Current Research Projects

This is a collaborative project, based in Helena, Arkansas, that aims to help preserve and celebrate Magnolia Cemetery, an important African American burial ground whose history powerfully illuminates the development of a large and vibrant 19th-century African American community, the evolution and impact of spatial segregation following the Civil War in the Delta region of the South, and the organizational efforts of African American women to preserve their community's past and build a stable economic future. The idea for the project originated in conversation with the women who founded the Magnolia Cemetery Association (MCA) and who are engaged in efforts to preserve this cemetery. Leaders of MCA are working with us to produce a series of educational events to be held in the spring of 2013. This collaboration will bring public attention to the history of the Magnolia Cemetery and contribute to efforts to renew community involvement in the maintenance and preservation of the cemetery. It will also contribute important research materials to a book on the history of Magnolia and the postemancipation African American community it served.

Funding is for a three-year follow-up collaboration with Fudan University to further develop Women's and Gender Studies as an academic field in China, and to build the newly established UM-Fudan Joint Institute for Gender Studies at Fudan University into a leading academic institution promoting women's and gender studies in China. This collaboration, which takes the form of a dissertation workshop for PhD candidates selected from universities throughout China, will provide a new model of interdisciplinary exchange between Chinese and U.S. scholars. The general aim of the collaboration is to enable feminist transformation of knowledge production in China by hosting dissertation workshops for a cohort of young Chinese scholars who are interested in the emergent field of gender studies, but have no academic resources for advanced learning.

The University of Michigan in partnership with the Women's Sports Foundation (WSF) seeks to establish a new Research and Policy Center for Women and Sport on campus. This partnership would provide exciting and unique synergies and opportunities to promote and support the interests and priorities of sport, physical activity and leadership for women and girls. The creation of the new center would bring together faculty experts from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) and the School of Kinesiology, Psychology, Public Health, the Medical School and other campus units such as the Institute for Social Research and the Department of Athletics. This relationship would serve as a 'win-win' for both parties as there are notable opportunities for co-branding from two well-known and prestigious brands. Given Michigan's internationally recognized scholars in the areas of gender research, sport business, motivation, behavioral adherence across the lifespan, identity and self-esteem development, education, sport and physical activity, policy, marketing, public health, human computer interactions, and social networks, and the critical mass of researchers across campus already conducting research on issues related to women and girls' physical activity, motivation, sport, health, injuries, self-esteem development, and recreation, we foresee this opportunity as a catalyst to bring together these researchers and promote their research to a much broader audience. In addition, the center would also support the design of new and innovative research on campus related to sport, physical activity, and health of women and girls. The structure of the center would include a leadership component, a research element which would be central to its mission with the objective of creating data to inform advocacy efforts and evidence-based policy that advances women's and girls' self-esteem, health and status in sport nationally and internationally, a partnership with the sport and recreation community on campus and in the state of Michigan, and finally a policy and advocacy component.

This project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, builds on previous cross-sectional, exploratory research (focusing on gender differences in the nonmedical use of scheduled prescription medications among adolescent and young adult populations using Web-based survey. The study aims are guided by a theoretical model that depicts the domains of risk, which include sex, gender, social class, and race/ethnicity.

This project, funded by Africare-Liberia, will develop and evaluate the effectiveness of Maternal Waiting Homes in Bong County, Liberia. The design will allow us to document the differences among clinics at different time points regarding outcome indicators as well as rapid CATCH indicators. Since it is not possible to attribute differences among clinics to only an essential obstetric service, we will use data collected from individual interviews and mortality audits to complement the quantifiable data and to provide insights into the variables that should be considered as mediators and modifiers in our statistical analyses.

The objective of the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is to advance our knowledge regarding longitudinal trajectories of Nonmedical Prescription Drug Misuse (NPDM) using 12 independent, nationally representative cohorts of approximately 180,000 high school seniors between 1997 and 2008 from the Monitoring the Future study. Findings from this project will substantially advance the current understanding of NPDM among adolescents in the United States and provide information that will improve the screening, assessment, prevention, and treatment of prescription drug abuse.

In 1999, the university launched the Web-based Student Life Survey to determine the prevalence of alcohol and other drug use on campus. Data are collected every two years to track students’ behaviors and attitudes particularly as they relate to alcohol and drug use. The trend data are distributed to various academic and administrative units, including the Provost’s Office, Student Affairs, University Housing, University Health Services and Counseling, and Psychological Services. Because of the survey’s effectiveness, the scope of the study has expanded over time.