The Fall Research Competition, offered by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, is a chance for UW–Madison faculty members to receive vital funding support for research projects.
Applications for the 2024 competition are due by 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6, and applicants will be notified of outcomes in December.
As entries for this year’s contest begin to roll in, the School of Human Ecology celebrates its nine faculty members whose projects received funding through the 2023 Fall Research Competition:
- Jennifer Angus, “Blue”
- Megan Bea, “The role of short-term debt fluctuations in the financial lives of lower-income Americans”
- Sarah Anne Carter, “Equity in the museum: Collections research in context”
- Ben Fisher, “The school security industrial complex as a driver of racial inequality in school discipline”
- Erin Hamilton, “Green libraries, green occupants: Leveraging sustainable architecture for STEM education and eco-behaviors”
- Mary Hark, “Large scale handmade paper production for installation: Color field painting with paper and natural dyes”
- Gisella Kagy, “The long-term and intergenerational impact of childhood lead exposure on well-being”
- Margaret Kerr, “Evaluating the preliminary effectiveness of an antiracist parenting (ARP) program: Building support for extramural funding”
- Uchita Vaid, “Mapping women’s social networks in informal housing in India: Fostering gender equity in urban policymaking”
In her project, Kagy, an assistant professor of Consumer Science and the Global Human Ecology & 4W Faculty Fellow, is investigating the long term effects of waterborne lead exposure. Using full count historical U.S. censuses, she is able to track individuals over time to determine their potential exposure to waterborne lead as children, as well as their adult labor market outcomes.
“The research strategy involves analyzing large datasets (the final sample includes 5.4 million people!) and takes advantage of the fact that the amount of lead leached into drinking water depends on the corrosiveness of the water,” Kagy says. “Preliminary findings indicate that individuals exposed to lead pipes with corrosive water during childhood have lower incomes as adults. This effect is seen through occupational sorting, but even within the same occupation, individuals exposed to lead have lower incomes. This year, we will be exploring the underlying factors driving these results.”
Last year’s award enabled Kagy to hire a graduate student to help analyze project data, which she called “critical” to completing the data work.
In addition to last year’s grant, Sarah Anne Carter, associate professor of Design Studies and executive director of the Center for Design and Material Culture (CDMC), received two previous grants that supported her book project “Museum Feelings: An Emotional History of the American Museum” by funding two year-long graduate student assistantships.
Each chapter of “Museum Feelings” focuses on a feeling or category of feelings explored through examples primarily drawn from large urban museums, such as wonder, rootedness, fatigue, home, possibility, pain and empathy. Research in museum archives and interdisciplinary analyses of art and other objects opens a new window onto the past, present and future of the American museum.
“These grants had the dual benefits of pushing a complex new research project forward and allowing me to mentor two of my graduate students in a new context,” Carter says. “First off, these awards offered focused research support that led to multiple conference papers, grant applications and important steps toward a completed book manuscript.”
These graduate students’ work on Carter’s project has fueled further academic study and influenced their career goals, Carter says.
“In 2022-2023, Design History PhD candidate Natalie Wright provided expert research assistance on this project, and we are now writing a co-authored essay that grew out of one of the chapters that her research supported,” she adds. “And this past year, Folklore PhD candidate Svea Larson also provided expert research assistance. Larson is now seriously considering a career in museums and is working in the CDMC this fall.”