CBD Awards Grants to 12 Student Innovators for Summer Projects and Internships
The Culture, Brain & Development program has awarded $25,000 in grants to 12 Hampshire College students to fund an array of summer projects and internships, ranging from an archeological exhibit in Ghana, to an exploration of cross-cultural perspectives on reproductive health, and a study of gendered play preferences in children.
CBD Director Dr. Pamela Stone said this round of grant applications was especially competitive, reflecting the high quality of work undertaken by Hampshire students. CBD Assistant Director Amy Dryansky agreed and noted the diversity of the student proposals, detailed below.
The grants help students defray the cost of their research, including travel, housing, program fees, supplies and equipment. The CBD Student Research grant program was founded with support from the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, led by Hampshire alum, Dr. Rob Lemelson, and CBD is working toward establishing a permanent endowment to fund student research.
Student Grantees
Hannah Davidson was awarded two CBD grants. Hannah will investigate research methodologies in maternal health at the UMASS Amherst School of Public Health and then travel to Mexico to look at cross-cultural perspectives on reproductive health.
Emily Gear will undertake a Division III project on the Isle of Foula in Scotland. Emily will collect data, and record oral histories, film and animation footage in order to develop a film about the ways in which geographical displacement is manifested in the human body.
Xinzhu (Cindy) Fang, Priscilla Lu and Tony (Boming) Zhang will all work with Hampshire Assistant Professor Ethan Myers at the Center for Brains, Minds & Machines at MIT. The students will look at aspects of visual perception, computational models for pop-out attention and data analysis for neuroscience.
Nichole Greene will work with Hampshire Assistant Professor Rachel Engmann at the Christiansborg Archeological Heritage Project in Ghana. Gillian with assist with curating and promoting an exhibit of a previously unseen collection of colonial photographs and daguerreotypes.
Miranda Harrison and Zoe Pestana will both perform research under the supervision of Hampshire Dean and Associate Professor Jane Couperus. Miranda will work in the Infant Cognition lab to investigate the degree to which sex-specific preferences are inborn, with hormonal origins, and how the influence of gender socialization affects the development and expression of such preferences. Zoe Pestana will work in Hampshire’s ERP lab to research the neural correlates of chronic pain and empathy. Zoe hopes her research will improve our understanding of pain and compassion for those who suffer chronic pain.
Gabriel Horvath will create and print a collection of short comics as part of their Division III project. The comics use goblin characters to artfully explore vocabularies and representations of neurodivergence, queer community, mutual care and gender diversity.
Daya Mena secured an internship with the National Institute of Health’s Framingham Heart Study, a longitudinal, multigenerational research project that explore risks associated with cardiovascular disease, as well as the impact of such risk factors on the development of the individual.
Robin Roblee-Strauss is creating a collaborative film that explores the experience of living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Robin hopes the film will add to the growing movement to create more platforms for people to talk openly about their mental health and eradicate stigmas around living with mental illness.
Gillian Toman was accepted into the Education/Social Work Internship Program at One Heart Source in Cape Town, South Africa, where she will study multicultural education and education as a driver of social change.
CBD Endowment Fund
CBD is currently raising money to establish the endowment for the Student Research fund, to ensure that rigorous, creative, interdisciplinary student work at Hampshire continues to thrive. If you’d like more information about the Student Research Fund, or the CBD program at Hampshire, contact their office at cbd@hampshire.edu, or 413 559-5730.
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