Research Faculty

Carol J. Boyd

Professor Boyd is an internationally recognized scholar in the studies of gender, vulnerable populations, and risky health behaviors (e.g. smoking, misuse of medications, alcohol abuse, and other substance abuse). She is noted for mixed-method studies, including evaluation research for the State of Michigan and for Michigan schools. Her most recent studies, funded by the National Institutes of Health, are school-based and focus on adolescent and young adult populations and their lifestyle behaviors, with a particular focus on the medications they are prescribed and how they are used and misused.

Professor Boyd received her PhD in nursing with an anthropology cognate from Wayne State University (1987).

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Sean Esteban McCabe

Dr. McCabe is an internationally recognized scholar in the areas of web-based data collection, prescription drug misuse, gender, sexual orientation, and epidemiology of substance abuse. His current research interests focus on environmental prevention strategies to reduce collegiate alcohol abuse; gender, racial, and sexual orientation differences in substance abuse; and epidemiology of prescription drug abuse.

Dr. McCabe earned his PhD in social work and education from the University of Michigan (2000).

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Hannah Rosen

Dr. Rosen is a historian whose research and teaching have focused on the social and cultural history of the 19th-century United States, and particularly on the intersection of race and gender in histories of slavery, emancipation, and postemancipation society. She is the author of Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009, recipient of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians First Book Prize, the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the Willie Lee Rose Prize from the Southern Association of Women’s Historians).

Her current research treats African American experiences surrounding death and mourning during and after the Civil War and the increasing segregation of southern cemeteries in the postemancipation period. In this project, she also explores historical memory and commemoration through black women’s efforts to reclaim and restore African American burial sites.

Dr. Rosen earned her PhD in history from the University of Chicago (1999).

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Paula Ross-Durow

rossduro@umich.edu
Research Investigator, IRWG

1233 Lane Hall
734-615-8758

Dr. Ross-Durow’s research interests include violence and abuse in adolescents and adults, as well as behaviors and gender differences associated with these problems. She currently serves as the project director of a five-year NIH-funded grant, A Prospective Study of the Nonmedical Use of Prescription Medications by Adolescents. Prior to assuming her position at U-M, she did extensive clinical practice in psych/mental health nursing and was a tenured university nursing faculty member. She serves as a nursing consultant in the area of psych/mental health.

Dr. Ross-Durow earned her BSN from Wayne State University and her MS in psychiatric/mental health nursing from the University of Michigan. She also earned her PhD in nursing from U-M (2007) and completed nursing postdoctoral work in risk reduction among vulnerable populations at U-M (2009).

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Michelle Segar

fitness@umich.edu
Associate Director, SHARP Center for Women and Girls
Research Investigator, IRWG

1247 Lane Hall
734-615-4477

Dr. Segar is nationally recognized for her interdisciplinary research in women's exercise goals, motivation, and behavior. Her research investigates the cultural norms and gender-specific pressures that undermine sustainable physical activity motivation, self-regulation, and behavior. Her latest research examines behavioral branding and gender differences in exercise marketing and messaging. Trained as an interventionist and translational researcher, Dr. Segar also develops and evaluates interventions and marketing messages to foster sustainable physical activity and self-care.

Dr. Segar has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Association of University Women, and the American College of Sports Medicine, among others. Her research has generated accolades from organizations such as the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the North American Menopause Society, and the State of Michigan's Governor's Council on Physical Fitness, Health, and Sports. She speaks to academic, health professional, and lay audiences about how to make behavioral changes that can be sustained over time.

Dr. Segar has a doctorate in psychology, a master's of public health (health behavior-health education), and an MS in kinesiology, all from the University of Michigan.

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Julia Seng

Julia Seng studies the effects of abuse-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on women’s health and childbearing outcomes. She and her collaborators have been studying genetic, neuroendocrine, psychological, and social predictors of obstetric, mental health, and attachment outcomes of first-time pregnant women who have PTSD. They also focus on the women’s experiences, using narrative methods. Using action research, they have worked with "survivor moms" to develop a PTSD-specific psycho-education program for the childbearing year.

Dr. Seng is the co-author with Mickey Sperlich of Survivor Moms: Women’s Stories of Birthing, Mothering and Healing after Sexual Abuse (Motherbaby Press, 2008), which was honored as the 2009 Book of the Year by the American College of Nurse Midwives. Currently Dr. Seng is studying the hormone oxytocin as a plausible biological mechanism for some of the psychological and physical symptoms of Complex PTSD among women. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in outcomes research at the University of Iowa.

Professor Seng, CNM, FAAN, earned her PhD in nursing (women’s health) from the University of Michigan (1999).

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Wang Zheng

Professor Wang’s publications concern feminism in China, both in terms of its historical development and its contemporary activism, and changing gender discourses in China’s socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformations of the past century. Her recent research projects deal with gender and socialist state formation in the Mao era and contemporary feminist activism in China in a global context. Wang Zheng is the director of the US-China Gender Studies program, which collaborates with Chinese universities to develop graduate programs in women’s and gender studies in China.

Wang Zheng earned her PhD in Modern Chinese History from the University of California, Davis.

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