This page showcases samples of my research, both for reporting and academic projects. Links provided throughout.

Politics & Identity

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Women in Congress

Conducted historical research, co-produced, co-photographed, and wrote for special section on Women of the 116th Congress for The New York Times.

Pitched, researched, and co-photographed The Women of the 116th Congress, which included portraits of 130 out of 131 women members of Congress, shot in the style of historical portrait paintings. The story ran as a special section featuring 27 different covers, each featuring a different local woman member of Congress that varied depending on where that version of the paper was printed and distributed, It was subsequently published as a book by Abrams Books with a foreword by Roxane Gay.

Researched focused on the history of women’s involvement in politics in the United States, focusing specifically on women’s membership in Congress, including biographies of historic women members of Congress. Elicited quotes from the offices of 130 of the women serving in the 116th Congress, and wrote introduction essay to special section and book.

I spoke with Beth Flynn about the making of the project on the Vision Slightly Blurred podcast and with Marisa Schwartz Taylor at Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies webinar series, and about the visual approach and style at the Shaping an Image: Political Women in History and Today lecture, presented by The Getty Museum.

Below: Timeline major moments from women in American politics, created for the book.

Below: Tearsheets from the Women of the 116th Congress special section.

Collaborators: Marisa Schwartz Taylor, Beth Flynn, Celeste Sloman, Jane Mitchell, Rumsey Taylor, Josh Williams, Fred Bierman, Tom Jolly, Wayne Kamidoi, Andrew Sondern, Kelly Doe.

Survey of Congressional Staffers on Gender Dynamics at Work

Conducted online survey of congressional staffers to examine why women congressional staffers were more likely to advance to top positions in offices led by women compared to those led by men.

This work examines how gendered networks operate at a micro-level in the U.S. Congress. To conduct the survey-based research, we compiled a list of 10,000 current staff members using the standard House and Senate email structures and publicly-available staff directories. We distributed the survey to this full list, and were able to reach roughly 7,000 staffers, as indicated by the number of bounced emails and auto-replies received. Respondents were linked to their boss’s office to conduct the analysis.

With 228 responses, the survey more than doubled prior academic surveys of staffers run in the past. Results suggested that women staffers are less likely to have face time with male members of Congress. Among staffers who are working in offices led by men, women are significantly less likely to report directly working or traveling on a weekly basis with the member who employs them. With less contact, women may be in a less advantageous position to receive a promotion.

Collaborator: Neil O’Brian.

The Politics of History Textbooks

Conductive extensive archival research to examine how contemporary politics shape state-sanctioned narratives of the past, focusing specifically on official narratives in textbooks.

This area of research includes two projects, both of which involve extensive archival research and fieldwork. The first examines how the events of September 11th, 2001 are recounted in high school history textbooks worldwide. I created a dataset of digitized passages from over 850 textbooks from over 90 countries. This research informed reporting for a New York Times interactive story on how students are taught about 9/11 in 12 different countries.

The second project examines how narratives of the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh have been written and revised in the country’s social science textbooks from independence to the present. I created a dataset of digitized passages from over 150 Bangladeshi textbooks from 1971 to the present, conducted 100 semi-structured interviews with educators and political elites, and carried out 30 school visits with classroom observations across Bangladesh’s seven districts.

Below: Pages from digitized textbooks with narratives on 9/11. Click to enlarge; texts are from (in order from left to right, starting from top row) Australia, Botswana, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan, Norway, Papau New Guinea, Slovenia, South Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkmenistan, Ukraine.

Trauma & Politics

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Psychological Trauma and Community Stability

Designed and implemented multi-method dissertation research theorizing and testing how psychological trauma impacts social cohesion in the context of humanitarian crises.

My dissertation research, Individual Trauma, Collective Stability, theorizes and examines how the psychological implications of living through humanitarian crises affect social cohesion. I present the theory of psychological foundations of social cohesion, which posits that individuals' adverse responses to trauma exposure, manifest as psychological distress, lead to changes in social cohesion outcomes.

The primary test of the theory uses an original panel dataset gathered via a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the efficacy of The Field Guide for Barefoot Psychologists, a novel psychoeducational program designed to improve emotion regulation and reduce psychological distress among Syrian refugees living in Za'atari Refugee Camp in Jordan. The study, conducted in collaboration with Beyond Conflict, The New School, and The Ford Foundation, provides evidence for the theory that interventions designed to improve individual psychological well-being may have secondary improvements on community-relevant factors via the theorized relationship between psychological distress and social cohesion.

This work received the 2023 Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association, Political Psychology Section. Full dissertation available here, and a working paper featuring the main empirical test of the theory is available here. I’ve also spoken about the research on the Talking Policy Podcast and with the Educators for Human Rights Institute.

Collaborators: Vivian Khedari, Michael Niconchuk, Sarah Beranbaum, Biz Herman, Zakarya Alkareem, Basma Jaber, and Wendy D’Andrea.

Women in Conflict

Conducted multi-year multi

This project draws on a dataset of 120 semi-structured interviews that I have completed with women who have engaged in various roles in modern conflicts across the globe. Conflict narratives of women — a population who are often excluded from official remembrances — allow for a test of how individual attitudes toward collective stability are affected when a person’s experience is excluded form official remembrances. This work will result in a solo authored paper and the release of the deidentified dataset of the interviews.

The project has expanded to examine the history of women in conflict, examining both how written have been featured in historical accounts of war, and in identifying women who have been omitted from narratives in the past.

Below: Newspaper clippings from archival research, picturing Alice S. Burke and Nell Richardson.

Below: Images and video clips from the project. Hover over images for caption information, including excerpts from interviews.

Katerina Kaltak. Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

“Literally, we left our school desks to join the army. I was 16 when I joined the Medical Corps. The fact is that being women in the army, we had to prove ourselves. There, we were surrounded by friends from before the war. Unfortunately, with time, some of those friendships disappeared along with our friends.”

— Katerina Kaltak joined the Bosnian Army Medical Corps at 16 with her older sister, Kristina Mujak. They enlisted after their younger sister, who was eleven at the time, was killed by artillery fire in July 1992.

Sunset. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

As seen from the hills surrounding the city, where Serbian snipers were positioned during the Bosnian War.

Võ Thi Yên. Hue, Vietnam, July 2010.

  “Where did we get our strength to keep fighting? We had no choice, we had to work hard in order to liberate our country so we can reunite with our family. I told my children how hard our life was during the war so that they can understand. I tell them that even though we had a difficult time during the war, we overcame, so that they too should overcome difficulty and study well to develop their character. To study well so you can help other people, help the society, help the family.”

— Võ Thi Yên, born 1949, was a member of the North Vietnamese Army.

Dževada Trešnjo. Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 2012.

  “When the war started, I hoped all time that it wasn’t real, that the passions would settle down and everything would go back to normal. However, as it continued, I felt that it was going to last forever. But now, the hard memories from the war are gone. As soon as you realize that you have to proceed with your life, then you learn how to deal with these hard memories.”

— Dževada Trešnjo, born 1964 in Foca. Served in the Bosnian Army Medical Corps, lost her hand while trying to protect a young boy who had been wounded by enemy fire.

S. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

“I don’t talk with my mother so much about these things, I don’t know why. I think it’s really hard for us to talk freely about it. The kids of Bosnia should never forget what has happened because if they forget, it might happen again. Yet now, the way our generation remembers the war is just not enough.”

— S, who wished to remain anonymous, is the daughter of a Bosnian Muslim woman from Srebrenica who married at 14 and became pregnant with S just as the war was beginning. S’s father was killed in the Srebrenica massacre shortly after she was born. Her mother remarried to an Imam; they now live outside Sarajevo.

Prayers. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

At a mosque where a number of the members are women who were displaced from Srebrenica during the war.

Mary Doyle. Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2012.

  “[Women] reared the children, had to go out and get a job to put food on the table. They went on the marches. You know, there’s thousands of women like them, women you’ve have never heard of. It was just the norm to them. They didn’t want to be put on a pedestal. It was just normal for them to do...they became very strong, very independent women.”

— Mary Doyle, a member of the Irish Republican Army and one of three women to participate in the 1980 Hunger Strike while imprisoned at Armagh Prison on charges of harboring incendiary devices.

Anonymous. Cairo, Egypt, May 2012.

  A street child, who wished to remain anonymous, was raped during protests in Tahrir following the fall of Mubarak.

Aya Mohsen. Cairo, Egypt, May 2012.

Aya Mohsen, 14 is highly active on Twitter, frequently posting critiques of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces. She often engages in political debates at home with her parents, both of who have served in the military, yet who encourage their daughter to think for herself, even if it means defying what they believe.

Election Day. Cairo, Egypt, May 2012.

Protests on election day in Taalat Square.

Nura Osmanović. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

  Nura Osmanović, 61, is one of a group of women who are originally from Srebrenica, but are currently living just outside Sarajevo. The women fled Srebrenica during the massacre in July 1995, never to return to their homes, which were subsequently destroyed or occupied by Serb forces.

Hasina Begum. Sirajganj, Bangladesh, August 2011.

"I do not know why some are called mukti juddha but we are called birangona...I used to care for and serve food to other freedom fighters when they would come to our house. Why are we not freedom fighters, too?”

— Hasina Begum was raped by the West Pakistani army during the Liberation War. After the war, women who were raped were given the honorific term birangona (war heroine), which soon became a mark of shame as many women were rejected by their families. Hasina has pushed back against the social stigma associated with rape, maintaining birangonas should be called mukti juddha (freedom fighters), like those who fought.

Forty Years Later. Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 2011.

Fortieth anniversary memorial service of the Liberation War at the Shahid Minar (Language Martyrs' Memorial) at Dhaka University.

Dalia Nausheen. Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 2011.

"I sang for the soldiers. Before they would take the field for battle, me and the others girls would gather together and sing to them songs of freedom. Then they would go and fight for our liberation."

— Dalia Nausheen, a singer, traveled around to Freedom Fighter and refugee camps in India, singing songs of freedom for the women and men training for the war, providing support, and sheltering themselves and their families.

Haunted / Hunted. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

A dog emerges from the brush where the frontlines were during the Bosnian War, where Serbian troops surrounded and beseiged the city of Sarajevo.

Abla Farok Ahmed. Cairo, Egypt, October 2011.  

A mother of 5, Abla Farok Ahmed was never active in politics. But when her son was arrested on false grounds at a protest where he had gone to search for his younger brother, she started attending protests to see if she could find details on his whereabouts. She soon discovered he was being detained and tortured at a military detention center outside Cairo. When she located him, he had already faced trial and been found guilty on fabricated charges. With the help of No Military Trials for Civilians, she is pressuring for an appeal. She is also organizing other mothers—now 700 strong—to protest against military trials.

Bronagh Hinds. Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2012.

“I used to walk across what was called Murder Mile during the height of the troubles to get home from my university classes.”

— Bronagh Hinds, founder of DemocraShe and a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition during the Peace Talks following the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Anđelka Knežević. East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

“You’ve lived in peace, you’ve grown up in peace, you just couldn’t believe that something like that could ever happen. It was terrible and I wouldn’t wish war upon anyone.”

— Anđelka Knežević, 61 years old. A Bosnian Serb, she came from a family with a number of mixed marriages. She lost her husband of 18 years to the war on April 21, 1992, and afterward fled to Serbia with her children, where she served as a cook in the Serbian Army.

Alija Džananović. Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

“We used to live in poverty, but people were happier. You should never forget it, but you have to live on.”

— Alija Džananović, is a Bosnian Muslim from Srebrenica and one of the first people to return home following the massacre of Bosnian Muslim men that took place in there in July 1995.

The Day's End. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

Youths rest on an old fort in the hills of Sarajevo waiting for sunset and the end of the day's fast during the month of Ramadan.

Milka Kokot. East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

"This year will be the twenty-first year since my brother and father went missing. I am still trying to find them. But I really hate that word — missing. These men had hearts. Hearts that were pounding. They had families...I am not allowed to say the name of my father or speak of his nationality, that he was a Serb. I don’t care about Bosnia or Serbia. My father was born as a Serb and he died a Serb. The same goes for Muslims or Christians."

— Milka Kokot, a Bosnian Serb, lost her father and brother in 1992 during the war and has not been able to find and bury their remains.

Divided. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

A woman of mixed ethnicity in Sarajevo. Families of mixed ethnicities face discrimination and have a significantly more difficult time finding appropriate political representation, as political parties in Bosnia are ethnicity-based.

Diamond Jubilee. Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2012.

A Loyalist house in Belfast.

Sonya Elezar. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovia, August 2012.

Sonya Elezar, a Jewish woman who provided shelter and food to others in the heart of Sarajevo during the war, while the city was under seige.

Ann Marie Quinn. Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2012.

"The troubles had started when I was 10 years old. In 1969 the British Army came on the streets of Belfast and from then on that’s how I knew my life to be. British soldiers arresting people, shooting people, shooting some people dead. So that was life as I knew it when I was 10 years old."

— Ann Marie Quinn, a Catholic Republican, joined the Irish Republican Army when she was in her late teens. She was later imprisoned at Armagh Women’s Prison alongside 32 other women of the IRA.

Memorial. Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

A young girl walks by the memorial to the victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

Hasija Brankovic. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 2012.

"I’m not a closed type of person. What I mean, I say. I have shared everything with my family, but it is hard to share the truth – the real suffering that I went through, that’s hard to share even with my own siblings. I want to tell them some details, because I don’t want this to happen again and I want them to be very well aware and prepared for something that might happen again in the future. There are so many things that I need to speak about."

— Hasija Branković was raped by Serbian soldiers during the war. She testified about her experiences at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague.

Dusk. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012.

Youths play on an old fort in the hills of Sarajevo.

Begum Gulferdous, with granddaughter. Comilla, Bangladesh, August 2011.  

“During the war, I used to hide weapons underneath my sari and bring them to the Freedom Fighters. I would sometimes have to bury them in the middle of the night to hide them from the West Pakistani army.”

— Begum Gulferdous, freedom fighter, pictured with her granddaughter, was one of nine children. She was active in local politics prior to the war, and served as a spy and weapons smuggler after the war broke out.

Shaheen Akhtar. Dhaka, Bangladesh, May 2011.

  Shaheen Akhtar was separated from her mother at the start of the war, as she was visiting her brother outside the city. As thousands fled the city, she worked her way back with her brother to be reunited with her family, walking for days and taking rickshaws whenever possible. When they arrived in the city, they found themselves in the middle of a warzone, and hid out in a family friend's house for the duration of the war. After months of no contact, their mother returned home in the fall of 1971, severely malnourished and weakened after months of hiding. Shaheen is now a prominent Bangladeshi filmmaker.

Comilla, Bangladesh, August 2011.

Road captured by Bangladeshi guerrilla forces.

Battlefield. Kushtia, Bangladesh, March 2011.

Battlefield between West Pakistani and guerrilla forces.

Forty Years Later II. Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 2011.

Fortieth anniversary memorial service of the Liberation War, at the Dhaka University campus.

Ameya Khatun. Bogra, Bangladesh, June 2011.

"Both of my sons and my husband went off to fight during the war. One of my sons never came back. But I am proud. I am proud to be a war mother and a war wife."

— Ameya Khatun, born 1934, cared for her younger children while her two sons and husband went off to fight.

Forty Years Later III. Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 2011.

Fortieth anniversary memorial service of the Liberation War at the Dhaka University campus.

Eibhlin Glenholmes. Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2012.

  “The transition from arms struggle to purely political struggle for me was seamless. I wasn’t handcuffed to arms. I wasn’t fighting a war for the sake of fighting a war. I fought in the absence of options. Morally, once there were options, I was obligated to seize them. Would we take the risk? And we did. We called a unilateral ceasefire. I think we made absolutely the right decision.”

— Eibhlin Glenholmes, joined the IRA as a young woman and became a highly active member, carrying out missions against British troops. She was considered the most wanted woman in the UK for 23 years, until she was granted amnesty.

Kakon Bibi. Dhaka, Bangladesh, September 2011.

“I have lived with these wounds in both of my legs for my whole life. I got them while fighting with Sector 9 in the Liberation War. But the government does not pay me the Freedom Fighter stipend they pay the men. I get no help from the government. Now, my family has nothing.”

— Kakon Bibi fought in the war, but does not receive the stipend from the government that male veterans receive. She and her family live in extreme poverty in the northeast of Bangladesh.

Ganga river ferry dock. Sirajganj, Bangladesh, March 2011.

Waterways were used to flee the city following the start of the war in March 1971. Millions vacated Dhaka to hide in village family homes, but many who used the country's rivers for transport were fired upon and killed mid-transit.

A Woman's War: Ebony Pittman

Rounak Mohal Dilruba Begum. Bogra, Bangladesh, June 2011.

“As a woman Freedom Fighter I feel proud, all women cannot do what I did; I was not just a housewife or passing my time in India as a refugee. I was fighting for my country.”

— Rounak Mohal Dilruba Begum recruited, organized, and helped train six groups of young men to fight in Bangladesh’s Liberation War of 1971.

Collaborators: Rebecca Rose, Simul Khan, Velma Saric, Kristen Deasy, Deena Adel, Sara Elkamel.

The Women of the 116th Congress

Pitched project to The New York Times to document the women of the 116th Congress, co-photographed with Celeste Sloman. Ran as a special section in January 2019, later published as a book.

I pitched, researched, co-produced, and co-photographed The Women of the 116th Congress, which included portraits of 130 out of 131 women members of Congress, shot in the style of historical portrait paintings. Like the work of Kehinde Wiley, who painted Barack Obama’s official presidential portrait, the photos sought to evoke the imagery seen in the halls of power, but place people not previously seen as powerful in the frame.

Production involved working with editors Marisa Schwartz Taylor and Beth Flynn to contact and schedule all 131 women members of Congress in a studio setup on Capitol Hill. The story ran as a special section featuring 27 different covers, and was published as a book by Abrams Books with a foreword by Roxane Gay.

Below: Video presentation of the images from the project, with quotes interspersed.

Below: The 27 covers that ran with the special section, with members local to the printing region featured on each. Use arrows to advance to see tearsheets of the special section.

Below: Diptychs pairing current members of Congress with presidential portraits. Use arrows to advance.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, painted by James Anthony Wills; Yvette Clarke (D-NY), representing New York’s 9th district, first elected in 2006. While Eisenhower believed the desegregation should be undertaken gradually, in 1957 he sent federal troops to protect the nine black students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine Little, who were enrolled in the segregated Little Rock Central High School.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the U.S., painted posthostumously by Aaron Shikler; Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), representing California’s 12th district, first elected to the House in 1987. In 1971, Mr. Shikler told the Washington Post, “I painted him with his head bowed, not because I think of him as a martyr, but because I wanted to show him as a president who was a thinker.” Speaker Pelosi is pictured looking directly into the camera, as the same bowed pose reads differently on women; looking down is often interpreted as being demure, rather than as thinking. As the woman that has achieved the highest elected office to date in the United States, Speaker Pelosi embodies what power looks like in 2019.

Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the United States, painted by Mather Brown, and Sharice Davids (D-KS), representing Kansas’ 3rd congressional district, elected in 2018. During his presidency, Jefferson was the architect of numerous policies and efforts to drive Native Americans off their lands; Davids is one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, along with Deb Haaland (D-NM), in 2018.

Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, painted by George Healy, and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), the senior Senator from Arizona, who made history in 2012 as the ﬁrst openly bisexual person elected to the House of Representatives and in 2018 as the ﬁrst openly bisexual person elected to the the U.S. Senate. She is also the ﬁrst woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, painted by George Healy; Lauren Underwood (D-IL), elected in 2018, is the youngest black woman to ever serve in Congress, and the first black woman to represent the 14th congressional district in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863; it wasn’t until just over 100 years later, in 1968, that Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

Warren Harding, the 29th president of the United States, painted by Margaret Lindsay Williams; Susie Lee (D-NV), representing Nevada’s 3rd district, elected in 2018.

A Woman’s War

Multimedia and oral history project documenting the role of women in modern conflicts in Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, and the United States.

Made portraits, conducted interviews, and filmed video to document stories over 120 women involved in modern conflicts. Testimonies and additional portraits available here.

Above: Võ Thi Yên (top left) in Hue, Vietnam in July 2010, served as a member of the North Vietnamese Army. Kakon Bibi (top middle), in Dhaka, Bangladesh in September 2011, served as a freedom fighter in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. A young girl (top right), who wished to remain anonymous in Cairo, Egypt in May 2012, was raped while participating in political protests in Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring. Dževada Trešnjo (bottom left) in Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovia in July 2012, served in the Bosnian Army Medical Corps and lost her hand while trying to protect a young boy who had been wounded. Begum Gulferdous (bottom middle) with her granddaughter in Comilla, Bangladesh in August 2011, served as a spy and weapons smuggler in the 1971. Katerina Kaltak (bottom right), in Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 2012, joined the Bosnian Army Medical Corps at age 16 with her older sister, Kristina Mujak, after their younger sister, who was eleven at the time, was killed by artillery fire.

Below: An edit of video testimonials from the project.

Block Parties in New York City

Was one of 20 visual journalists taking photos and video for a special section highlighting block parties across New York City. Project was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy.

Below: Lead photo for the project, which I photographed at a block party in Sugar Hill. See full story here.

Ethics in Research

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Ethical Considerations for RCTs in the Global South

A co-authored article published in PS: Political Science & Politics, highlighting considerations for research involving field experiments in the Global South.

In “Field Experiments in the Global South: Assessing Risks, Localizing Benefits, and Addressing Positionality,” co-authors and I draw on our research experiences to offer best practices to better localize benefits and assess risks in such studies. By dividing the research process into four stages—idea generation, planning, implementation, and scientific communication—we offer a series of practical considerations and tools that will allow researchers better consider the risks and benefits posed to research participants, the community in which the study is taking place, and the research team, as related to field experiments in the Global South.

Collaborators: Amma Panin, Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Graeme Blair, Lindsey D. Pruett, Ken Ochieng’ Opalo, Hannah M. Alarian, Allison N. Grossman, Yvonne Tan, Alex P. Dyzenhaus, Nicholas Owsley

An additional line of research focuses on improving best practices for applied and ethical microlevel research with populations with lived experiences of violence and trauma. This research builds on work that I have been undertaking with co-authors to develop guidelines regarding processes and ethical considerations for designing and fielding research in fragile security contexts.

Human Trafficking

Designing & Evaluating Anti-Trafficking Education Campaigns

Served as Research Manager for the Human Trafficking Vulnerability Lab and worked with the International Organization on Migration to design and implement research on human trafficking.

The four multi-year studies included designing and evaluating the efficacy of anti-trafficking education campaigns (separate studies conducted in Hong Kong, Nepal, and the U.S) and designing and implementing a nationally-representative survey assessing the prevalence of child trafficking in Jamaica.

The lab applies experimental methods to study the impact of awareness campaigns on norms and behaviors that leave people vulnerable to labor exploitation and human trafficking. Thus far, data have been collected in Nepal and Hong Kong, with a specific focus on populations that are either vulnerable to trafficking and labor exploitation or responsible for mitigating it. This includes the general public, law enforcement, employers, and migrant domestic workers. With funding from Humanity United, USAID, US Department of Labor, Stanford University, Terres des Hommes, and Vanderbilt University, the HTV Lab has tested the efficacy of these campaigns on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of populations that are either vulnerable to trafficking and labor exploitation or responsible for mitigating it. This includes the general public, law enforcement agents, employers, and migrant domestic workers (MDWs).

Studies included collaborating with field partners and conducting interviews and focus groups to solicit input for both education campaigns and survey instruments evaluating their efficacy, conducting statistical analyses of randomized controlled trials evaluating the campaigns’ efficacy, creating data visualizations, authoring academic articles, and writing reports for public audiences to communicate findings.

Collaborators: Margaret Boittin, Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, Dennis Feehan, Guy Grossman, Sarah Rich-Zendel, and Soo Sun Yoo. Learn more at www.htv-lab.com.