integration, and total health through evidence-based practices and integrated health care.