Alexis Lamb
Alexis Lamb is a master’s student in Music Composition at Yale’s School of Music.
Her WFF Seed Grant project, “Music and Archival Research Connect in New Work for String Quartet,” is a continued exploration of composition and archival research from a collection entitled Oral Histories Documenting Yale University Women in Yale’s Manuscript and Archives. Lamb composed a piece for orchestra, “She Was There, Too,” that featured the voices of six women who were in faculty or staff positions during and shortly after Yale College became coeducational in 1969. These women include: Penny Abell, Marie Borroff, Margaret Farley, Florence Haseltine, Maureen Quilligan, and Dorothy Singer. Lamb’s goal was to honor the contributions of these women to the Yale community and celebrate their tremendous impact on Yale’s graduate schools over the last 150 years of women at the University. In the future, she hopes to incorporate her WFF-sponsored research into a new composition for string quartet.
The Yale Philharmonia premiered “She Was There, Too” on December 12, 2019, in Woolsey Hall. To learn more about Lamb’s research and her composition process, please listen to her podcast.
Andrea Aldrich
Andrea Aldrich, Ph.D., is a lecturer in Yale’s Department of Political Science. Her research interests are focused on political representation, gender, and comparative political institutions. She is also the co-chair of the Political Parties Research Network for the Council for European Studies and a member of the Political Parties Database Project (PPDB).
Aldrich’s Seed Grant project, “The Consequences of Gender Quotas for the Women of the European Parliament,” explores the causal effect of the introduction of gender quotas on the distribution of legislators’ professional and political qualifications for the European Parliament (EP). Her project leverages the EP’s unique configuration and quota system to examine these legislators’ career trajectories, both professional and political, before and after the introduction of simple quotas and placement mandates. Aldrich, along with her collaborator William Daniel, an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Nottingham, compared these patterns to patterns in member states that have never uses quotas in order to determine if patterns of representation have changed after quotas are implemented. While previous studies have shown that quotas can eliminate gendered differences in descriptive representation, Aldrich looks to test whether the use of quotas has a causal effect on the type of legislator, whether male or female, that serves in the legislature.
To learn more about Aldrich’s methodology and research findings, please view her poster presentation.
Annabelle Hutchinson
Annabelle Hutchinson is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s Political Science department and a current WFF Gender and Diversity Fellow.
Hutchinson’s Seed Grant Project, “The Backlash of Male Economic Anxiety,” explores the economic downturn brought upon by Covid-19 in 2020. Hutchinson asks what happens to our society socially and politically when men lose their jobs in vast numbers. Her project investigates whether, in a country where gender norms have changed rapidly over the last century, white men exhibit a sexist backlash and a desire to revert to traditional gender norms when their economic and social power is threatened.
Hutchinson’s survey is currently in progress and her research results are forthcoming.
Julia Monk
Julia Monk is a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Monk’s interdisciplinary collaboration with natural scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars seeks to understand the technical and operational definitions of “sex” employed in biological research, and to critique these often-imprecise definitions and metrics of “biological sex.” Because the biological sciences are often invoked in discussions of human sex, gender, and sexuality, and definitions of “biological sex” are more specifically wielded to justify trans-exclusionary policies, it is imperative that biologists are clear in their language and meaning. Her hope is that her Seed Grant research, “Sex in the Literature: a Meta-Analysis and Critique of Technical and Operational Definitions of Sex in Biological Research,” will stimulate biologists to more carefully consider their definitions of biological sex, discuss sex as a non-binary and continuously varying set of traits, and reflect on the utility of traditional constructions of sex in research that aims to understand the awesome variation found among living organisms.
To learn more about Monk’s research, please view her poster. This work was conducted in collaboration with U.C. Berkeley Social Science Matrix’s Queer Ecologies Working Group. A public panel discussion at UC Berkeley, “Queering Science: Rethinking Biology, Sex, and the Environment,” was co-organized by Monk and focused on the implications of Monk’s research in the life sciences.
Julia Rozanova
Julia Rozanova, Ph.D., is an associate research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale AIDS program.
To achieve the 90-90-90 HIV goals by 2030, Ukraine focuses on young men who have sex with men, but older women with HIV are largely invisible to research and policy agendas. Using personal connections in Ukraine with women’s HIV support group, Julia Rozanova’s Seed Grant project, “Heavy Drinking and Girlfriend Support to Start ART Treatment Among 50+ Year Old Women in Ukraine Diagnosed with HIV,” conducted ethnographic observations of the group’s meetings, and interviewed 15 newly diagnosed women with HIV over the age of 50 to explore how girlfriends help one another to avoid heavy drinking that stems from stigma, loneliness, and social isolation, and to start ART treatment in the absence of external help. Rozanova mentored her Ukrainian colleagues including the group organizers, two women with HIV in their 60s, in developing travel scholarship applications that enabled them to attend the International AIDS Conference in 2020 in San Francisco, co-present this work, and make their voices heard. Rozanova’s study highlights women’s resilience in developing network coping strategies and urges future R01 grant applications to NIAAA to develop a peer-based intervention that reduces heavy drinking and improves mental health among older women newly diagnosed with HIV.
To see the results of Rozanova’s study, please view her poster.
Lola Hourihane
Lola Hourihane is a Yale College senior majoring in Theater Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS).
Hourihane’s Seed Grant Project, “The Hungry Woman,” is an experiment in Anti-Racist Theater (A.R.T.), which focuses on mitigating and addressing white supremacy and paternalist culture in theatrical spaces by incorporating practices from A.R.T ancestors, namely Teatro Chicana, Nicole Brewer, and Augusto Boal. The play itself — The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea by legendary lesbian Chicana feminist writer Cherríe Moraga — deals with themes of homophobia; motherhood and coming-of-age; race, blood quantum, nation-building and indigeneity; migration and war, and more. Hourihane’s project aims to create an environment where we can critically and sensitively engage these themes as a community through movement, art, design elements, acting and performance while interrogating intellectualizing norms that uphold white supremacy culture.
Hourihane’s cast was predominately Latinx women and non-binary students, highlighting the 50th anniversary of Latinx students at Yale College. Most of the actors had never acted before, and their production team was open to all regardless of experience. Their team also led extensive readings on Chicana feminism of the late 20th century, diving into Moraga’s queer feminist vision while interrogating the transphobia present in her writings.
To hear more about Hourihane’s directorial role and research, please listen to their podcast. More information about Hourihane’s play can be found on the Yale College Arts website.