Labs Within Social Ecology
Adolescent and Childhood Experience Lab
Dr. Jodi Quas (jquas@uci.edu)
Here in the Adolescent and Childhood Experience Lab at the University of California, Irvine, we are dedicated to improving the lives of children of all ages through science. We work on many projects with families all over Orange County, across the United States, and even in other countries.
Research Interests: Memory development, effects of stress on memory; consequences of legal involvement on youth victims and witnesses; development and testing of methods to improve identification of and interventions for high-risk children and adolescents.
Child Narratives Lab (CNL)
Dr. J. Zoe Klemfuss (jklemfus@uci.edu)
Research in the Child Narratives Lab focuses on how social context and individual differences influence children's reports about past events. More specifically, we address questions about how the conditions under which children experience events and the conditions in which they are asked to remember those events influence what and how they recall. We are also interested in studying how individual differences in cognitive and narrative skills contribute to children's abilities to report about events they've experienced.
Development, Disorder, and Delinquency Lab (3D Lab)
Dr. Elizabeth Cauffman (cauffman@uci.edu)
Dr. Elizabeth Cauffman is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. Along with her students and staff, her research team focuses on three interrelated concerns:
- patterns of normative development in samples of community and delinquent youth
- delinquent behavior among youth and the implications for practice and policy
- the mental health problems of juvenile offenders
To develop more effective prevention and treatment strategies for youth offenders, we must first understand how individual and environmental factors interact. This understanding can be, and has been, used to inform legal decision-making.
History and Politics Lab
Dr. Eraldo Souza dos Santos (esouzado@uci.edu)
The History and Politics Lab’s goal is, to use Toni Morrison’s words, to shed critical light on the “politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute,” by refusing “arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.”
Human Rights and Technology Lab
Dr. Nicole Iturriaga (iturrian@uci.edu)
Technology and Changing Abortion Laws: Explores the intersection of technology and changing legal realities around reproductive justice and abortion access in the United States using a triangulated data analysis approach.
White Nationalism Online: Our lab, in an ongoing collaboration with Aaron Panofsky’s (Institute for Society and Genetics, UCLA), examines how white nationalists use scientific language and ideas in online discussions surrounding the intersection of race and gender, specifically regarding dating and procreation.
Tulsa 1921: This project, using a forensics-based human rights lens, examines the current exhumation efforts of victims of the Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space and Crime (ILSSC)
Dr. John Hipp (hippj@uci.edu) and Dr. Charis E. Kubrin (ckubrin@uci.edu)
Our group is dedicated to researching the social ecology of crime at all levels of analysis including street segments, blocks, neighborhoods, cities, counties, and metropolitan areas. We address questions related to three broad categories within the social ecology of crime.
Rendon Urban Research Lab
Dr. María G. Rendón (mgrendon@uci.edu)
Scholars debate the extent to which the Mexican-origin group has successfully integrated into the United States. Some suggest they have experienced “delayed assimilation” while others suggest “generations of racial exclusion.” This study engages this debate calling attention to the complex and non-linear integration process of Mexican-Americans, as well as, their racialization in the United States. Assimilation theory failed to capture the integration process of Mexicans Americans whose migratory flow is the longest lasting in the world. The Mexican case encompasses various and distinct immigration cohorts that have experienced voluntary and non-voluntary return migration, and re-immigration – factors missing when taking only an intergenerational approach. This study draws on archival research, oral histories and historical-GIS mapping to examine how immigrant cohorts and neighborhoods shaped the integration and exclusion of this group. It focuses on a case study of a Mexican village (in San Luis Potosi, Mexico) that experienced migration to southern California, specifically the Long Beach area, since the early 1900s. The study follows migratory cohorts of families across generations to understand how the time of arrival, racialization and segregation practices, as well as acculturation, shaped divergent patterns of integration for Mexican Americans.
Labs Outside of Social Ecology
RISE (Race, Immigration, & Social/Health Equity) Lab
Dr. Alein Y. Haro-Ramos (ayharo@uci.edu)
The RISE Lab at UC Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health is dedicated to understanding and addressing health disparities among minoritized and immigrant communities. Our research focuses on the structural, social, and policy factors that shape health outcomes, with an emphasis on health equity.
Voices for Community Health Equity and New Systems and System Changes (VoiCES) Lab
Dr. Alana LeBron (alebron@uci.edu)
Our lab focuses on health equity and health justice projects and uses mixed methods research and a Community-Based Participatory Research (CPBR) approach. Through the lab, students participate in immersive public health research experience, engaging directly with faculty, research staff, community health organizations, and study participants.
Our research lab leverages qualitative research methods and mixed methods to uncover and communicate the stories and lessons from our work with underserved communities. Through qualitative research, we amplify voices and highlight the complexities of lived experiences, fostering greater empathy and understanding. By closely examining the narratives, experiences, and insights of individuals within these communities, we can gain a deeper understanding of their challenges and triumphs.