Learn about the latest books, journal articles, and reports of BU social scientists here.

The Center’s mission is to promote the work of Boston University’s social science faculty and our affiliates. If you have or know of someone who has a new publication, please email us at ciss@bu.edu.

Nazli Kibria (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Making Sense Of Sibling Economic Gaps: Racialized Meritocratic Frames, Economic Inequalities, and Family Relationships (American Journal of Cultural Sociology, December 2024) Kibria and her co-author look at how economically divergent siblings in the United States make sense of their economic gaps, highlighting family relationships as an arena in which economic inequalities are experienced and negotiated. Drawing on over sixty in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample of predominantly middle-class persons who report themselves to be in better economic circumstances than their sibling(s), we examine “sibling difference stories,” or siblings’ explanatory accounts of their economic divergence.
Kathleen Forste (CAS/Archaeology) Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland (The University of Alabama Press, Ethnobiology Letters, December 2024) In this book review, Forste examines three goals for in Fritz’ book: to “highlight the biologically diverse agricultural system” in place at Cahokia during the early second millennium AD and its development; to “examine the possible roles played by farmers” across the social hierarchy in producing and preparing food; and to present the archaeological evidence for agriculture and subsistence at Cahokia in a “comprehensible and… interesting” manner for the general public (p. 4–5). Forste shares her perspectives mainly on her third goal and highlight the pedagogical value of excerpts from this book as a deep learning tool for college students, and as a source of inspiration for developing paleoethnobotanical exercises in college courses.
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) The Effect Of A Veterans Affairs Rapid Rehousing and Homelessness Prevention Program On Long-Term Housing Instability (Health Services Research, December 2024) Byrne and his co-authors analyzed data from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) electronic health record (EHR) between October 2015 and December 2018 using the target trial emulation framework. Veterans were included in one or more trials if they were 18 years or older, had recent evidence of housing instability, had received care in VA for at least 1 year, and had never before enrolled in SSVF. The authors extracted patients’ housing outcomes from the EHR and modeled the probability of being unstably housed each day while accounting for confounders and irregular visit times.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS director) Global Assessments of End-of-Life Care: How Are These Care Measures Patterned By Proxy Relationship To Decedent? (Innovation in Aging, December 2024) A “good death” is one in which the patient’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are met, they are treated with dignity and respect by health care providers, and treatment preferences are honored. Carr and her co-authors use 13 waves of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), and polychoric factor analysis and multinomial and logistic regressions to identify the contributions of 10 specific dimensions of end-of-life care to overall quality of care evaluations, and how these assessments are affected by the proxy’s relationship to the decedent, after controlling for socio-demographic and health characteristics of decedents.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS director) Chinese Older Adults’ Preferences For Involvement In End-of-Life Care Decisions: Causes and Outcomes (Innovation in Aging, December 2024) Understanding the end-of-life decision making styles of Chinese older adults is an important goal, especially against a backdrop of global population aging. Guided by the Shared Decision-making framework, Carr and her co-authors use data from 571 adults ages 50+ in Shanghai, China to develop statistically and conceptually distinct profiles of shared, delegated, and autonomous end-of-life decision making; and identify the psychosocial and health correlates of these profiles, and the impact of profile type on advance care planning.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS director) A Novel Time Use Approach On Successful Aging: Racial and Gender Disparities In Daily Productive Engagement (Innovation in Aging, December 2024) Productive engagement (PE) represents a potential pathway toward successful aging (SA). Using time diary data, this study explored how U.S. older adults structure their daily lives in different productive roles, the impacts of these roles on one specific dimension of SA (self-rated health), and the extent to which these patterns differ by race and gender.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS director) Marital Status and Quality of End-of-Life Experiences Among Older US Adults (Innovation in Aging, December 2024) Understanding the quality of end-of-life experiences is a critical goal, because many older adults experience discomfort or care discordant with their preferences at the end of life. While extensive research documents the protective effects of marriage for health, we know of no studies focusing specifically on marital status differences in end-of-life well-being and care. Carr and her co-authors examine the extent to which marital status (married, remarried, divorced, widowed, never married) affects end-of-life physical and emotional well-being, quality of care, and dignified care, and whether these associations differ by gender.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS director) Social Contexts And Well-Being In Aging: Exploring Neighborhood Environment, Networks, Family Dynamics, And Loneliness (Innovation in Aging, December 2024) The five papers presented in this symposium utilize data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) to investigate the impact of social context, encompassing neighborhood environment, social networks, family dynamics, and social isolation, on health and well-being in later life.
Hyeouk Chris Hahm (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Anti-Racist and Inclusive Mentoring in Social Work Doctoral Education (Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, December 2024) Doctoral social work education is challenged to revisit how we mentor the next generation of social work scholars to decolonize and de-center whiteness in social work research, education, and practice. The Anti-Racist & Inclusive Mentoring Model highlights the importance of an interconnected and coordinated effort at multi-levels to create sustainable and impactful mentorship embedded in individual, interpersonal and system changes at school and institutional levels. In addition to doctoral education, the mentoring model will have useful implications for mentoring social work students at undergraduate and graduate levels.
John Thornton (CAS/History & African American and Black Diaspora Studies) Mwene Muji: A Medieval Empire in Central Africa? (The Journal of African History, September 2024) Although the Lower Kasai was identified by Jan Vansina as a likely center for highly complex societies, he failed to recognize that sixteenth-century sources had mentioned the Empire of Mwene Muji as a large polity in that region. Studying the well known and recently discovered literature on West Central Africa, as well as a critical study of oral tradition, shows considerable evidence for the antiquity and existence of Mwene Muji.
John Thornton (CAS/History & African American and Black Diaspora Studies) How Jesus became Black: Kongo’s Discovery of its Role in the Creation and Nativity Stories (Journal of Early Modern History, August 2024) The Kingdom of Kongo is notable for its conversion to Christianity in the late fifteenth century and as continuing as a Christian country for the rest of its independent existence. Its conversion and the propagation and maintenance are widely believed to be the work of foreign missionaries, disrupted by a nationalist reconception of Christian history by D Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a prophetess possessed by Saint Anthony in 1704. New documentary discoveries force a new understanding of this process, placing emphasis on the reworking of the Creation and Nativity as taking place in Kongo, not with D Beatriz’ possessed statements in the eighteenth century, but in the sixteenth century at the hands of Kongolese intellectuals and school masters reworking European written source material, such as the Black Madonna at the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and maps of the Garden of Eden.
Leping Wang (CAS/Sociology & Graduate Affiliate) Human Capital and the Upward Occupational Mobility of Rural Migrant Workers in China (Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, December 2024) This study contributes understanding to the mobility and stratification literature by: 1) distinguishing between four human capital factors including formal education, professional training, certificates, and foreign language proficiency, and revealing the heterogeneity in their relationship with upward mobility; 2) providing an innovative empirical approach to understand the relationship between human capital and occupational mobility that accounts for the origin and destination occupations of mobility; 3) contributing a life course perspective by revealing the link between origin and destination occupations, between education and employment, between the younger and older cohort, and between structural barriers (or incentives) and individual agency for human capital investment.
Wade Campbell (CAS/Anthropology & CISS Affiliate) Rethinking Early Diné Weaving History in the Four Corners through an Archaeological Lens (Museum of New Mexico Press, Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, July 2024) Over the past century, most discussions about the history of Diné weaving in the American Southwest have approached the topic through the analysis of textiles themselves. Such a focus makes sense, as readily appreciated shifts in Diné blanket designs chart a “Classic–Transitional–Modern” typological progression that mirrors key economic and political developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Diné life. Furthermore, close examinations of these objects can shed light on a variety of sociocultural considerations that are literally woven into the very fabric of Diné society past and present, including traditional teaching/learning systems and conceptions of value and hozho (“beauty”).
Claudia Andersen (CAS/Sociology & Postdoctoral Affiliate) Poor Mental Health as Cause and/or Consequence of Restrictive Housing (Criminal Justice and Behavior, December 2024) Andersen and her co-authors conducted within-person analyses of changes to both mental health and the odds of segregation to determine whether these effects are bidirectional within the same sample. Between-person analyses of mental health effects on segregation were also performed for comparison to prior studies. Within-person analyses revealed lower odds of placement in administrative segregation for individuals with declining mental health during their sentence and no significant segregation effects on subsequent mental health. Between-person analyses indicated higher odds of placement in disciplinary segregation within the first year of confinement for persons with poorer mental health at prison intake.
Cheryl Knott (CAS/Anthropology) Assessing the Impact of Environmental Education in a Critical Orangutan Landscape in West Kalimantan, Indonesia (Folia Primatologica, December 2024) Knott and her co-authors review the effectiveness of Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program (GPOCP) environmental education initiatives in Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP) and the surrounding region in West Kalimantan, Indonesia which host a significant population of Critically Endangered Bornean orangutans. The authors analyze data from standardized pre- and post-activity surveys administered to students participating in puppet shows and lectures and found that education resulted in a substantial increase in knowledge and positive shifts in attitudes toward orangutan conservation among students.
Wade Campbell (CAS/Anthropology & CISS Affiliate) Microbotanical Starch Analysis as a Tool for Indigenous Foodways Research: An Early Navajo Case Study from the U.S. Southwest (Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, December 2024) In this paper, Campbell and his co-authors report the results of a starch-focused analysis of ceramic sherds and groundstone tools recovered from the surface of a Gobernador Phase (c.1625–1760 CE) Diné (Navajo) habitation site in northwest New Mexico. Microremains evidence for a variety of early Navajo food preparation techniques is discussed in conjunction with ethnohistoric studies of Diné foodways and the ongoing food sovereignty movement in Indigenous communities.
Nicolette Manglos-Weber (STH/Religion and Society & CISS Affiliate) Constructing Moral Autonomy: Ugandan Development Leaders between Donor Power and Public Mistrust (Sociology of Development, November 2024) This study analyzes how local development leaders in Uganda navigate and evaluate the moral ambiguities of their work, as they are situated between the demands of donor-driven development systems and their communities’ growing mistrust of foreign aid. Using 54 context-rich interviews with development professionals in the central region of the country, Manglos-Weber analyzes the reflexive-constructive moral work they engage in to describe their activity; and she shows how they construct a sense of their own moral autonomy by working across institutional sectors, diversifying funding sources, and framing their activities in personal and relational terms.
Taylor Boas (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate) Dynastic Partisanship: Oligarchic Political Competition in Brazil(Research Council of Norway, November 2024) In this paper, Boas and his co-authors argue that patrimonialism can function similarly to modern partisanship in terms of structuring robust competition between opposing political factions and influencing voting behavior. Leveraging original kinship data on mayoral candidates in Brazil, they show that many municipalities are characterized by robust competition between two or more family- based political groups. The results underscore that partisan-like competition and voting behavior can emerge even in places that present seemingly unfavorable conditions for party politics.
Anne G. Short Gianotti (CAS/Earth & Environment & CISS Affiliate) Climate Change and Municipal Finance: Ordinary Innovations for Just Urban Transitions (Urban Studies, November 2024) Gianotti and her co-authors use the USA as a case study to analyse the impacts of climate change and climate action on municipal budgets and to examine how cities are adapting their financial tools and practices to advance climate action and climate justice efforts. They employ a mixed-methods research design that combines 34 expert interviews with a systematic content analysis of municipal budgets from 15 US cities of different sizes. They find that both climate change and climate action can contribute to cities’ fiscal vulnerability by imposing additional expenditures and/or reducing municipal revenues.
Robert Grace (CAS/Political Science) Guest Editorial: Complex Disasters, Complex Solutions: Advancing Inclusive Governance And Decolonization In Southeast Asia (Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal, November 2024) Grace and his co-authors contribute to this edition’s introductory editorial discussing how this special issue of Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal examines the complexity of disaster governance in the Southeast Asian region. This special issue builds upon insights from two international seminar workshops that were held in December 2022 and October 2023 to discuss the experiences and challenges of disaster governance in Southeast Asia.
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Testing Implementation Support Strategies To Facilitate An Evidence-Based Substance Use And Mental Health Care Intervention In Veterans Treatment Courts: A Hybrid Type III Trial Protocol (The European Journal of Psychiatry, November 2024) Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) are alternative to incarceration programs for veterans involved in the criminal legal system. VTC participants have high rates of co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (COD). Maintaining Independence and Sobriety Through Systems Integration, Outreach and Networking – Criminal Justice (MISSIONsingle bondCJ) is an evidence-based, multicomponent intervention offered alongside VTCs to support veterans’ complex needs. This protocol offers an overview of an implementation-effectiveness trial of MISSIONsingle bondCJ in VTCs.
Aarti Bodas (GRS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate) &Deborah Kelemen (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate) The Impact Of Children’s Attitudes Towards Learning And Conceptions Of Science On Learning About Evolution By Natural Selection Through A Classroom-Based Storybook Curriculum (Center for Open Science, November 2024) This paper asks whether US third graders’ attitudes towards learning (i.e., their science identity and growth mindset), and their conceptual understanding of science, influences their learning about evolution by natural selection, a counterintuitive topic that many people—including adults— notoriously find difficult to learn (Gregory, 2009). It also explores whether engaging with two versions of a challenging explanation-based investigative science curriculum changes third graders’ attitudes towards, and conceptions of, science.
Andrew Stokes (SPH/Global Health & CISS Affiliate) Association of Cigarette–E-Cigarette Transitions With Respiratory Symptom Resolution (Nicotine & TobaccoResearch, November 2024) Adults increasingly use e-cigarettes for cigarette cessation because of the perceived reduced risk. Stokes and his co-authors find that e-cigarette-assisted smoking cessation may increase rates of respiratory symptoms resolution among smokers who completely transition to e-cigarettes; however, there is risk for additional harm among those who initiate e-cigarette use without decreasing their smoking intensity.
Danielle Rousseau (MET & CISS Affiliate) Examining The Effects Of A Trauma-Informed Yoga Curriculum On Incarcerated Individuals (Criminal Justice Studies, November 2024) This study explores the effects of a trauma-informed yoga (TIY) curriculum offered by Yoga 4 Change to individuals who were incarcerated. Utilizing data from the Yoga 4 Change organization, Rousseau and her co-authors capture the internal changes of individuals participating in a six-week TIY curriculum built on the knowledge of trauma.
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Life Shocks And Self-Perceived Risk Of Housing Loss Among Low-Income Individuals (Housing, Care and Support, November 2024) In this study, Byrne and his co-researchers aim to describe the self-perceived risk of housing loss among low-income individuals in the context of four potential life shocks and examines whether individuals’ social and economic resources are protective against self-perceived risk of housing loss in the context of these life shocks.
Zachary Rossetti (WED/Special Education & CISS Affiliate) Examining Family Testimonials for the Reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (Journal of Disability Policy Studies, November 2024) Rossetti and his co-authors explore possible solutions to how the last reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) where families of individuals with disabilities provided less than 4% of the public comments. Given that families are equal partners in the decision-making process for students with disabilities, it is critical to understand their suggestions for IDEA. In the conducted study of 65 such families, participants suggested strengthening existing IDEA provisions, increasing federal funding of special education, addressing personnel issues in special education, improving accountability, and increasing family knowledge and empowerment.
Stuti Das (GRS’25) Immigration Policy is Health Policy: Confronting the Health Costs of Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric (Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, November 2024) In this invited blog post, Das urges readers to recognize that immigration policy is, without a doubt, health policy, and the well-being of immigrant communities is deeply connected to the health of the broader population. Addressing the unique challenges many immigrants face—such as limited healthcare access, unmet mental health needs, and the effects of structural racism—is not only an ethical obligation but also essential for the well-being of society as a whole. Ultimately, migrant health is public health, and only through inclusive, compassionate policies can we achieve the goal of health for all.
Frank Korom (CAS/Anthropology) How a New Sufi Movement Globalized (Current History, November 2024) When a charismatic Sri Lankan holy man moved to Philadelphia in the early 1970s and set up a new branch of his movement, he began a process of adaptation to the North American context that has continued since his death. Within the new Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, adherents in favor of a more liberal style of worship have clashed with a stricter official interpretation of the founder’s views on Islamic requirements, while relations with the original Sri Lankan organization have also experienced frictions. The history of the fellowship is a case study in how the globalization of religion results in heterogeneous versions of a common faith.
Quinn Slobodian (Pardee/International History) Time Zones (Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, October 2024) In this response to the forum, Slobodian argues that if we think of zones not so much as spatial zones but as time zones, a new way of understanding the pixelated decentralization of politics comes into view. By explicit intention, the zone is designed to punch people out of a shared horizon or a space of capture in the quintessentially modern metrics of per capita growth or standard of living. While offering peculiar usable pasts often related to creative not to say anachronistic understandings of indigenous politics, the zone is also a better iconic scale for the end of history in the grand sense than the nation or even the world in its sloughing off the injunctions of mass politics and popular sovereignty.
Jessica Hlay (GRS/Anthropology & CISS Affiliate) A Psychometric Evaluation of the Tend-and-Befriend Questionnaire (Journal of Personality Assessment, October 2024) Hlay and her colleagues examine the Tend-and-Befriend Questionnaire (TBQ) which measures self-reported individual differences in the use of fight, flight, tend, and befriend as stress responses. Using the TBQ-Short Form (TBQ-SF), the authors evaluate the claim that women use tend-and-befriend more than men. While men do report more fighting than women, both men and women report use tending and befriending more than fighting or fleeing. While the TBQ-SF does capture differences in stress reactions (fight, flight, tend/befriend), the authors suggest that the scale is most reliable in measuring overall stress reactivity.
Pratyusha Tummala-Narra (CAS/Psychological & Brain Studies) A Qualitative Exploration of Muslim American College Students’ Experiences of Discrimination and Coping (American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, October 2024) Tummala-Narra and her colleagues sought to understand how 1.5- and second-generation immigrant-origin Muslim American college students (a) experience discrimination, (b) describe the emotional impacts of discrimination, and (c) cope with discrimination considering how a majority of Muslim American college students have grown up exclusively within a post-9/11 climate of surveillance and discrimination. Recent events such as the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” and the Palestinian genocide have led to additional spikes in Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim Americans. Findings indicated that discrimination experienced by Muslim American college students is chronic, pervasive, and intersectional.
Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS Director) A Novel Time Use Approach on Daily Active Engagement with Life: The Intersectionality of Race and Gender (The Gerontologist, October 2024) Carr and her co-authors identify active engagement with life (AE) as an integral aspect of successful aging. Using time diary data, this study explored how U.S. older adults structure their daily lives involving social participation and productive engagement, and the extent to which these patterns differ by race and gender. Carr and her co-authors found that the association between AE and self-rated health varies by race and gender. Persistent structural barriers may prevent older adults from historically minoritized backgrounds, particularly Black women, from benefiting from AE.
Michele DeBiasse (Sargent & CISS Affiliate) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Dietetics Profession: Past, Present, and Ways Forward (Elsevier Academic Press, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Healthcare: From Knowledge to Practice, October 2024) DeBiasse’s chapter in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Healthcare: From Knowledge to Practice explores the field of dietetics in relation to the future of incorporating DEI practices into healthcare services. Each chapter of this book is dedicated to a health profession and is authored by an expert in EDI and workforce diversity in their respective discipline (such as medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and so on). 
Benjamin Siegel (CAS/History & CISS Affiliate) Thomas B. Robertson and Jenny Leigh Smith (eds.), Transplanting Modernity: The Environmental Legacy of International Development (Book Review) (The British Journal for the History of Science, October 2024) Siegel explores this book’s editors seek to remind readers that the hubris of twentieth-century development planners’ core conceit of remaking the world has been a central theme in the recent historiography of global politics and how Transplanting Modernity – its title suggestive of the grafting of new tissue onto old rootstock – offers nine varied and strong interventions aimed at reintroducing the environment into a historiography that has often treated questions of political ecology as an afterthought.
Alexis Peri (CAS/History & CISS Affiliate) Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women (Harvard University Press, October 2024) In the tense years of WWII and the early Cold War, hundreds of American and Soviet women took up a remarkable pen-pal correspondence that enabled them to see each other as friends rather than enemies. Previously unexamined, these letters movingly demonstrate the power of the personal, as the pen pals engaged in a “diplomacy of the heart” that led them to question why their countries were so divided. The correspondence also inspired them individually to reexamine their own societies and lives through a critical lens.
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Retaining Hud-Vash Housing: Differences in Housing Exits Among Unsheltered and Sheltered Veterans (Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, September 2024) Bryne finds that veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness had higher risk of exiting U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-Veteran Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) housing compared to sheltered veterans.
Dilip Mookherjee (CAS/Economics & CISS Affiliate) Misallocating Misallocation? (London School of Economics, September 2024) Mookherjee and his co-author study an integral aspect of macro-development literature on misallocation and identify the source of productive misallocation in any given setting: policy distortions per se rather than underlying market failures.
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Mosquito‐Borne Disease among Individuals Experiencing Homelessness in the United States: A Literature Review (Preprints, October 2024) Byrne and his co-authors compile a comprehensive literature review of the disproportionate vulnerability of individuals experiencing homelessness to contract mosquito-borne illnesses and they argue for the developing of policies aimed at providing homeless populations with housing during mosquito-borne disease outbreaks to protect this population and promote health equity
Timothy Longman (Pardee & CISS Affiliate) The Weakness of Authoritarian Regimes: Rwanda as a Difficult But Convincing Case (Political Science Quarterly, October 2024) Longman examines Marie-Eve Desrosiers’ book “Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda: Elusive Control before the Genocide” and analyzes different central points within the text including Desrosier’s argument on greater awareness of shifting strategies and changes in governance across time, what she calls “authoritarian trajectories,” to better understand how authoritarian regimes actually work and how the public responds to them.
Alice Cronin-Golomb (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate), Bridget A. Logan (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate), Sandy Neargarder (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate), Shraddha B. Kinger (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate), Amie K. Larum (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate) Robert D. Salazar (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate) Self-Perceived Stigma in Parkinson’s Disease in an Online Sample: Comparison with In-Person Sample, Role of Anxiety, and Relative Utility of Four Measures of Stigma Perception (Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, February 2024) Cronin-Golomb and her coauthors investigate whether online assessment would replicate in-person findings of younger age and depression as predictors of stigma perception. We further assessed the predictive value of anxiety, and compared predictors across four stigma measures.
Michele DeBiasse (Sargent & CISS Affiliate) and Jesse D. Moreira-Bouchard (Sargent), Sophie Godley (SPH) LGBTQ+ Faculty, Queering Health Sciences Classrooms: Student Perspectives (Advances in Physiology Education, February 2024) DeBiasse and her colleagues suggest a positive effect on student sense of belonging, and therefore student retention, when faculty authenticity and intentionality create inclusive classroom environments in the health sciences.
Cathie Jo Martin (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate) Theorization and Causality (Oxford University Press, Doing Good Qualitative Research, February 2024) In this chapter, Martin offers an example of how qualitative methods help us to perform important tasks of research, from design to theoretical development to assessments of causality.
Judith Gonyea (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Low-Income Residents of Inclusionary Housing Face More Bias (HUD User- Bringing Housing and Community Research Home to You, February 2024)
Gonyea and her colleagues discover how Cambridge residents of affordable units in inclusionary housing properties reported frequently experiencing bias, especially from management and discuss how that might be changed.
H. Denis Wu (COM/Mass Communication & CISS Affiliate) Does World System Theory Rein in Social Media? Identifying Factors Contributing to Country Mentions on X (International Political Science Review, February 2024) Wu and his colleagues examined how social media content has shaped the representation of countries for publics around the world. 
Anne Short Gianotti (CAS/Earth and Environment & CISS Affiliate) Municipal Finance Shapes Urban Climate Action and Justice (Nature Climate Change, February 2024) Short Gianotti and her co-author use US cities as a case study to examine how climate finance impacts, and is impacted by, the pursuit of urban climate action and climate justice.
Timothy Callaghan (SPH/Health Law, Policy, and Management & CISS Affiliate) Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID (Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, February 2024) Callaghan reviews this book by Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sarah Wallace Goodman, and Thomas B. Pepinsky.
Cheryl Knott (CAS/Anthropology) Tropical Field Stations Yield High Conservation Return on Investment (Durham University Research Online, February 2024).  Knott and her colleagues suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value.
Christopher Robertson (LAW & SPH/Health Law, Policy & Management & CISS Affiliate) Should Current Laws Be Revised to Address Occupational Hazards Caused by Hand-Tool Size Mismatch Among Surgeons? (JAMA Surgery, February 2024) Robertson and his co-authors explain why female surgeons may leave their practice early, contributing to shortages of surgeons, especially in gynecology in which female surgeons constitute a larger portion of the workforce.
Ian Sue Wing (CAS/Earth & Environment & CISS Affiliate) The Economics of Power System Transitions (Environmental Economics and Policy, February 2024) Sue Wing and his colleagues discuss ways to design a power system and electricity market that can address this inefficiency.
Dilip Mookherjee (CAS/Economics & CISS Affiliate) Declining Clientelism of Welfare Benefits? Targeting and Political Competition based Evidence from an Indian State (City Research Online, February 2024) Mookherjee and his co-authors fail to find evidence that the new “central” programs introduced after 2014 were better targeted than traditional “state” programs, or that the targeting of state programs improved after 2014. 
Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Temporary Financial Assistance Reduced The Probability Of Unstable Housing Among Veterans For More Than 1 Year (Health Affairs, February 2024) Byrne and his colleagues find that temporary financial assistance rapidly reduced the probability of unstable housing, but the effect attenuated after forty-five days, but suggest  more intervention is needed.
Timothy Callaghan (SPH/Health Law, Policy, and Management & CISS Affiliate) 131. Teen-Parent Dynamics in Adolescent COVID-19 Vaccine Decision-Making: A Qualitative Study (Journal of Adolescent Health, January 2024) Callaghan and his co-authors examine joint and independent adolescent and parental vaccine attitudes needed for evidence-based vaccine promotion efforts.
Andrew Stokes (SPH/Global Health & CISS Affiliate), Dielle J. Lundberg (SPH/Global Health), Zhenwei Zhou (SPH/Biostatistics), Rafeya Raquib (SPH/Global Health), M. Maria Glymour (SPH/Epidemiology) Excess Natural-Cause Mortality in US Counties and Its Association with Reported COVID-19 Deaths (PNAS, January 2024) Stokes and his colleagues support the suggestion that many excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes during the first 30 months of the pandemic in the United States were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths.
Randall P. Ellis (CAS/Economics & CISS Affiliate) Scope and Incentives for Risk Selection in Health Insurance Markets With Regulated Competition: A Conceptual Framework and International Comparison (Medical Care Research and Review 1–20, January 2024) Ellis and his colleagues provides a framework for analyzing the scope (i.e., potential actions by insurers and consumers) and incentives for risk selection in such markets.
Spencer Piston (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate) and Laura Mattioli (CAS/Political Science) The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform: An Analysis of Elite Rhetoric in Four Cities (Journal of Public Policy, January 2024) Piston, Mattioli and their co-authors analyze rhetoric in public statements across four liberal metropolitan areas during the spring and summer of 2020 finding a long-standing discourse of racially paternalist penal welfarism, retrofitted to pandemic times and accompanied by a distinction between “deserving” and “undeserving” criminals.
David Carballo (CAS/Anthropology, Archaeology, & Latin American Studies & CISS Affiliate) Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica (Cambridnge University Press, Elements in Anthropological Archaeology in the 21st Century, January 2024) Carballo recently published a short book in the Cambridge University Press Elements series.
Timothy Callaghan (SPH/Health Law, Policy, and Management & CISS Affiliate) and Matt Motta (SPH/Health Law, Policy, and Management & CISS Affiliate) Quantifying the Prevalence and Determinants of RSV Vaccine Hesitancy in US Adults Aged 60 or Older (SocArXiv ezaur, Center for Open Science, January 2024) Motta and Callaghan, along with their co-authors, find that a majority of seniors (53%) intend to refuse an RSV vaccine. 
Pratyusha Tummala-Narra (CAS/Psychological & Brain Studies) Racial Socialization Experiences Among 1.5 and 2nd Generation Indian Americans (The Counseling Psychologist, January 2024) Tummala-Narra and her colleagues underscore underscore how the minimization of racism within and outside of Indian American contexts, a colonial mentality transmitted intergenerationally, and negative impacts of casteism, sexism, and racism may influence one’s racial consciousness and racial socialization. 
Andrew C. Stokes (SPH/Global Health & CISS Affiliate) Electronic Cigarette Use and Chest Pain in US Adults: Evidence from the PATH Study (Tobacco Induced Diseases, January 2024) Stokes and his colleagues examine the association of self-reported chest pain with multiple cigarette and e-cigarette use patterns.
Cynthia Becker (CAS/African American & Black Diaspora Studies) The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors (Routledge Press, Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African Art, January 2024) In this chapter, Becker considers how Africa has been seen and understood in New Orleans in relation to racial politics through the lens of Black Masking Indians. 
Luke Glowacki  (CAS/Anthropology & CISS Affiliate) Author’s response: The Challenge of Peace (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, January 2024) Glowacki replies to commentators who propose how to extend his framework or focus on the cognitive and psychological prerequisites for peace.
Maxwell Palmer (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate) A Dataset of Geocoded Medicaid Office Locations in the United States (Data In Brief, January 2024) Palmer and his co-authors identified and geocoded all Medicaid offices in the United States, which can then be paired with other spatial data (e.g., demographics, Medicaid participation, health care use, health outcomes) to explore policy-relevant research questions. 
Zach Rossetti (SED/Special Education & CISS Affiliate) “Not Sure How to Approach Them the Right Way”: Nondisabled Students’ Perspectives on Friendship With Peers With I/DD (Remedial and Special Education, January 2024) Rossetti examines non-disabled students’ perspectives on friendship via four focus group interviews with 44 first to eleventh graders. 
Timothy Callaghan (SPH/Health Law, Policy, and Management & CISS Affiliate) Professional Partisans? Primary Care Physicians, State Governments, and COVID-19 Responsibility and Response (State Politics & Policy Quarterly, January 2024) Callaghan and his colleagues explore primary care physicians’ trust in state government for handling the pandemic, as well as their evaluations of their  state government’s treatment responsibility for the pandemic and their state’s policy response.
Alice Cronin-Golomb (CAS/Psychological and Brain Sciences & CISS Affiliate) The MAPP Room Memory Test: Examining Contextual Memory Using a Novel Computerized Test in Cognitively-Unimpaired Individuals with Autosomal Dominant Alzheimer’s Disease (The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, January 2024) Cronin-Golomb and her colleagues evaluate visuospatial contextual memory finding that that their MAPP Room Memory Test may be sensitive to subtle cognitive changes associated with risk of AD. 
David Manuel Carballo (CAS/Archaeology & CISS Affiliate) Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Elements: Elements in Anthropological Archaeology in the 21st Century, January 2024) Carballo and his coauthor consider a suite of interdisciplinary frameworks for how and why people work together to manage resources, cooperate as groups larger than families, and sustain governing institutions that are relatively trusted and more pluralistic, meaning providing a voice in decision-making to more people. 
Michael Lyons (CAS/Psychological & Brain Studies) Probable Chronic Pain, Brain Structure, and Alzheimer’s Plasma Biomarkers in Older Men (The Journal of Pain, January 2024) Lyons and his co-authors provide one of the first assessments in humans, examining the associations of probable chronic pain with hippocampal volume, integrity of the locus coeruleus (LC)—an upstream site of tau deposition—and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)-related plasma biomarkers. 
Kathleen Corriveau (SED/Applied Human Development & CISS Affiliate), Sona C. Kumar (SED, Applied Human Development), and Amanda S. Haber (SED, Applied Human Development) Exploring How Teachers’ Scientific Questions Differ by Child Gender in a Preschool Classroom(Mind, Brain and Education, January 2024) Corriveau an her colleagues explores differences in messages that preschool teachers send girls and boys about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Catherine Caldwell-Harris (CAS/Psychology & CISS Affiliate) Expanding the Emergentist Account:Reply to Open Peer Commentaries (Brain And Language, January 2024) Caldwell-Harris and her colleague suggest that modern technology can eventually provide data that will better explain how emergentism provides a framework for understanding how language learning processes vary across developmental age and linguistic levels.
Robert W. Hefner (CAS/Anthropology) Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics (Routledge Press, Taylor and Francis Group, January 2024) Hefner examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women’s rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have coevolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging.