Application Information

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Yuki Kato

Faculty Supervisor Department: Sociology

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: Urban agriculture, food justice, environmental justice, history 

Faculty Supervisor Email: yk483@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: Where Have All the Gardens Gone?: Examination of the Termination of Urban Local Food Provisioning Practices in BIPOC Communities in the late 20th Century

Project Summary: Despite the consistent anecdotal accounts of local food provisioning in urban BIPOC communities through the early 20th century, such practice has rarely been formally or consistently documented. This creates a gap in our understanding of exactly when such practice ceased to be commonplace, if it ever did, and more importantly, why. This is a multi-method, interdisciplinary research project. In-depth interviews with a new generation of local food provisioners will provide how this group understands the historical precedent of local food provisioning practice, and to what extent this knowledge guides their contemporary practice. The archival data analysis examines the role of federal and local government policies, private market practices, and technological advancement that created or decreased the needs for people to procure food for themselves while also restricting who could grow, hunt, fish, or forage food in the city. In juxtaposing the oral histories with archival materials, the aim of the study is not to interrogate the accuracy of the collective memory, but rather to understand why such narratives came to dominate the collective understanding of their community’s history and legacy. The study thus considers cultural erasure and appropriation as central mechanisms, and not just consequences, of the capitalistic cycle of disinvestment and reinvestment.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities:
The Scholar will assist in data collection (interview and/or archive) as well as with analysis using Dedoose qualitative data analysis software. The first week will involve intensive training to prepare the Scholar for the work. We will meet weekly to set a concrete agenda for each week, but work may be done remotely. Depending on the pace of the data collection/analysis, the Scholar may also assist in developing a scholarly journal article manuscript.  

Expected Scholar Deliverables:
By the end of the project, the Scholar will assist in producing preliminary data analysis for a component of the project (interview or archive) as a part of the scholarly journal article development.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? Yes

Project Requirements or Skills:
Independent research (ability to work self-guided each day/week), Curiosity and interest in the project’s topic, Comfort with reaching out to individuals to interview or institution to access archival materials.
I prefer that the students have had some social science or archival research backgrounds (e.g., took a course on the topic or have already worked on another research project).

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Monica Sanders

Faculty Supervisor Department: Law Center

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: Climate and Environmental Justice, Disaster Risk Reduction

Faculty Supervisor Email: ms4532@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: Mapping Environmental Justice: Building a Database of EJ Laws and Policies

Project Summary: This project focuses on developing a database of environmental justice (EJ) laws and policies to support communities impacted by environmental inequities. The scholar will research, analyze, and map EJ-related statutes and regulations across local, state, and federal levels. This project will equip communities with actionable information on their rights and available resources while enabling stakeholders to identify gaps in EJ frameworks. The research will include community input and feedback to ensure accessibility and relevance. The final output will contribute to a broader initiative that informs equitable policy interventions and resource allocation.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities:
The Laidlaw Scholar will work for six weeks (days and hours TBD), contributing to several facets of the project:

• Conduct literature reviews and legal research to identify EJ laws and policies.
• Collaborate with community organizations to gather input on legal challenges and capacity needs.
• Utilize digital tools (e.g., GIS, spreadsheets) to map and catalog laws by region.
• Synthesize research findings into accessible reports and visualizations.
• Participate in weekly mentorship meetings to discuss progress and receive guidance.
• Day-to-day responsibilities will include reviewing EJ-related statutes, compiling data in user-friendly formats, and preparing presentations on findings for stakeholder feedback.

Expected Scholar Deliverables:
The scholar will deliver a curated database (section most feasible) of EJ laws and policies, a summary report highlighting legal and policy trends, and a presentation that includes visualizations (e.g., maps, charts) to share findings with community partners and faculty/team mentors.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? No

Project Requirements or Skills:

• Research skills, including the ability to review and synthesize academic and policy documents.
• Basic proficiency in GIS or data visualization tools (training can be provided if needed).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for engaging with community organizations and summarizing research findings.

A passion for environmental justice and interest in developing practical solutions to support impacted communities. Familiarity with legal research or environmental policy is helpful but not required. Training and support will be provided throughout the project.

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Jamil Scott

Faculty Supervisor Department: Government

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: American Politics; Race and Gender Politics; Legislative Politics and Judicial Politics

Faculty Supervisor Email: js4693@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: Running for Justice? Understanding Women’s Path to Prosecutorial and Judicial Office

Project Summary: Scholars recognize women and particularly WOC have more progressive ambition in running for office and seeking positions in the legal system, yet the political, institutional, and personal factors that motivate them to seek office have been paid very little attention. Using state bar passage data, we have the population of potential candidates and nominees for state and local prosecutors and judges given that the vast majority possess law degrees. We will code the state, local, and personal information for each of these individuals who ran for office to determine what allows women, and particularly women of color, to succeed in these arenas. This will also provide us with names and information for our larger project to interview candidates who have won and lost, and also nominees, to understand what motivates women to seek prosecutorial or judicial office. This study not only has implications for women and race and ethnicity politics, but also for studies of state and local politics and policy, and judicial politics. It will also create a new dataset that can be utilized for future important studies. Moreover, these results will have important implications for judicial reform for those interested in how to increase diversity in the judicial system.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities:
Coding state bar association data to match with existing candidate records – both legislative and judicial.

Interviewing candidates who have run for legal office to understand their motivation for seeking office.

Weekly check-in meeting.

Develop draft of research paper through weekly deliverable tasks.

Develop resume and other professional development materials through weekly deliverable tasks.

Expected Scholar Deliverables:
The Laidlaw scholar will develop a final paper that builds from the larger project by examining which women with law degrees and what factors matter for the decision to run for legislative office rather than judicial office.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? Yes

Project Requirements or Skills:

• Experience with finding and reading academic articles.
• Experience with coding data and search tasks.

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Sam Halabi

Faculty Supervisor Department: Health Management and Policy

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: Global Health Law

Faculty Supervisor Email: sfh9@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: Universal Health Coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa

Project Summary: The Center for Transformational Health Law (CTHL) is partnering with the World Health Organization’s Office for the Africa Region (AFRO) in developing tools and capacity support to expand access to basic health services across the continent. Focusing on maternal and infant health including access to medicines, the student fellow would develop country-specific profiles and identify major gaps in access to services considered essential to prevent catastrophic out of pocket payments for health products and services.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities:
The Laidlaw Scholar would largely be responsible for executing discrete research requests within the National Library of Medicine database and other publicly available databases. The scholar would undertake a comprehensive search using keywords and then synthesize search results into actionable memos.

Expected Scholar Deliverables:
The scholar would produce approximately 4-6 memos and would also be credited in publications for submission.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? No

Project Requirements or Skills:
Interest in global health; familiarity with NLM/NCBI databases and keywords; strong writing ability
Working knowledge of French or Portuguese desirable but not required

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Tina Liu

Faculty Supervisor Department: Neurology

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: Brain plasticity, Vision

Faculty Supervisor Email: tl925@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: VIBRANT study (Vision Improvement through Behavioral Rehabilitation And Neuroplasticity Training)

Project Summary: Every year, over 12 million people worldwide suffer from stroke, affecting one in four adults at some point in their lives. Given that nearly half of the cerebral cortex is involved in visual processing, cortical damage affecting vision can significantly impact the quality of life for stroke survivors. However, current diagnostic and treatment methods are often limited in addressing these visual deficits.

The VIBRANT study integrates visual behavior (psychophysics, eye-tracking), neuroimaging (structural and functional MRI), and neurorehabilitation (transcranial electrical stimulation) with the long-term goal of achieving precision vision recovery. In addition to the CITI training, Laidlaw Scholars will receive MRI safety training through CFMI and transcranial electrical stimulation training through the Visual Perception and Plasticity Lab.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities:

1. Assisting with recruitment, phone screening and scheduling of stroke patients and healthy volunteers for research

2. Supporting experiment setup and data collection, and maintaining accurate documenting experiment logs

Expected Scholar Deliverables:

By the end of the project, the Scholar will produce a detailed report or presentation summarizing their findings and insights. This will include an overview of the research approaches they engaged with (e.g., functional/structural MRI and transcranial brain stimulation), a discussion of their contributions to the study, and an analysis of the implications of their work in the context of human brain research. The final output should demonstrate their understanding of the methodologies and their ability to critically evaluate experimental results.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? Yes

Project Requirements or Skills:

• Experience with human subject research
• Strong communication skills
• Technical proficiency (e.g., familiarity with basic programming or statistical analysis tools)

Faculty Member Information

Faculty Supervisor Name: Sam Halabi

Faculty Supervisor Department: Health Management and Policy

Faculty Research Focus/Interest: Global Health Security

Faculty Supervisor Email: sfh9@georgetown.edu

Project Details

Project Title: Advancing Law and Ethics of Pathogen Genomic Data Sharing

Project Summary: The rapid sharing of accurate and high-quality data about potentially pandemic pathogens has become a cornerstone of international readiness and international agreements. The Laidlaw Scholar would provide analyses of how ethical and legal frameworks apply to the sharing of data, including potentially sensitive data about human contributors to data sharing networks.

Laidlaw Scholar Responsibilities: The scholar’s day-to-day responsibilities would focus on research within both openly accessible public health databases (NLM/NCBI) as well as proprietary databases like Science Direct and generating research memoranda.

Expected Scholar Deliverables: The scholar would be responsible for drafting a series of 4-5 page memos analyzing legal and ethical frameworks applicable to sharing pathogen data.

Do you expect this project to run longer than six weeks? No

Project Requirements or Skills:

Background in microbiology or genetics is helpful but not required.