Research Interns

Kate Charlotin (CAS ’27) is pursuing a joint major in Political Science and Philosophy, with a double major in Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, and a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Guided by a deep commitment to addressing systemic inequalities within her communities, she incorporates her proficiency in Haitian Creole into her academic and research endeavors. Her current research examines how physicians respond to patients’ social determinants of health, with the aim of advancing more equitable approaches in healthcare.  The project: Clinical Practice & Social Determinants of Health (Mentor: Michel Anteby, QST).

Sage Clark (Wheelock ’28) is a sophomore pursuing a major in Education and Human Development with a specialization in Youth Justice & Advocacy. He is a Questbridge Match Scholarship recipient from Sioux Falls, South Dakota and is on the Pre-Law track interested in educational policy and juvenile justice. As a first-generation, Indigenous college student with a lived experience in the American foster system, Sage has dedicated his academic career to understanding the school-to-prison-to-pipeline and its impact on the unjust incarceration of adolescents. Sage is working with Professor of Political Science, Spencer Piston hoping to better understand the complexities of alternative crisis response and its possible implications in communities of color. The project:   (Mentor: Michel Anteby, QST). The project: Organizational and everyday successes and challenges of alternative crisis response (Mentor: Spencer Piston, CAS/Political Science).

Cate Rosa (CAS ’26) is a senior studying Environmental Analysis & Policy with a minor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is a pre-law candidate interested in family dynamics and how they are affected by the legal system, particularly the impact of the incarceration of mothers. Since January, Cate has been working with Professor of Sociology Nazli Kibria on the Global Siblings & Inequalities Project. Her research within the project now focuses on assessments of inheritance distributions and seeks to better understand how our cultural and familial frameworks of fairness and equality are shaped. The project: A Fair Inheritance? Adult siblings and the distribution of inherited assets (Mentor: Nazli Kibria, CAS/Sociology).

Tania Torres (CAS ‘27) is a junior pursuing a double major in Sociology and English. Her personal experiences growing up in low-income communities in California’s Bay Area center her commitment to analyzing how positive education experiences can be a liberating site for marginalized communities. Her research interests are focused on experiences around education as they intersect with access to housing and urban development. Tania also focuses her research on the analysis of political and historical trends in Latin America within the 20th century and their relation to the development of Latinx communities in the United States. In addition, she is interested in seeing how these transnational experiences are expressed in literature. She will be working with Professor Schmidt to study the housing experiences of Latinx immigrants in Los Angeles, and is extremely excited to be able to learn more about Urban Sociology as a field. The project: Examining the Causes and Consequences of Renter Immobility in Los Angeles (Mentor: Steven Schmidt (CAS/Sociology).

Jessica Wu (CAS ’27) is a junior majoring in Psychology and Sociology on the pre-law track with minors in Deaf Studies and Urban Studies. She is from Denver, Colorado, and enjoys beekeeping, along with visiting museums. She is passionate about pursuing criminal justice law with the hopes of influencing a chain reaction within the justice system and truncating the effects of generational incarceration. She is excited to participate in this internship program to learn more about the research process and improve her skills while also acquiring new ones. The project: Witnessing Birth: Women of color and the labor of birth work (Mentor: Celeste Curington, CAS/Sociology).

Yijun “Betty” Xie (CAS ‘26) is a senior from Cincinnati, OH, majoring in Biological Anthropology with a minor in Archaeology. She is interested in the ways that human remains can reveal critical stories about past lives and practices, especially in ways historical and systemic violence has and continues to impact treatment, care, teaching, and curation across classrooms, labs, and museum spaces. This year she will be taking part in the Anthropology Teaching Collection Curation Project (ATCCP) under Dr. Andreana Cunningham, where she will be contributing to an inventory of human remains and other biological material in efforts to create a more accessible and ethical process of care and use in teaching and curation. She will also be researching possibilities of phasing out unethically sourced human remains in teaching collections through creating hand-sculpted osteological models in conjunction with her honors thesis. The project: Anthropology Teaching Collection Curation Project (ATCCP) (Mentor: Andreana Cunningham, CAS/Archaeology).