Office of Research and Graduate Studies

The College of the Liberal Arts is home to twenty-one cross-disciplinary centers and institutes that promote scholarly collaboration, outreach, and student engagement. The centers are equipped with the resources to bring their research and scholarship into the public domain, helping to inform practitioners and policy makers well beyond Penn State.

The Office of the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies supports research activity by faculty, students, and other researchers.

What we do:

Manage the Office of Grants and Contracts
Supervise Liberal Arts IT
Oversee the college’s research centers and institutes
Support graduate programs throughout the college

Internal Funding

Liberal Arts faculty interested in external funding opportunities work with our Office of Research and Graduate Studies. The college and University provide many avenues for securing funding.

College Resources

Start-up funds are provided by the college to newly hired faculty to help them advance their program of study through significant and substantial research projects that are likely to appear on a CV. Start-up funds can be especially useful for projects that would otherwise prove unfeasible due to lack of funding, and/or they increase the faculty member’s chances of securing external funding to support their research agenda.

The college provides a $5,000 award to faculty who are tenured and promoted to associate professor. The award supports faculty in pursuing their next major research project, with a strong emphasis on activities that promote a successful application for external funding. The funds may be used to support preliminary archival work, purchase equipment or materials, conduct pilot studies aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of a project to an external funding agency, etc. In addition, the award can be used for a course release, contingent on a strong case for the benefits of the release and approval from the department head.

This award recognizes and rewards faculty for their success in bringing in external funds. The award is tied to the components of grants that bring revenue into the college, in the form of indirect cost recovery, or that shift college expenses (e.g., faculty salaries and graduate student stipends) onto grants. Awards will be made concurrent with the establishment of the grant budget, to allow investigators to use these funds in ways that support the execution of the grant or positions them for their next major grant proposal. The award is made to the principal investigator (PI) for grants that fall within the portfolio of the college’s Office of Grants and Contracts.

How it Works
The award amount is computed as 8 percent of the revenues generated by a grant in the form of:

indirect cost recovery that comes to the college (Note: The college recovers 12 percent of indirect costs when they are charged at a rate in excess of 15 percent.);
academic year salaries for faculty in Liberal Arts; and
academic year stipends for graduate students in Liberal Arts.

The cap for the award for any grant is set at $15,000. There is no cap on the number of recognition awards a faculty member may receive; competitive continuation awards are considered as separate from the initial grant.

The award is given to all grants led by a Liberal Arts faculty member, including P.I. awards and sub-contracts. There is no threshold for entry, such that all grants with indirect cost recovery, salaries, or stipends are eligible for the award. The award does not apply to fellowships; the college typically supports and recognizes faculty obtaining prestigious fellowships by closing the gap between the fellowship funding and the faculty member’s full salary. Fellowship support must be approved by the dean in advance of the fellowship application submission.

The award takes the form of a flexible research fund. Awarded funds can be used for concurrent course buyouts if and only if faculty salaries cannot be paid by the funding agency per published guidelines, or if extenuating circumstances prevent the grant from covering course releases. In such cases, the internal course buyout rate is $8,000. Faculty may receive permission to use the awarded funds for subsequent course releases, at an internal course buyout rate of $8,000, contingent on sufficient justification concerning the impact of the release on future grant activity, and approval from the associate dean for research and the faculty member’s department head. Subsequent course releases are not intended to substitute for faculty salary that could be charged to a subsequent grant. Note: Faculty with less than 2-2 teaching loads are not eligible for course releases using these funds. Funds awarded under this program may be taken into consideration if the college is asked to provide resources in preparation for submission of a proposal or when submitting a proposal or accepting funding involves institutional cost sharing.

Select University Resources

External Funding – Office of Grants and Contracts

Liberal Arts faculty interested in external funding opportunities can work with the Office of Grants and Contracts. The office is committed to adding value to grant proposal preparation and grants management for research project principal investigators (PIs) and to enhancing the growth of sponsored programs research in the College of the Liberal Arts and the University.

To contact us, please email raz11@psu.edu or drop by 118 Moore Building. For more information, current Penn State faculty, staff, or students can visit the Administrative Gateway.

Our Services

Proposal Preparation and Submission

The Office of Grants and Contracts works with faculty, postdocs, and graduate students to prepare budgets and supporting documentation, including securing cost sharing, assisting with proposal preparation and submission, ensuring proposals meet agency guidelines, reviewing proposals for grammar, obtaining required signatures, and making budget revisions if requested by funding agencies.

Managing Grant Funds and Ensuring Compliance

The Office of Grants and Contracts sets up budget accounts, updates budgets at the time of award, administers subawards and subcontracts, manages grants, and ensures cost accounting office compliance. We also track cost sharing, monitor academic year salary distributions to grants, manage account termination and closeouts, and assist departmental personnel in the interpretation of uniform guidance and sponsors’ terms and conditions.

Other Services

The Office of Grants and Contracts notifies faculty of important changes in federal grant policies, provides grants and contracts training to departmental staff, provides startup funds to junior faculty, hosts the annual Researcher Appreciation Reception, and more.

Faculty Research

Dara Walker

Assistant Professor of African American Studies, History, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Walker received a 2025 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship. The award will go toward her current book project, “High School Rebels: Black Power, Education, and Youth Politics in the Motor City, 1966–1972,” which tells the story of a citywide movement of Detroit teenagers who fought for Black self-determination during the Black Power Era.

Faculty Research

Heather Holleman

Associate Teaching Professor of English

Heather Holleman’s faith deeply inspired her work as a writer, including for her debut novel, This Seat’s Saved, which was named the winner in the Young Adult (YA) category for Christianity Today magazine’s 2024 Book Awards.

Faculty Research

Michael J. Nelson

Professor and Department Head of Political Science

Collegiality can go a long way toward ensuring a more harmonious and productive workplace — even in places like the federal judiciary, according to Michael J. Nelson, professor and new head of Penn State’s Department of Political Science and his co-authors in the book, “The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary”.

Faculty Research

Dawn Witherspoon

Professor of Psychology

Dawn Witherspoon has spent many years researching the ways that the spaces children inhabit play a critical role in their development, including in her role as director of the Parents And Children Together (PACT) research initiative.

Faculty Research

Michael J. Nelson

Professor and Department Head of Political Science

The U.S. Supreme Court Database, one of the foremost research aids devoted to the nation’s highest court, has found a new home at Penn State. The comprehensive, publicly accessible database contains information on every case decided by the Supreme Court from its first decision in 1791.

Faculty Research

Jonathan H. Marks

Bioethics Program Director

Jonathan H. Marks has been named a fellow by the Hastings Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to informing policy, practice and knowledge of ethical issues in health, science and technology.

AnthropologyFaculty AchievementFaculty Research

Kirk French

Teaching Professor of Anthropology

In the summer of 2022, Kirk’s documentary—which explores environmental challenges faced by a Mexican community—was nominated for a Mid-Atlantic Emmy.

Faculty Research

Sandra Spanier

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Women's Studies

Led by Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Women’s Studies Sandra Spanier and Associate Research Professor of English Verna Kale, the the Hemingway Letters Project recently published the sixth volume of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway”. This volume covers the period from June 1934 to June 1936, plus an appendix of 48 previously unpublished letters written between 1918 and 1934.

Faculty Research

Sandra Spanier

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Women's Studies

The Hemingway Letters Project received a three-year NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations grant worth $282,520, plus $150,000 in federal matching funds. That will fund the seventh, eighth and ninth volumes of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway,” which will eventually produce 17 volumes of the American literary icon’s more than 6,000 letters written between 1907 and 1961.

Faculty Research

Elizabeth Kadetsky

Professor of English

Elizabeth Kadetsky received a $60,000 Public Scholars grant for her current non-fiction book project chronicling her journey to trace the whereabouts of the Tanesar sculptures, a series of sixth-century stone figures, most of them mother goddesses that are also called matrikas, that were stolen from a temple in southwestern Rajasthan, India, during the early 1960s and ended up in the collections of high-profile art collectors and several prominent museums.

Faculty Research

Christina Snyder

McCabe Greer Professor of the American Civil War Era

Christina Snyder’s research investigates the deep and often overlooked histories of slavery, race, and colonialism in North America from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Her current project, American Abolitions, explores how efforts to end slavery took shape across different regions and eras, challenging narrow understandings of American freedom. Through her work, she brings to light marginalized stories that are essential to a fuller, more inclusive account of U.S. history.

Faculty Research

Rina Das Eiden and Jenae Niederhiser

Co-directors of the Child Study Center

Rina Das Eiden and Jenae Neiderhiser were appointed co-directors of the College of the Liberal Arts’ Child Study Center (CSC). In their new role they will continue to build on the CSC’s growth and development, while bringing more visibility to it and implementing several new initiatives.

AnthropologyArchaeologyFaculty ResearchMatson Museum of Anthropology

James Doyle

Director, Matson Museum of Anthropology

A former assistant curator of art of the ancient Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, James Doyle has been making a big impact on the Matson Museum of Anthropology at Penn State, which opened in its new location inside the new Welch Building in 2025.

Faculty Research

Sarah Kollat

Teaching Professor of Psychology

Sarah Kollat’s research and teaching focus on developmental psychology, particularly how healthy family systems can support positive growth and prevent future challenges. As a novelist, she draws on her psychology background to explore the darker aspects of human behavior and trauma, crafting psychological thrillers that delve into fear, dysfunction, and the complexities of family dynamics.

Faculty Research

Daryl Cameron

Professor of Psychology

Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute

Professor of Psychology

Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute

Daryl Cameron’s research explores how people perceive and respond to empathy—especially when it’s simulated by artificial intelligence. Through his work with the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making and his Empathy and Moral Psychology Lab, Cameron investigates the ethical and psychological implications of AI-generated empathy, considering both its potential to fulfill human social needs and the risks of outsourcing emotional connection. His interdisciplinary approach aims to deepen understanding of moral behavior in an age of rapidly evolving technology.

Faculty Research

Ricardo “Rico” Brooks

Assistant Professor of Industrial-organizational Psychology

Ricardo’s research explores multiple factors associated with workplace learning and development. His work will address a major gap in the field – that most employee learning is informal (about the individual), yet most organizations focus on organizational-centric approaches (what’s best for the organization).  

Faculty AchievementFaculty Research

Eric Plutzer and Michael Berkman

Liberal Arts Professor of Political Science; McCourtney Institute Director and Professor of Political Science

Plutzer and McCourtney Institute Director and Berkman received a one-year grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to re-survey people who have participated in their Mood of the Nation Poll. “We believe this is the first U.S. survey to follow the same citizens to see how their opinions have changed over a period of years. We are excited about digging into the data, and appreciate the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation. A small amount of funds can go a long way in social science research and we are grateful to receive it.”

Faculty Research

Julie Reed

Associate Professor of History

Julie Reed’s research centers on Cherokee history, Indigenous education, and the ways Native communities preserve and transmit knowledge across generations. Through her Mellon-funded training in applied Southeastern archaeology, she’s expanding her scholarship to include non-invasive archaeological methods that honor and elevate Indigenous voices. Her work reframes dominant narratives about Cherokee educational history and sovereignty while fostering more ethical, collaborative approaches to research with Native communities.

Faculty Research

Martha Wadsworth

Professor of Psychology

Thanks to a five-year, $5.5 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Professor Psychology Martha Wadsworth and her colleagues will further evaluate the trauma-informed coping and empowerment-based BaSICS program’s ability to treat anxiety, depression and traumatic stress symptoms in a larger randomized trial with clinically referred early adolescents across central Pennsylvania.

Faculty Research

James Doyle

Associate Research Professor of Anthropology

Director of the Matson Museum of Anthropology

Associate Research Professor of Anthropology

Director of the Matson Museum of Anthropology

The Matson Museum of Anthropology received a $9,333 Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions that funded a consulting conservator who examined the condition of the museum’s collection of over 800 global textiles.

Faculty Research

Michael Naydan

Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies

Michael Naydan’s research and career center on translating and promoting Ukrainian literature and culture for English-speaking audiences. Through decades of collaborative translation work, mentorship, and scholarship, he has helped bring overlooked Ukrainian voices to global attention—especially vital during the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Faculty Research

P. Gabrielle Foreman

Professor of African American Studies

Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR), Douglass Day has proven to be a highly creative and effective way to transcribe a vast trove of digitized African American historical documents — including the writings of its namesake, iconic abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass. Now the program has a new three-year partnership with the Library of Congress.

Faculty Research

Alicia Grandey

Professor of Psychology

Penn State Liberal Arts Professor of Psychology Alicia Grandey is the co-author of “Emotionally Charged: How to Lead in the New World of Work.” Published by Oxford University Press, the book provides leaders—everyone from shift managers to top-level executives—with practical strategies to manage the emotional ups and downs of the workplace and serve as better leaders for their employees.

Faculty Research

Dean Clarence Lang

Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts

Clarence Lang, Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, served as one of the co-editors of the recently published book, “Black Urban History at the Crossroads: Race and Place in the American City,” published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October of 2024. The anthology spotlights recent scholarship in the field of African American urban history, connecting and contextualizing “chronological, regional, topical and thematic perspectives on the Black urban experience” over the past three centuries of American life.

Faculty Research

Gabeba Baderoon

Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, African Studies, and Comparative Literature

Gabeba Baderoon’s work blends poetry, scholarship, and personal narrative to explore themes of illness, memory, and identity. As a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow, she is writing a memoir in verse that grapples with the fragmented experience of concussion through interdisciplinary archives, landscapes, and language. Her project reflects a deep engagement with creative expression as a form of healing and critical inquiry.

Faculty Research

Jessamyn Abel

Associate Professor of Asian Studies

Jessamyn Abel’s research explores how major infrastructure projects and institutions in postwar Japan shaped cultural identity, national pride, and democratic values. Her award-winning book examines how the Tōkaidō Shinkansen bullet train symbolized Japan’s emergence as a modern, global power, while her current work investigates how everyday institutions fostered democratic participation after World War II.

Faculty Research

Martha Wadsworth

Professor of Psychology

Martha received a new five-year $5.5 million NIMH grant to expand her BaSICS program (Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills), which helps middle schoolers manage chronic stress through evidence-based strategies.

Faculty Research

Sherita Johnson

Director of Africana Research Center

Associate Professor of English

Director of Africana Research Center

Associate Professor of English

Newly appointed director of the Africana Research Center in the College of the Liberal Arts, Sherita L. Johnson plans to raise the visibility of ARC, place more emphasis on research initiatives, while also exploring how ARC has supported its past post-docs.

Faculty Research

Karen Bierman

Evan Pugh University Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies

Low-income students who received a preschool intervention focused on social-emotional development continued to benefit from it during their teen years according to a recent study.

Faculty Research

A.K. Sandoval-Strausz

Professor of History and Director of the Latina/o Studies Program

A new book edited by Sandoval-Strausz provides readers with an expansive view of how the Latino community’s deep influence on cities allows for a rethinking of American urban history. The University of Chicago Press recently published “Metropolitan Latinidad: Transforming American Urban History,” a collection of 12 essays examining the rich and multifaceted Latino experience in cities and suburbs throughout the United States.

Faculty Research

Kirk French

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Film Production/Media Studies

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Film Production/Media Studies Kirk French and his crew recently completed “A Century After Nanook,” a 90-minute documentary detailing the devastating environmental and cultural changes that have taken root over the last century in Inukjuak, the Inuit village in northern Quebec where Robert Flaherty filmed the classic 1922 documentary, “Nanook of the North.”

Faculty Research

Mary Stuckey

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences

Mary E. Stuckey’s research examines how presidential rhetoric shapes national identity and influences how people see themselves within political communities. Her work highlights how political language—through symbols like national parks or the Declaration of Independence—both reflects and shapes who we are as a nation.

Faculty Research

Katie Burkhouse

Associate Professor of Psychology

Katie’s externally funded research explores behavioral and brain-based risk factors for youth depression with a focus on early interventions. She integrates methods such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral data. She currently leads two major grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), totaling more than $7.3 million, and is a collaborator on several other federally and state-funded projects including the $11 million State of Ohio Adversity and Resiliency Study. 

Faculty Research

Katie Burkhouse

Associate Professor of Psychology

Associate Professor of Psychology, Katie Burkhouse, and a colleague at Vanderbilt University are researching how maternal depression affect mothers’ young children. “We’re trying to understand the precise mechanisms within the children of depressed mothers that place them at higher risk for developing not just depression but also anxiety—because if you have a parent with a history of depression, you’re at increased risk for multiple forms of psychopathology.”

Faculty Research

Craig L. Pearce and Hee Man Park

Brova Family Endowed Professor of Leadership and Human Resources; Associate Professor of Human Resource Management

The professional world has no shortage of micromanagers—or, as Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER) faculty members Craig L. Pearce and Hee Man Park like to call them, “accidental dictators.” But leaders don’t have to fall into that trap, according to an article published in the journal Organizational Dynamics co-written by Pearce and Park.

Faculty Research

Ted Toadvine

Director of Rock Ethics Institute

Professor of Philosophy

Director of Rock Ethics Institute

Professor of Philosophy

In his new book, “The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology”, Ted Toadvine examines deep time — or geologic time, measured in billions of years — to show how humans’ obsession with the precariousness of life “relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects the past and present with the goal of managing the future,” in turn diminishing our relationship with the world.

Faculty ResearchHistoryRichards Center

Rachel Shelden

Director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center

Rachel is an associate professor of history who focuses her resarch on the political and constitutional history of the the long nineteenth century—encompassing 1789 to 1914.

Faculty Research

James Doyle

Director of the Matson Museum of Anthropology

The Matson Museum of Anthropology, which is devoted to the study of human culture and supports teaching, research and outreach initiatives within the Department of Anthropology, welcome visitors to its new home within the new Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building in 2025. Thanks to a recent grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the museum will be able to publish the digitized catalog of its entire collection, making it searchable for faculty, students, staff and the public.

Faculty Research

David P. Baker

Professor of Sociology, Education, and Demography

Compiling historical accounts, interviews and reams of data, authors of “Global Mega-Science: Universities, Research Collaborations, and Knowledge Production”, David P. Baker, Penn State Professor of Sociology, Education and Demography and Justin J.W. Powell professor of sociology of education at the University of Luxembourg, argue that the age of global mega-science came out of the deeply intertwined relationship between higher education and scientific research, and the resulting collaborative networks established by professors around the world.

Faculty AchievementFaculty Research

Bradford Vivian

Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences

Bradford Vivian received two awards, the National Communication Association’s (NCA) 2024 Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression, and the Distinguished Alumni Award in English from George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Faculty Research

Jacob Holland-Lulewicz

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Holland-Lulewicz is among a group of archaeologists who published research on how oyster shells discarded over thousands of years by Indigenous people have helped protect and preserve the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia.

Faculty Research

Matthew Restall

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Director of Latin American Studies

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Director of Latin American Studies

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History recently wrote a book, “The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus,” tracing the life and many afterlives of Columbus. Throughout the book, Restall separates fact from fiction and seeks to understand why Columbus continues to mean different things to different people.

Faculty AchievementFaculty Research

Peter Arnett

Penn State Distinguished Professor of Psychology

Peter Arnett received Reitan Clinical Excellence Award from he National Academy of Neuropsychology. Recipients of the award are recognized for their long-term impact in the field of clinical neuropsychology.

Faculty Research

Claire Bourne

Associate Professor of English

Claire M.L. Bourne’s research focuses on book history, textual studies, and how readers—including literary giants like John Milton—interacted with texts over time. She has helped authenticate two rare books as having belonged to Milton, revealing how his marginalia reflect the development of his political and literary thought. Her work sheds light on the lived histories of books and deepens our understanding of early modern reading practices.

Faculty Research

Scott Burnett

Assistant professor of African studies and WGSS

Scott Burnett’s work critically examines how fascist and ethnonationalist ideologies manipulate gender and reproductive politics, which contributes to understanding and challenging systems of oppression. By bringing these issues to light through the Sawyer Seminar, the research promotes equity, historical awareness, and the pursuit of justice, while also encouraging dialogue and policy change that can lead to broader social transformation.

Faculty Research

Koraly Perez-Edgar

McCourtney Professor of Child Studies

The first wave of data Penn State’s HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study is now available to researchers interested in addressing a wide-range of questions, including how environments and substances impact infant and child development.

Faculty Research

Andrew Vitek

Associate Professor of Psychology

Extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud Boys have long been an ugly undercurrent of American culture. But despite these groups’ hateful rhetoric, their ranks have largely refrained from committing violent acts over the past three decades, according to research conducted by Andrew Vitek, associate teaching professor of political science and director of the Department of Political Science’s counterterrorism option at Penn State.

Faculty Research

Suresh Canagarajah

Evan Pugh University Professor of Applied Linguistics, English and Asian Studies

Suresh Canagarajah’s research focuses on language diversity, global communication, and the sociolinguistics of inclusion. Drawing on his multilingual upbringing in Sri Lanka, he examines how people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds—including migrants, international scholars, and disabled individuals—navigate and negotiate meaning across English varieties and communication styles. His work highlights the need for mutual understanding in global interactions and has significant implications for equity in education, science, and society.

Faculty Research

Hil Malatino

Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Philosophy

Joyce L. and Douglas S. Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute

Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Philosophy

Joyce L. and Douglas S. Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute

While conducting research, Hil Malatino, came to the realization that a vast trove of archival documents devoted to trans history had yet to be unearthed and analyzed by contemporary scholars. That insight led Malatino to conceive the project, “Widening the Arc of Trans History: Archival Research for Public Storytelling,” which recently received a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Faculty Research

Tawny Holm

Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS)

Associate Professor of CAMS and Jewish studies

Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS)

Associate Professor of CAMS and Jewish studies

Tawny Holm and her colleague, University of Notre Dame faculty member Dan Machiela, received a $50,000 Collaborative Research grant for their project, “The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls at the Crossroads of Empire: Negotiating Jewish Life under Foreign Rule.”

Faculty ResearchHistoryMiddle East Studies

Laura Robson

William L. and Donna F. Oliver-McCourtney Professor of History

A scholar who specializes in the Middle East and especially the Arab world, Laura and a fellow scholar launched a digital humanities project to tell the stories of and raise awareness and scholarship about stateless people.

Faculty Research

Karen Bierman

Evan Pugh University Professor of Psychology

Karen’s decades-long work—including the Head Start REDI (Research-based, Developmentally Informed) initiative—demonstrates the lasting impact of evidence-based programs designed to strengthen school readiness in young children. This early support connects to better outcomes in adolescence. 

Faculty Research

Jes Matsick

Associate Professor of Psychology and WGSS

Jes Matsick’s research explores how a sense of belonging impacts the mental and physical health of LGBTQ+ people, emphasizing that structural and interpersonal support are key to individual well-being. Through her work at the Underrepresented Perspectives Lab, Matsick is advancing research that helps LGBTQ+ individuals not only survive but thrive.