Social and Behavioral Sciences

Evaluating the Roles of Hillforts: Settlement and Mobility in Western Kosova during the LBA-EIA (1450-800 BCE)
Erina Baci, Anthropology

My dissertation examines how hillforts—fortified or naturally defensible sites—shaped settlement, mobility, and interaction in Western Kosova during the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age (1400-800 BCE). Using a multiscalar approach, I analyze data at three levels: individual sites, the broader Dukagjin region, and comparisons with similar sites in Northern Albania. While traditionally viewed as places of refuge during conflict, emerging research suggests that hillforts played a far more dynamic role in prehistoric society—a broader dialogue to which this study aims to contribute. By integrating artifacts, macrobotanical remains, radiocarbon dating, isotopic analysis, and geospatial data, this research re-evaluates the influence of hillforts on human settlement and mobility in the Balkans during a key period of social transformation.

Growing Up Together: The Linked Lives of Siblings During the Transition to Adulthood
Emma Banchoff, Sociology, Roblin Scholar

Among the longest lasting social connections in people’s lives, sibling relationships are ubiquitous, multifaceted, and intertwined over the life course. Despite being integral to the composition and functioning of families, siblings remain significantly understudied in social research. My dissertation project addresses this deficiency by analyzing the interconnected lives of siblings during the transition to adulthood. I conceptualize siblinghood as a special kind of social tie that fuses kinship relations with a shared biographical generation. Across three empirical chapters, I investigate how different dimensions of this unique social tie shape family formation outcomes and intimate relationships. Using three decades of longitudinal, whole-family panel data, I assess how marital transitions vary by sibling attributes; estimate sibling effects on fertility; and analyze siblings’ mutual influences on sexual behavior. These analyses illuminate how siblings—the people we grow up with—are integral to how we grow up and who we grow up to be.

Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Conceptualizations and Enactments of Caring for Racially Minoritized Students
Karin Brown, Educational Studies

Too many students of color in American secondary schools have negative experiences while learning mathematics. However, mathematics teachers can facilitate more positive environments for these populations through caring. Prior research offers insight into what teacher caring for students of color involves, such as interpersonal student-teacher relationships and understanding structural racism. However, researchers have tended to describe these practices in general ways. In contrast, this study offers an in-depth account of teachers’ caring, guided by the following question: How do secondary mathematics teachers who are identified as effective conceptualize and enact caring for racially minoritized students? Participants include four white women teachers nominated for successful work with students of color. Data comprise semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, analyzed using thematic analysis and the constant comparative method. Findings will support teacher educators and professional developers in strengthening educators’ knowledge of caring, which could contribute to more positive mathematical learning experiences for students of color.

The Clinic and the Cop: Punishing Gender Non-Conformity and The Rise of Trans Politics in Liberal San Francisco, 1960-1994
Alex Burnett, History and Women’s and Gender Studies

My dissertation, The Clinic and the Cop: Punishing Gender Non-Conformity and The Rise of Trans Politics in Liberal San Francisco, 1960-1994, offers an urban history of the emergence of mass incarceration from the perspective of criminalized gender non-conforming people. Dominant historiography has primarily examined transgender histories through the lens of medicine, narrating how a mostly white and middle-class group of patients navigated a hostile medical system that restricted gender-affirming healthcare. Through foregrounding the stories of sex workers, imprisoned people, and psychiatric patients, I argue northern California’s criminal legal system and its transsexual healthcare system grew in tandem with each other, creating new forms of social control under the guise of promoting public health. Furthermore, my dissertation reveals that San Francisco’s trans liberation movement developed in response to the SFPD’s sexually, racially, and economically discriminatory anti-prostitution enforcement system, challenging—and, at times, bolstering—the power of this punitive regime.

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Helping the Homeland? The Challenge of National Industrial Policy in a Globalized Economy
Sujin Cha, Political Science

Industrial policy has re-emerged as a key tool for supporting domestic industries, yet in a globalized economy, subsidies often benefit foreign firms and workers, sometimes undermining nationalistic goals. How has the globalization of production and consumption impacted governments’ industrial policies? I argue that policymakers weigh multiple firm attributes when awarding subsidies, including firms’ nationality and the relative foreignness of firms’ supply chains, customers, and workforces.

If governments prioritize political rewards from business, firm and supply chain nationality should be especially influential; if governments value rewards from ordinary voters, customer and workforce nationality should be more decisive in shaping industrial policy targeting. Analyzing firm-level data on U.S. industrial subsidies from 2000 to 2023, I find evidence for the special interest channel: large American firms with U.S.-centered supply chains are significantly more likely to receive government support, whereas firms with more domestic customers and workers do not garner a similar advantage. These findings shed light on how firm characteristics shape industrial policy outcomes and reveal its limitations in serving broader public interests.

Advancing Interpretability and Controllability in AI-powered Generation and Perception
Siyi Chen, Electrical and Computer Engineering

AI systems play an increasingly prominent role in public safety, healthcare, and content creation. However, the opaque, complex nature of deep neural networks limits trust, reduces user control, and raises ethical concerns, particularly in sensitive applications such as public safety monitoring and data generation. Hence, the need for interpretable and controllable AI models has become urgent. My dissertation research tackles these issues by advancing interpretable methods to enhance user control, safety, and robustness in AI-powered generative and perceptive models. These advancements equip users with tools to understand and guide AI outputs, promote ethical AI models, and enhance the performance of AI. Specifically, my dissertation studies: (i) Principled and Precise Control in Image Generation which allows flexible user control of generated images. (ii) Robust and Safe Text-to-Image Generation that avoids the generation of harmful or illegal content. (iii) Interpretable and Enhanced Representation Learning that is important for applications such as public safety monitoring.

Mapping and Dreaming Together at the Kitchen Table: An Exploration of What Allows Teachers of Color to Stay, Thrive, and Sustain Themselves in Educational Spaces
Sarah Day Dayon, Educational Studies

My dissertation explores what it takes for veteran Teachers of Color (TOCs) to stay in schools and what is needed to support their well-being and work. Knowing the harms that Students and Teachers of Color experience have been well documented in educational research, there’s an opportunity to further learn from TOCs and how they see their capacity to continue working in what are often hostile conditions. I ask how TOCs think about staying in education, the factors that support them to continue their work, and what is needed for them to not just survive, but thrive and be sustained as whole people. I also examine how critical mapping methods in the context of a retreat can be used to learn about TOCs’ perspectives on the environmental conditions and resources that support them.

The Rise and Fall of the Space Age: From Prophecy to Profit in the Making of the American Future
Reynolds Hahamovitch, History

The Space Age was meant to last forever, but today we refer to it in the past tense. My dissertation asks why. I argue that the Space Age transformed in the collective American imagination from an unending future to a brief period in the past when profit overcame prophecy as the dominant paradigm for state-led technological development over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. The driving force that caused prophecy to crumble and profit to rise as the ideal future for space technology was a contest between the state, corporations, and a cross-section of the public over the ownership, direction, and distribution of technological innovation. By the late 1970s, the Space Age, once a dramatic plan for human space colonization, had transformed from inevitable future to a fleeting moment of optimism in the past. What emerged in its place is an American future in which the horizons of technology, society, and profit remain inextricably bound.

Shaking the Snowglobe: Remaking the Self in Ketamine Treatments
Matthew Hiller, Social Work and Anthropology

This project explores the ways that ketamine is framed as a source of hope for the treatment of depression and trauma. It is based on two years of ethnographic research as a “psychedelic integration psychotherapist” at a ketamine clinic in southeast Michigan. I argue in this dissertation that ketamine is linked to narratives of transformation centered on the disruption and reintegration of the self. I examine how these narratives relate to three common themes in ketamine treatments: neuroplasticity, trauma, and mystical experiences. Through doing this, I make the case that the production of hope in ketamine treatments ties to particular ideological investments, or presumptions about what things are and how they should be. I consider both how these ideological investments factor into experiences of healing and how they can perpetuate harm or exclusion.

“To Buy a Slave and Save a Soul”: Slavery, Religion, and the Household in Late Antiquity
Brittany Joyce, Ancient History

My dissertation considers the evolution of Roman slavery practices with the popularization of Christianity in the fourth to fifth centuries CE. Although it has long been acknowledged that the introduction of Christianity did not improve conditions for enslaved people, as was previously thought, my project articulates how Christianity and slavery functioned together both to control enslaved people and illustrate religious rhetoric used to influence free Christians. I place the literature of religious leaders alongside legal and epigraphic evidence to tease the connection between rhetoric and reality in slavery discourse of the later Roman empire. Over the course of four chapters, I demonstrate these intersections through different types of people: abandoned children, freed people, virgins, and prostitutes. These chapters focus on the ideas and regulations of religious leaders concerning each group, both looking to the abstract scenarios presented in literary sources and the implications for enslaved lives rhetoric could cause.

The Politics of the Urban Topography
Martin Macias Medellin, Political Science

What is the relationship between the urban built environment—roads, buildings—and armed conflict? I argue that states develop homogeneous roads and buildings to consolidate control when they have opportunities and are cohesive enough. Subsequently, when armed conflicts affect cities, areas with more heterogeneous environments provide cover to defenders, forcing states to use indiscriminate violence and massively destroy cities. I develop a novel conceptual and measurement framework centered on the idea that cities have an urban topography. Then, I show that when armed conflict ends in decisive military victories governments create more uniform urban environments in contrast to conflicts ending in power-sharing agreements or when violence fades out. I also how states use more indiscriminate tactics and destruction in messier urban areas. My study underscores how the urban built environment is a product of the consolidation of state power but can also pose challenges to maintain such power.

The Psychological, Neural, and Biological Underpinnings of Cultural Diversity
Irene Melani, Psychology

Psychological variation across cultures has been theorized along interdependent and independent self-models based on systematic East-West comparisons. My dissertation extends this literature by addressing three distinct inquiries. First, while it is well-established that Westerners and Easterners focus on objects and contexts, respectively, little research has explored the cognitive strategies that afford these attentional patterns. Chapter 1 examines whether European Americans and East Asians organize information differently in the mind. Second, while Western societies foster independence, they exhibit the highest levels of relational concerns, indicated by social anxiety. Chapter 2 investigates whether social anxiety carries different cross-cultural functions and consequences. Third, in Chapter 3, I expand the scope of cultural psychology by examining Southeast Asia—a region largely overlooked in literature. Together, this dissertation illuminates how deeply culture is encoded in the brain, mind, and body, and highlights the need to extend this work beyond East Asia and North America.

Education in Exile: A Comparative Case Study of How Venezuelan Immigrant and Refugee Students Experience their Educational Integration in Colombian Schools
Marcela Ortiz Guerrero, Educational Studies

Amid rising forced displacement, ensuring educational opportunities for refugee children has become a global priority, as education provides a safe space for learning and development while fostering integration and social mobility. Yet, half of the world’s refugee children remain out of school or attend institutions unable to provide adequate support. This dissertation examines how Venezuelan immigrant and refugee students experience integration in Colombian schools, a critical context given the scale of Venezuelan migration. Drawing from integration frameworks in education and refugee studies, and combining data from in-depth interviews and classroom observations in two schools along the Colombia-Venezuela border, this study moves beyond conventional measures of access and achievement. It examines the multidimensional nature of educational integration, recognizing it as a fluid phenomenon shaped by the constant interplay of learning, belonging, and policy. This research seeks to offer insights into how schools can more effectively support newcomers through culturally responsive approaches.

Cognitive and Contextual Factors Shaping Spanish and English Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Children
Valeria Ortiz Villalobos, Education and Psychology

Reading comprehension—knowing how to read and understand text—is essential for successful learning, especially in the digital age, where technology and social media heighten literacy demands on children. Bilingual children, particularly in immigrant families, often face challenges as the language of school instruction differs from the language spoken at home. Through two related studies, my dissertation examines cognitive and contextual factors that support reading comprehension in Spanish-English bilingual children. Theories of bilingualism suggest that dual language competence advances child literacy development, yet how home language proficiency benefits reading comprehension remains understudied. Study 1 explores cross-linguistic interactions between Spanish and English. Study 2 longitudinally investigates Spanish reading comprehension. Using an asset-based approach to bilingualism, this work informs educational policy and practice to support children’s academic success and heritage identity.

Supplemental Benefits and Unmet Needs in Medicare Advantage Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans
Morgan Perry, Health Services Organization and Policy

There are currently no studies investigating differential access to Medicare Advantage insurance plans and benefits for dual Medicare-Medicaid eligible individuals, potential impact on unmet health-related social needs (e.g., transportation, food insecurity), or mechanisms for improving enrollee voice in insurance design. For Aim 1, I use cross-sectional analyses to investigate equity in access to highly rated Medicare Advantage insurance plans and supplemental benefits according to area-level factors. For Aim 2, I use novel, quasi-experimental staggered difference-in-differences to draw causal inferences of impact of Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits on transportation needs and food insecurity. For Aim 3, I conduct interviews to characterize decision-maker and policymaker perceptions of barriers, facilitators, and strategies to integrate insurance enrollee perspectives into health insurance policy and reform. My dissertation augments current research on Medicare Advantage and the science of policy implementation, investigating the state of health-related social needs in Medicare Advantage and mechanisms for improvement.

Landscapes of (Im)Mobility: Congolese Refugee Youth, the U.S. Resettlement System and Racial-Spatial Negotiations of Belonging
Irene Routte, Social Work and Anthropology

Grand Rapids, Michigan is one of the top cities in the U.S. for refugee resettlement and is also the largest resettlement city for Congolese overseas arrivals and secondary migration. Through the centering the lived experiences of Congolese refugee youth, this project questions the ways in which different mobilities and relationships to place elucidate specific claims of belonging, and how they are articulated within the refugee industry. Furthermore, it questions the ways that belonging is a racial-spatial experience and why this matters to Congolese refugee youth who have experienced forced movement. Additionally, the project focuses on the ways that place-attachment, relationships with past and present landscapes and mobility impact refugee youth’s own embodied and constitutive practices of integration and belonging. These questions deepen the ways we view these relationships to place and space contribute to a broader understanding of what it means to belong to the social fabric of the U.S.

Personalization, Pricing, and Experimentation on Digital Platforms
Yu Song, Business Administration

Digitization has fundamentally transformed the business landscape, presenting both opportunities and challenges for platforms. My research focuses on platform strategies in e-commerce and their effects on consumers, suppliers, and market outcomes. Using field experiments, structural modeling, causal inference, and advanced machine learning techniques, I examine consumer and supplier behaviors to inform managerial and policy decisions.

The first essay of my dissertation investigates how personalization at different stages of the customer journey—personalizing recommendation during the early stage and personalizing search during the later stage—affects consumer search and purchasing behaviors. I find that early-stage personalization encourages immediate consumer conversion but reduces active exploration, while later-stage personalization improves outcomes by leveraging more specific consumer preferences. The second essay examines the impact of platform-suggested pricing on seller pricing strategies and downstream sales outcomes. My findings suggest that sellers anchor their prices to platform suggestions and also incorporate private information when setting pricing.

Misinformation Politics: Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 Misinformation in the US and India
Pavani Vissapragada, Health Services Organization and Policy, Roblin Scholar

Misinformation rates around the world have been growing over the past five years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation was tied to thousands of avoidable deaths, globally leading to the World Health Organization declaring an “infodemic”. Paradoxically, some of this misinformation came from politicians, who should have incentives to improve population health outcomes for reelection. I argue that the spread of misinformation is incentivized by populism and that populist politicians particularly benefit from the spread of misinformation. I define populism as anti-pluralist, anti-establishment, anti-institutionalist and promoting the personalization of power. In this research, I argue that populist politicians are more likely to share misinformation than non-populist politicians and misinformation allows populist politicians to achieve populist goals. To test this theory, I use University of Michigan’s access to Facebook data to study the magnitude and political impact of misinformation transmission by populist politicians during the COVID-19 pandemic in two countries–the United States and India.

Characterizing Anthropogenic Climate Change Skeptics’ Data Reuse to Generate Insights for Data Repositories and Intermediaries
Morgan Wofford, Information

This dissertation describes the data practices of climate change skeptics, focusing on their reuse of public datasets. It addresses the dual-edged nature of open data: while it democratizes access to information, it may be repurposed in ways that challenge scientific consensus or conflict with open data practitioners’ beliefs. Through digital ethnography—participant observation, content analysis, and semi-structured interviews—this study traces “data journeys” from repositories like NASA and NOAA through skeptic communities. This approach investigates the infrastructures that enable and constrain data reuse within this community, shedding light on how members develop trust or distrust in data and create their own “knowledge artifacts” (e.g., graphs, models). By analyzing socio-technical factors influencing data engagement, the study offers nuanced insights into the impacts of open data access. Findings aim to guide open data practitioners in designing services that foster trust in climate science, minimize data misuse, and encourage critiques to advance scientific understanding.

Violences in Community: A Study of Fraternity Men’s Friendships and Organizational Responses to Harm
Anna Wood, Social Work and Sociology

Fraternity peer cultures are well-documented as upholding norms of masculinity that involve witnessing, withstanding, or being silent about violence. Based on longitudinal interviews with 42 members of historically white fraternities between 2022-2024, this three-paper dissertation troubles the idea of individualized harm, demonstrating ways in which harm and violence are viewed, perceived, and felt relationally and collectively in the social worlds of fraternity men. I argue that without genuinely engaging with peer cultures like fraternities, feminist anti-violence interventions will continue to fall short. I further argue that interventions that increase young men’s capacity to challenge normative masculinity as a template for constructing their gender identity–while simultaneously centering young men’s experiences in their social worlds–is a promising avenue for reducing the risks of gender-based violence on college campuses and beyond.

Advancing Next-Generation Performance-based Wind Engineering: AI-Enhanced Probabilistic Assessment of Nonlinear Structural Performance
Liuyun Xu, Civil Engineering

Globally, there is a growing awareness of the need to design more economically and environmentally sustainable structures and infrastructures to withstand the effects of extreme winds in the face of environmental shifts such as climate change. Within this context, performance-based wind engineering (PBWE) is gaining consensus as an effective alternative to current elastic wind design practices, offering the potential for explicit evaluation of post-yield system performance. To maximize the full benefits of PBWE, this research introduces computational frameworks for the efficient probabilistic performance assessment and failure/reliability analysis of nonlinear dynamic structures, by leveraging cutting-edge computational modeling, artificial intelligence (AI), and stochastic simulation techniques. Innovative methodologies for uncertainty propagation are established for the rapid estimation of nonlinear system responses under uncertainty. This research not only fosters greater innovation in the development of the next-generation of climate-resilient civil infrastructures, but also highlights the potential of applying advanced computational/AI techniques in civil engineering.