Archives: Affiliates

Heather is a socio-legal scholar who focuses on the ways in which institutions such as the law, higher education, and the medical field interact with marginalized populations. She has conducted statistical analyses, ethnographic fieldwork, and evaluation research. Heather’s current work is in the field of Critical Disability Studies examining disclosure, identity management, and workplace accommodations among people with physical, mental, and sensory differences that are not readily apparent. She is also committed to community based research and does consulting work for local social justice organizations, primarily focusing on disparities within the criminal justice system.  Heather earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Washington and spent 8 years teaching courses in the Department of Sociology; Disability Studies Program; and the Law, Societies & Justice Department at UW. She joined the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at UW in July 2021 as an Acting Assistant Professor and Research Director for the Northwest ADA Center.

Mariana Amorim is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington State University. She has a MPP from Oregon State University and a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management with a minor in Demography from Cornell University. Her research and teaching specializations include family demography, poverty, inequality, social policies, applied demography, statistics, and research methods. Amorim’s work sheds light on the role of public, private, and “shadow” safety nets in promoting the well-being of parents and children during an era of increasing family complexity and economic inequality. Her manuscripts have been published in selective outlets such as Demography, Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Problems, Sociological Science, and Social Science Research. Her research has received support from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as seed funds from the NYU Cash Transfer Lab, Washington State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As a geographer, I have always been interested in exploring the connections between human societies and the environment. I received broad trainings in both the biophysical sciences and the social sciences and integrated quantitative, qualitative, and GIS methods into my research. My thesis analyzed the spatio-temporal changes of urban landscape patterns in response to urbanization, with a focus on green space conservation and landscape ecology. In my doctoral research, I explored different perspectives on ecological restoration from the standpoints of scientists, professional practitioners, and volunteers. Based on case studies from Wisconsin and Michigan, I cross-examined the meanings of science, nature, and public participation embedded in restoration ideologies and practices. 

Currently as a lecturer in the Program on the Environment at the University of Washington, my primary role is undergraduate education, through which I experiment with innovative teaching strategies. My current research projects include comparing student learning outcomes between in-person and online formats of the same course, methods for cross-cultural learning experience through virtual collaboration, and case study pedagogy. I am an active member of the UW Center for Teaching and Learning. Externally, I am involved in the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center’s program on “Teaching Socio-Environmental Synthesis with Case Studies.” I frequently present my work at conferences by associations such as the American Association of Geographers, Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, and North American Association for Environmental Education.  

At the UW, I am also a core faculty member of the Taiwan Studies Program. I lead a summer study abroad program to Taiwan with the theme on exploring environmental and social resilience. In the course “Environmental Issues in East Asia”, we survey contemporary environmental issues in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan through a comparative lens. Every Winter Quarter, I organized a lecture series focusing on Contemporary Environmental Issues in East Asia. In addition to teaching and research, I advise students on Capstone projects, including topics about environmental education, greenway infrastructure, sustainability design, community outreach, clean-up site prioritization and many others. 

Mahesh Somashekhar’s core research agenda concerns how urban economic development and social inequality affect one another. More specifically, he studies the effects of commercial development on urban and suburban communities, with a particular focus on immigrant entrepreneurship, gentrification, and gayborhoods. 

Somashekhar is currently pursuing two projects. The first investigates the entrepreneurship patterns of undocumented immigrants in the United States. While it is illegal to employ undocumented immigrants, it is legal for undocumented immigrants to own businesses in the formal economy. Nevertheless, little is known about how firms owned by undocumented immigrants influence economic development and socioeconomic mobility trends. 

His second project aims to understand the effect of gentrification on local retailers and community organizations. To that end, Somashekhar is digitizing and geocoding the corpus of the Gayellow Pages, a U.S. directory of local organizations serving LGBTQ+ people that has been in continuous publication since the 1970s. He is using these data to understand whether LGBTQ+ organizations are surviving the gentrification of gay villages, and where they are moving when they are displaced. 

Somashekhar’s research has been published in journals including Social Problems, City & Community, Urban Affairs Review, and Economic Development Quarterly. Prior to joining UIC, Somashekhar was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Washington. He earned a PhD and an MA from Princeton University as well as a BS from Columbia University. More about his background and research can be found on his website. 

What would it look like for us to equitably nourish a growing global population? More importantly, how do we get there – which inputs have more leverage within complex systems, and what evidence do decision-makers need in order to support public health? Dr. Marie Spiker approaches public health nutrition research through a food systems lens that recognizes the need for transdisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration.

Dr. Spiker’s research interests include public health nutrition, sustainable food systems, food loss and waste, value chains for nutrition, systems modeling of food supply chains, and capacity building within nutrition and public health. To explore these topics, she draws from training in quantitative and qualitative methods and systems science, as well as her training as a registered dietitian nutritionist. Her professional practice experience includes work with municipal food policy and capacity building within the profession of nutrition and dietetics.

Stephan Siegel is the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business in Seattle, which he joined in 2005. A native of Hamburg, Germany, he earned a B.S. from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and a Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia University in the City of New York. Prior to his graduate studies, Stephan worked in Europe and China as a project manager with GCI Management, Munich, an international private equity and management consulting firm.  

Stephan’s research interests are in international finance as well as household finance. Together with his co-authors, he has examined the globalization of financial markets, the integration of European capital markets, and most recently the pricing of political risk. Stephan’s research in household finance has pioneered the use of genetically informed data to explore biological predispositions with respect to risk taking and investment biases. Most recently, he has explored the role of the cultural transmission of preferences about risk and uncertainty.  

His research has been published in a large number of academic journals as well as covered by leading news organizations, including, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.