CRF's Affiliates participate in the center's many activities, offering opportunities to engage with researchers from other disciplines.
Daniel Anderson’s general area of research is children and media, particularly television. He focuses on a cognitive analysis of children’s television viewing, as well as the impact of television on cognitive development and education. Dr. Anderson’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, as well as
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Kathleen Arcaro studies breast milk to gain insight into the causes and development of breast cancer. Breast milk can provide both a glimpse into the health of the breast and a record of a lifetime of environmental exposures. Many persistent and biologically active pollutants concentrate in fat and are therefore present in breast milk. Dr.
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David Arnold's research evaluates community partnership programs designed to foster disadvantaged young children's preliteracy development and academic engagement, while reducing behavior problems and promoting positive relationships with parents and teachers.
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Lee Badget studies family policy issues and labor market discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, and gender. She is the co-founder and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, a national think tank on policy issues related to sexual orientation.
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Angélica Bernal’s research includes political innovation and founding, popular constitutionalism, and indigenous rights and movements in Latin America. During her year as a CRF Scholar, Dr. Bernal will develop a grant research proposal on The Impact of Petroleum Contamination, Litigation & Legal Activism on Indigenous Families in Ecuador’s Amazonian Region. This research will study power in
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Ellizabeth Bertone-Johnson studies nutritional epidemiology, focusing on Vitamin D and women's health conditions including premenstrual syndrome, depression and breast cancer. She recently received a five-year, $868,857 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health to study women’s mental health, with special emphasis on premenstrual syndrome and the role vitamin D may play in counteracting its effects on women.
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In order to learn how hormones act in the brain to modify brain function and behavior and how the social environment can influences these processes, we study the cellular and neuroanatomical mechanisms of ovarian steroid hormone action on reproductive behavior and the interactions between the environment, neurotransmitters and steroid hormone receptors. Although much of our work has focused
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Michelle Budig's research interests focus on gender, employment, labor markets, earnings, stratification, and family. Her research has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Gender & Society, and numerous other professional journals. Currently she is working on
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Brenda Bushouse's research interests include early childhood policy, nonprofit governance, and policymaking processes.
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Karen M. Cardozo has served intermittently as a dean of student and academic affairs at Mount Holyoke College and taught a range of comparative cultural, ethnic, literary/film and trauma studies courses (including several focused exclusively on Asian/American Studies) on all five campuses of the consortium. In the future she hopes to introduce new cultural studies of science courses, including one
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Yu-Kyong Choe research interests include computer treatment in aphasia and apraxia, augmentative and alternative communication, individual differences in understanding speech, and speech perception/comprehension and production. Her past research supports the use of interactive computer technology as a tool to improve language and cognitive function. As a Family Scholar, Choe will continue this
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Dan Clawson's research focuses on labor movements and labor policy in the U.S., and their impact on the well-being of families. Dr. Clawson's research is very widely cited and well received outside academic circles, as well as having had an immense impact within his discipline. He has served as president of the faculty union and the Massachusetts Society of Professors (affiliated with the National Education Association), and as
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Leda Cook's research interests include interpersonal and intercultural communication; feminist, postcolonial and critical communication theory; and identity, collective memory, and nationalism. As a 2005-2006 Family Research Scholar, Dr. Cook proposed to develop, implement, and assess a media literacy and performance intervention model for the treatment of eating disorders. The media and cultural concern with
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Lorraine Cordeiro studies food security and the connections between high risk health behaviors and hunger in multiple social and cultural contexts. Her research largely focuses on adolescents and young adults. As a Family Scholar, she worked on a project to assess food security status and its association with dietary practices among pregnant and postpartum Cambodian women living in Lowell and Lynn, Massachusetts.
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Nilanjana Dasgupta's research focuses on prejudice, stereotyping, and the self-concept, with special emphasis on the ways in which societal expectations unconsciously or implicitly influence people's attitudes and behavior toward others and, in the case of disadvantaged groups, influence their self-concept and life decisions.
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Matt Davidson's research program targets a better understanding of the development of executive functions, including attention, working memory and cognitive control. Current studies are exploring the effects of physical activity on cognitive abilities and emotional stability in children and young adults,
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Research: Karen Ertel is a social epidemiologist who studies maternal mental health and children’s health. Her current research focuses on maternal depression and its relation to overweight in children. Related interests include work-life balance among parents and the health effects of short sleep duration and sleep disruption in mothers and young children.
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Nancy Folbre focuses on the interface between feminist theory and political economy, with a particular interest in caring labor and other forms of non-market work. She has received a five-year fellowship from the
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Naomi Gerstel’s research focuses on work and families, with particular attention to gender gaps in paid and unpaid caregiving. She explores the effects of employment on the care adult daughters’ and sons’ give to their parents, the effects of
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Abbie Goldberg is interested in how a variety of contexts (e.g., gender, sexual orientation, social class, work-family variables) shape processes of development and mental health. Her research focuses on exploring parenthood, relationship quality, and well-being in diverse families (e.g., adoptive parent families, lesbian/gay parent families) in an effort to increase our understanding of family diversity. Specifically, she is currently exploring the transition to adoptive parenthood among a diverse group of couples.
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Harold Grotevant's research focuses on relationships in adoptive families, and on adjustment and identity development in adolescents and young adults. His work has resulted in over 100 articles published in professional journals as well as several books, including Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections (with Ruth McRoy, Sage Publications, 1998).
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Sanjiv Gupta's research is concentrated in the areas of family and gender, with a particular focus on time spent on housework and other activities such as leisure and socializing. Current projects include an examination of class inequalities among women with respect to their time spent on
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Krista Harper's is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include environmentalism and other social movements, political culture, postsocialist societies, critical heritage studies, and the anthropology of food. She has conducted ethnographic research in Hungary, Portugal, and the United States. In her book, Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activists and Post-socialist Political Ecology in Hungary (2006),
Mary Harrington researches circadian rhythm entrainment. Her past research has been on neural systems mediating entrainment, in particular non-photic entrainment pathways utilizing neuropeptide Y and serotonin. Currently she is investigating the role of circadian disruption in health. One line of research examines effects of
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Elizabeth (Lisa) Harvey's research focuses on young children with behavior disorders. She is particularly interested in understanding how family factors contribute to the development and maintenance of attention and disruptive behavior disorders such as Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). Harvey has been conducting a 5-year longitudinal study that
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Unja Hayes research focuses on determining what experiences (e.g., mating, pregnancy, parturition, and social) and neurobiological changes are necessary for infanticidal animals to suppress aggressive behaviors and show parental behaviors.
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Julie Hemment’s research has focused on Russia in the post-Soviet period. She specializes in Russia, post-socialism, gender and transition, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and global civil society, feminist anthropology, Participatory Action Research Methodology, and public anthropology. Hemment’s work is in the tradition of community-oriented action anthropology, aimed at not only studying communities, but also
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Karen Kalmakis is currently studying the relationship between a history of adverse childhood experiences and the neurobiological stress response among young adults. During her year as a Family Research Scholar, Dr. Kalmakis will develop a grant proposal for the project entitled, “Exploring the role of socio-environmental and demographic influences on the stress process.” This project is focused on the impact that adverse childhood experiences, socioeconomic status, and individual demographics have on the coping strategies that are part of the stress process. Dr.
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Miliann Kang’s research interests include social construction of race, gender and class; sociology of the body, emotional labor and service interactions, immigrant women's work; Asian American Communities; Relations between Korean Americans and African Americans. As a Family Scholar, she considered how the decision to “opt out” or
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David Kittredge's current research interests focus on private woodland owner attitudes towards their land and the concept of an ecosystem-based approach to management. He has a growing interest in land protection techniques, human decision making, and the use of GIS in testing landowner attitudes towards thinking about their individual properties in the bigger picture.
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Elizabeth Krause’s current research seeks to illuminate how families negotiate the terms of transnational capitalism and the novel models of social organization and practices that underwrite its dynamics in one region of southern Europe. Here, a demographic “crisis” of very low fertility collides with an economic “crisis” of globalization. The “family” as a social unit has become politically charged.
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Jacquie Kurland is interested in the psychosocial effects of stroke induced aphasia (acquired neurogenic language impairment). Her work investigates brain reorganization following intensive therapy for individuals with aphasia. This research centers around the idea that family members of affected individuals can be highly influential in improving outcomes of intensive language therapy for those with aphasia. As a Scholar,
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Laura Lovett's research interests concern gender, race and the family in twentieth century America. Her work has focused on pronatalism, reproductive regulation, eugenics, and ideals of the family, as well as the intersection of women's and children's history. She is the author of Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family, 1890-1938, and is currently co-editing an anthology on the history and legacy of
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A social demographer with an emphasis on race and ethnic stratification, family formation patterns and immigration, Lundquist evaluates racial disparities along a variety of demographic outcomes, including marriage, family stability, fertility and health. Her work in this area extends to an exploration of the neighborhood effects of residential segregation as well as a re-evaluation of race relations from a social contact
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Jennifer McDermott’s research explores the role of early experience in relation to children’s cognitive and affective development. Her past work reveals that early adversity impairs physiological and behavioral indices
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Jerrold Meyer’s research program has two major themes. The first theme concerns the neurotoxic and behavioral effects of drugs of abuse, with a current focus on MDMA (“Ecstasy”). We are particularly interested in MDMA preconditioning (the ability of moderate MDMA pretreatment to blunt the serotonergic neurotoxic effects of a subsequent MDMA binge) as well as the interactions between MDMA and
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Joya Misra's research explores how policies can both mediate and reinforce inequalities by class, gender and race/ethnicity. Her recent research explicitly links work-family policies in different countries to various outcomes, trying to understand the effects of family policies for different populations (primarily by parenthood and gender).
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Jacqueline Mosselson’s research centers around the unique issues facing young people in conditions of extreme economic and governmental uncertainty. Prior research has found that school has a positive impact on a youth’s sense of agency in fragile contexts. As a Family Research Scholar, Mosselson worked on a project to develop a field study to better understand the relationship between education and youth outcomes
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Susan Newton is the Associate Director for Research at the Center for Public Policy and Administration. Newton received her doctorate in sociology from Purdue University, and has worked previously in grants administration at Amherst College and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Melinda Novak established the UMass Primate Laboratory, a small primate facility in which students receive training in handling and managing captive primates, performing behavioral and health assessments, and conducting research. Dr. Novak is Head of the Behavioral Primatology Unit at the New England Primate Research Center at Harvard Medical School where she conducts her federally funded research on
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Fareen Parvez’s research has focused on the politicization of Islamic revival movements in France and India. During her time as a Family Research Scholar, Dr. Parvez will prepare a grant proposal for the project entitled Debt, dowry, and labor migration: reconfiguring family life among the Indian Muslim urban poor. In this research, Dr.
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Maureen Perry-Jenkins is a nationally renowned scholar whose contributions on the national, state, regional, and university levels have had profound impact. Her work focuses on the ways in which socio-cultural factors such as race,
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Jerusha Nelson Peterman’s current research focuses primarily on dietary practices in vulnerable immigrant populations, including refugees. Peterman is interested in documenting how immigrant experiences combine with the U.S.
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Paula Pietromonaco is a social psychologist who studies how people think, feel, and behave in the context of their closest relationships. Her particular interest lies in how couple members influence each other’s ability to manage their emotions,
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As a developmental psychopathologist, Sally Powers’ investigates the interaction of normal developmental processes and psychopathology in adolescents and young adults.
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Marsha Kline Pruett's research revolves around father involvement and strengthening family relationships in vulnerable circumstances ranging from the legal system to the child welfare system. As and endowed Chair in research at the Smith School for Social Work with an adjunct appointment in psychology, Dr. Pruett's work on Supporting Father Involvement in a randomized clinical trial that
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Ready is a geriatric neuropsychologist with research interests in the assessment of mood, quality of life, and well-being in aging populations. She is particularly interested in assessment of these constructs in dementia patients, both from caregiver and patient perspectives, and am interested in the memory processes that are involved in recall and reporting mood, quality of life, and well-being. As a
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The Healey lab studies the electrophysiological and neurochemical phenomena that govern natural behavior. We focus on songbirds because of their many biological/behavioral parallels with humans. Many of these phenomena are readily accessible in the laboratory, including lifelong pairbonds, biparental care, vocal learning, and widespread production of steroid hormones in the brain. Our work and the work of our collaborators has demonstrated that the neurobiological and neuroendocrine mechanisms of social bonding are conserved between songbirds and mammals.
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Heather Richardson studies the influences of heavy, episodic alcohol consumption (i.e. “binge drinking”) on neurological and behavioral development using rodent models. Early onset alcohol use is one of the strongest predictors of a lifetime prevalence of alcohol dependence and is associated with cognitive impairments and
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Dean Robinson examines the effects of political and public policy trends on racial health disparities in the United States. His work focuses on patterns and policies that reinforce inequality of social welfare provision and socioeconomic status. In 2001, Dr. Robinson was awarded a two year fellowship as a W.K. Kellogg Scholar in Health Disparities at Harvard University's School of Public Health to pursue his research. As a
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Rymond-Richmond is interested in the effects that neighborhood characteristics can have on families in public housing within those neighborhoods. Recent trends in housing reform have focused on building “mixed-income” housing communities in the place of low-income housing. The idea driving this shift in housing policy is that low-income families will benefit from proximity to higher income families.
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Aline Sayer is a developmental psychologist with an extensive background in quantitative methodology. She specializes in new statistical strategies for studying the longitudinal development of individuals over time, including hierarchical linear models (also called HLM or multilevel models) and structural equation models (also called latent growth models). She has written broadly about these methods.
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Amy. Schalet's research has focused on sexuality and culture and she has authored several publications on comparative adolescent sexuality. Her book, Raging Hormones, Regulated Love, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, examines approaches to adolescent sexuality in American and Dutch middle-class families. Prior to coming to the University of Massachusetts, Dr.
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Erica Scharrer studies media effects on aggression and socialization, particularly the impact of television and videogames on gender role socialization, and the influence of media violence and hyper-masculinity on antisocial behavior. She has also examined the portrayal of fathers on TV. She has coauthored two books,
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Scott is a developmental psychologist whose research involves the study of the neural mechanisms of perceptual category learning and perceptual experience in developmental populations. Using both behavioral and electrophysiological methods, her work focuses on how specific visual experiences influence how infants and adults learn to recognize and categorize various types of objects. As a
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Lynnette Leidy Sievert is a biological anthropologist whose research has focused on age at menopause and symptom experience at menopause as two aspects of human variation. She is also interested in the evolution of menopause and
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Nina Siulc is interested in migration, crime, governance, and interstitial spaces such as borderlands and detention centers in the urban United States, the U.S./Mexican border region, Latin America and the Caribbean. She has explored the area of crime and criminalization of racialized immigrants in relation to narratives of national identity and security. As a Family Research Scholar, Siulc's project focused on
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Erin Snook’s research interests include understanding the antecedents and outcomes of physical activity behavior in populations with neurological diseases, particularly multiple sclerosis (MS), and improving and/or developing new outcome measures to be used in MS and other populations. During her CRF Scholar year, Dr. Snook will develop a grant which proposes to track the progression of multiple sclerosis using two
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Rebecca Spencer is interested in the influences of sleep on cognitive function and development. Her most recent work suggests that the benefits of sleep on learning diminish with age that is unrelated to reduced total hours of sleep, and preliminary evidence suggests a possible connection with levels of fragmentation in the REM sleep stage. As a Family Scholar, Spencer worked on several grant proposals to address the question of
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Richard Tessler's research covers social psychology, mental health, and childhood. He is the senior author of The Chronically Mentally Ill: Assessing Community Support Programs and West Meets East: Americans Adopt Chinese Children ( Bergin and Garvey, 1999). Among his numerous publications are: Family Experiences With Mental Illness (Tessler and Gamache, Auburn House, 2000); Effects of Bi-Cultural Socialization on
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Linda Tropp’s research concerns how members of different groups approach and experience contact with each other, and how group differences in power or status affect views of and expectations for cross-group relations. She also studies how
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Ryan Wells' research interests examine the transition from secondary school to postsecondary education. During his scholar year, Dr. Wells will work on a grant proposal to study “The work-to-college transition: Investigating pathways to degree attainment for working adults.” This research will consider many aspects of adult workers’
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Lisa Wexler's research considers how health and disease are understood and enacted within a social and cultural context. Considering how different people identify, understand and address their "problems" can enable professionals to advocate for meaningful change as well as develop effective intervention projects. Dr. Wexler is particularly interested in learning how situated discourses, attitudes and beliefs, of both
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Brian Whitcomb's research focues on epidemiologic evaluation of the immune system and inflammatory factors in adverse pregnancy outcomes and menstrual cycle function and dysfunction. Using serum samples collected early in gestation from participants in a large study of pregnancy, we have considered levels of a panel of cytokines, including Th1, Th2 and growth factors, comparing cases of miscarriage and
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Sara Whitcomb's research interests include implementation of mental health promotion and positive behavior support efforts in schools, and behavioral and instructional consultation. During her CRF Scholar year, Dr.
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