2023-2024 Winners

Spring 2024 Winners

Oksana Goroshchuk - Neurology

Sex Bias in Multiple Sclerosis: Sex is a major risk factor for autoimmune diseases, and the sex hormone milieu after puberty is an obvious difference between men and women. CD4+ T cells play important roles in autoimmunity, while there is an increased observation of CD4+ T cells with cytotoxic characteristics in autoimmune patients. Notably, the presence of granzyme-producing CD4+ T cells has been identified in highly sex-biased autoimmune diseases, including Sjogren’s syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. The relationship between sex hormones and granzyme-producing CD4+ T cells is ambiguous and requires investigation. This study seeks to elucidate the influence of sex hormones on persistently activated CD4+ T cells and their capacity to produce cytotoxic granzymes. My preliminary findings indicate a dose-dependent response in granzyme B expression in female cells, whereas a similar trend is not observed in male cells. Therefore, I will explore further the specific sex- and sex hormones-related effect. This study aligns with the WFF mission in advancing gender-specific knowledge in immunology and promoting inclusivity. Therefore, I am committed to promoting my project, relevant to women, by participating in the conference, which aligns with the program’s mission. I believe this research initiative will further enhance the visibility of gender-related issues in healthcare.

Katherine Meier - Antropology and School of the Environment

Coming From Congo: Combatting Structural Injustices in Who Gets To Do What Research: With this grant, I aim to help fund my Congolese collaborator, Tiriel Lokoka Ngoma, to join me on a research trip to the French Colonial Archives in Aix en Provence. Tiriel and I carried out a year of grueling dissertation fieldwork together in the northern swamp forests of the Republic of Congo (RoC), looking into the forest ecology, human-environment relations, and conservation politics of a highly marginalized protected area. Though both our dissertations would benefit greatly from this archival research component – meant to give a historical and post-colonial perspective on current conservation management strategies in Congo – there are huge structural barriers to Tiriel being able to participate. These barriers are intersectional and are fundamentally rooted in her gender. She is a woman, a mother, and a brilliant interdisciplinary researcher; Helping her advance in her PhD will also strengthen the weak scientific, academic, and social/environmental justice capacities of RoC.

Alka Menon - Sociology

Food for Thought: Can New Drugs Shift the Gendered Stigma around Fatness?: This project examines whether and how GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s), a recently approved class of drugs to treat diabetes and weight loss, are perceived and disseminated by people of different genders. This research aims 1) to understand the cultural meanings and subjective perceptions of GLP-1s in the U.S., and 2) to identify whether and how these perceptions vary by gender. The PI and research assistant will interview 20 people, asking questions about their awareness of these drugs, their perceptions of who it is for and why, and asking them to reflect on comparisons with other drugs with gendered profiles. This project advances WFF’s mission by promoting research on women and gender and by facilitating the hiring of student researchers to join the PI’s team and promoting mentorship, collaboration, and networking among women at Yale. This preliminary interview research will lay the groundwork for an application to a National Science Foundation research grant.

Gina Novick - Sociology

Food for Thought: Can New Drugs Shift the Gendered Stigma around Fatness?: This project examines whether and how GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s), a recently approved class of drugs to treat diabetes and weight loss, are perceived and disseminated by people of different genders. This research aims 1) to understand the cultural meanings and subjective perceptions of GLP-1s in the U.S., and 2) to identify whether and how these perceptions vary by gender. The PI and research assistant will interview 20 people, asking questions about their awareness of these drugs, their perceptions of who it is for and why, and asking them to reflect on comparisons with other drugs with gendered profiles. This project advances WFF’s mission by promoting research on women and gender and by facilitating the hiring of student researchers to join the PI’s team and promoting mentorship, collaboration, and networking among women at Yale. This preliminary interview research will lay the groundwork for an application to a National Science Foundation research grant.

Gita Pathak - Department of Psychiatry

Cardiovascular consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression are mental health concerns that can occur post-trauma exposure that have been shown to occur more frequently in women (10-12%) relative to men (5-6%). Our recent research highlighted genetic links between PTSD and cardiovascular conditions, yet understanding of these health relationships remains incomplete, particularly in women. Leveraging electronic health records, this cross-sectional study focuses on uncovering sex-specific disparities regarding PTSD and depression diagnosis and cardiovascular risks in women relative to men, considering social, financial, and health factors. Historically there has been a focus on male participants in medical research, this study addresses the critical gap in understanding how certain health conditions, such as PTSD, depression, and cardiovascular consequences, may manifest differently in women and men. Ultimately, the findings may inform policies and interventions tailored to address the diverse needs of women, affected by psychiatric and cardiovascular health issues.

Mafalda Teixeira dos Santos - School of Music

Rediscovering Women’s Agency in Cello History: The Relationship of Guilhermina Suggia and Pablo Casals in the Early Twentieth Century: My project reexamines the relationship of Guilhermina Suggia (1885-1950) and Pablo Casals (1876-1973) between 1906 and 1913. Questioning historical narratives that have distorted the reception of Suggia’s life and rediscovering her musical agency, I reveal how they projected an image of equality and mutual influence through their personal and romantic relationship, painting a picture where she stood as an equal, not an unformed artist, eager student, or female imitator of Casals. Shedding light on the complex relationship between her gender identity and professional pursuits, as well as her role in advancing women in music, this study demonstrates how she challenged and transcended expectations of her time, as an individual with an independent place in cello history. I will share my research across the worlds of musicology and performance, through an article, conference presentations, and lecture-recitals in Portugal and the United States, integrating spoken discourse with live demonstrations, executed by me, of excerpts from the compositions dedicated to Suggia and Casals.

Fall 2023 Winners

Samuel Akyirem - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Examining gender differences in the association between diabetes-related stigma and health outcomes among persons living with type 2 diabetes: About 50% of individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Ghana experience diabetes-related stigma, defined as the negative attitudes, judgment, unfair treatment, or prejudice against someone because of their diabetes. Studies have shown that women are more likely to report experiencing diabetes-related stigma. Moreover, a study conducted in rural Ghana revealed that older women with diabetes are often accused of witchcraft and are subjected to harsher social devaluation. In a recent meta-analysis I co-authored, we found that diabetes-related stigma is associated with detrimental health outcomes including poor glycemic control or higher hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C). However, to the best of my knowledge, no study has examined the role of gender as an effect modifier in the stigma-HbA!C relationship. The purpose of this study is to assess if gender plays a role in the experience and outcomes of diabetes-related stigma. The study will constitute a novel contribution to the diabetes-related stigma and gender literature, in alignment with the Women Faculty Forum’s mission of stimulating research into gender and gender-related outcomes.

Pinar Aldan - Department of Psychology

Exploring the Effects of Meritocratic Thinking on Gender Pay Gap Justifications: This project explores how meritocratic thinking patterns affect stereotype endorsement regarding the relative contributions of female versus male workers, in particular the belief that gender pay gaps are deserved. I investigate how people explain pay gaps between women and men in novel social settings, where they do not have specific knowledge about the jobs the women and men perform. Specifically, across two studies (planned N = 500), I will explore: (1) Do people tend to assume that higher-paying jobs are more important and/or difficult than lower-paying ones? (2) Do these merit-based assumptions (i.e., assuming the higher-paying job must be more difficult) become stronger when men are the ones performing the higher-paying jobs rather than women? (3) Do such explanations help people justify pay gaps? (4) Under which conditions do people become more likely to think about potential societal reasons for unequal pay, such as unjust discrimination, instead of explaining it with meritocratic reasons? I believe these findings will be informative in understanding and designing intervention strategies to address such thinking tendencies that might make people prone to justify existing inequalities between women and men.

Emily Coates - Dance and Performance Studies

The Scattering: As a former member of New York City Ballet who has carried that bodily knowledge into performing with artists such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Twyla Tharp, and Yvonne Rainer, and having now lived in New Haven for a decade, I aspire to create performances of place, work that fuses inspiration from my immediate surroundings and local stories with my accumulated kinesthetic histories. My new project pursues this ambition using the choreographer George Balanchine’s short-lived yet pivotal engagement with New England as a point of departure to think about how the body and spirit of dance artists scatter, living on in unexpected places. I am particularly interested in  histories of women and artists of color through the major events of twentieth century ballet history as a means of retelling the afterlife of dance as widely dispersed as opposed to consolidated into recognizable remains most frequently under one or two figureheads. The work meditates on the afterlives of dance after the creator is gone, taking as a feminist gesture the retelling of Balanchine’s narrative by a female author (me) as one of dispersal, sowing, and regeneration. In both form and content, I see my project as a unique manifestation of WFF’s mission.

Ilana Zaks - School of Music

The Concertmasters: A History: The History of Concertmasters (working title) is a 40 minute documents film. The Concertmaster (CM) is the first chair or leader in an orchestra. After the conductor, the concertmaster is the second-most important leader in an orchestra. The symphony orchestra of 100 players, as we know it today, became a fixture in American society in 1842, with the founding of the New York Philharmonic. As of 2022, the orchestra has never had a female concertmaster, nor a female music director. The same can be said for the other four oldest orchestras, which make up the “Big Five”: Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Chicago Symphony. As of 2014, less than 20% of Concertmasters are female in top US orchestras. How did this role start, and where is it going? Through the director’s own journey and aspiration to become the first female Concertmaster of one of the Big Five US Orchestras, The History of Concertmasters tells the history of the complex leadership role and surveys some of the most important living Concertmasters in US orchestras today.  The film identifies with the WFF mission through its intentional focus on gender equity in the professional orchestral world, and promoting the work of women in the Yale School of Music and beyond. The film premiere will also allow networking opportunities between music lovers and aspiring women leaders.

Claire Donnellan - Dance and Performance Studies

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches is a senior production thesis in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies in directing for myself, as well as an acting thesis for Jordi Bertrá​n Ramírez and a junior producing project for Clementine Rice. Millennium Approaches is the first half of Tony Kushner’s a Tony and Pulitzer prize winning queer epic set in 1985, depicting America in crisis on the brink of a new millennium. In this three and a half hour play, eight actors navigate democracy, faith, love, and death while the AIDS crisis and Reaganite conservatism loom above the lives of every character. This curricular project seeks to interrogate the play’s nuanced questions of sexuality and gender and explore its relevance to contemporary LGBTQ+ struggles. With this production, I also aim to support new scholarship on the directing and acting pedagogy of Maria Knebel, a Russian theater practitioner whose legacy has been largely forgotten outside of Russia. 

Jessica Duda - Department of Psychology 

Gender-Oriented Legislation and Mental Health among Transgender Youth: Exploring the Protective Role of Families: The past year has seen a rapid proliferation of rights-restricting legislation targeting the transgender community. The impact of these policies on the mental health of trans youth represents a critical area for study, especially given already high rates of anxiety and depression in this group. With this award, we seek to pilot one of the earliest studies to investigate the effects of the recent wave of gender-restricting legislation on depression and anxiety in transgender youth. We will recruit 20 transgender and gender-expansive adolescents (ages 10-18) through the Yale Pediatric Gender Program to complete surveys about their mental health, distal interactions with recent laws (e.g., learning about legislation), and proximal interactions with the laws (e.g., healthcare disruptions). Adolescents will also report on actions that their parents have taken to respond to the legislation (e.g., supportive conversations, advocacy) to elucidate the types of parent behaviors that are most protective for trans youth impacted by the laws. Informed by this pilot study, we hope to launch a larger study examining the associations between recent legislation, parental support, and youth mental health, with the goal of providing guidance to families about how best to support their children in the face of evolving legislation.

Dara Gleeson - Social and Behavioral Sciences

Downstream Effects of Maternity Care Deserts: Utilization and Accessibility of Postpartum Care and Infant Health Services among Medicaid Users: Approximately 36% of all counties in the United States are designated as maternity care deserts.  which indicates that the county has neither obstetric providers nor any hospital or birth center that offers obstetric care. The majority of maternity care deserts are located within Midwestern and Southern states, and disproportionately impact rural communities and women of color; thereby exacerbating racial inequities. The goal of this project is to assess how Medicaid users living in maternity care deserts access and utilize health services across the perinatal period, as well as evaluating the impact on birth outcomes for the mother and infant. Quantitative methodology will be applied through descriptive statistical analyses and logistic regression analyses using national data sources such as the Medicaid Adult and Child Health Care Quality Measures, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), and the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). Identifying the limitations in healthcare access among this population is critical to address the pervasive health inequities that impact mothers and infants living in maternity care deserts. Furthermore, identifying the limitations in postpartum care can potentially result in the development of evidence-based policies and programs designed to improve access and utilization of perinatal health services. 

Ming Ma - Department of Psychology

Brilliance Impressions of Women and Men: Past research has found that people are more likely to associate brilliance with men and boys, than with women and girls (Bian et al., 2017; Storage et al., 2020). For example, students are more likely to describe professors who are men (vs. women) as brilliant and genius (Storage et al., 2016). These impressions of brilliance may affect many consequential outcomes in higher education, including hiring, promotion, compensation, and performance evaluation. The proposed project will further investigate how people assess women and men on brilliance using an implicit measure. I will examine how people respond to different brilliance-related information and whether (and how) their implicit and explicit brilliance impressions will change depending on the gender of the target. Findings will contribute to our growing understanding of how gender stereotypes affect implicit impressions and inform research on ways to reduce brilliance biases, aligning with the Women Faculty Forum’s mission on promoting gender equity.

Florencia Montagnini - School of the Environment

Biodiversity Credits: Alternatives for Conservation in Biodiversity Islands: Biodiversity conservation is in great peril due to significant gaps in what is available and what is needed for financing conservation. There are many examples throughout the world that illustrate the urgent need to find alternative feasible ways to finance conservation efforts such as biodiversity islands. Biodiversity can be financed through strategies that incorporate other valued resources or ecosystem services such as water or carbon. When businesses and communities recognize these integrated benefits as essential to their own supply chains, resource bases, and human health, financing becomes more tangible. Programs may include Payments for Environmental Services (PES), which encourage projects that enhance conservation, restoration, production, and rural development via compensation. Under the provision of external funding, a payment can be estimated for each land use type to compensate farmer participation and thus encourage establishment of biodiversity islands on farms. This research will examine current literature and other sources pertaining to the use of alternative mechanisms within their geographical scope, current uses, and general characteristics in countries where critical biodiversity hotspots are located. The report will include alternative mechanisms most specially making reference to Biodiversity credits, and specific examples from countries in developing countries, based on cultural and other characteristics of the target populations, focusing primarily on smallholder farmers of tropical countries worldwide. 

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff - English 

Rehearsal and staged reading of “The Cycles”: The Cycles is a play about three female friends who speak to each other honestly the way that only old friends can. Informed by feminist Cuban American playwright Maria Irene Fornes, who championed the idea that drama doesn’t have to be driven by conflict, The Cycles explores the ways we love another and subtly hurt one another through unintended slippages of care.  A seed grant would allow me to hire a director, Caitlin Ryan O’Connell, who I hope will direct a future production of the play, to direct the first reading of the script with a cast. A reading would also allow me to invite my colleagues in the English and Theater Studies departments to encounter my most recent work. In line with the spirit of the Women Faculty Forum’s mission, my hope is that a reading would foster a spirit of creative exchange between me and my colleagues, many of whom I view as mentors.

Lucia Momoh Olubunmi - African American Studies

The Waiting: Black Huntresses of the South: I am working with international photographer, Camille Lenain, on a continuation of her project The Waiting, a photo essay that focuses on female hunters in the US South and France. Lenain has been photographing female hunters, or huntresses, for the past four years, and has found it difficult to find and photograph Black and Indigenous women hunters. So we decided to become the hunters we sought and—together with trainers provided by Hunters Of Color and small group of new huntresses that include the New Orleans-native and installation artist, Ifátùmínínú Bámigbálà Arẹ̀sà, and Haitian-American singer/song writers and sisters, Sabine and Leila McCalla—are planning our first duck hunt in the Louisiana bayou this January 2024. Camille and I will then work on a photo essay to be published in the Bitter Southerner, a publication that promotes “great stories from the South.” 

Kathryn Wall - Yale Child Study Center

Understanding Racial and Ethnic Barriers in Maternal EEG Research: Racial disparities in maternal physical and mental healthcare continue to persist creating a need for more diverse participants in research studies. This is particularly true for neuroscience research using electroencephalography (EEG), a method which utilizes a cap that places electrodes on the scalp to measure brain activity. EEG is commonly used in medicine for diagnosing brain disorders, including epilepsy, and in research for understanding neural processing. However, EEG caps do not accommodate natural characteristics and protective hairstyles of very curly or coarse hair. This has led individuals with these hair types to straighten or shave their hair when EEG is required for diagnostic purposes and deter their participation in EEG research. As a result, many EEG research studies lack diversity, rendering research findings less generalizable and reproducible. Here, I propose a focus group-based study which will recruit diverse women from the New Haven community to 1) achieve a better understanding of the barriers mothers face when participating in EEG research and 2) generate ideas on how to make EEG more equitable and accessible for women with very curly or coarse hair and protective hairstyles. This project  aligns with the WFF mission by a) promoting scholarship among women, and b) fostering equity in research.