IBS News

2013

John O'Loughlin has been awarded the Association of American Geographers Distinguished Scholarship Honors. The AAG Honors were conferred at the AAG Annual Meeting in Los Angeles during a special awards luncheon on Saturday, April 13, 2013. AAG Honors are the highest awards offered by the Association of American Geographers. They are offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research & scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe and for lifetime achievement. AAG Honors remain among the most prestigious awards in American geography and have been awarded since 1951.

Professor O'Loughlin is one of the towering figures behind the renaissance of political geography that has taken place over the past few decades. Over a career spanning some 40 years, he has produced an extraordinary body of scholarship in area studies, conflict studies, electoral geography, and geopolitics. He has shaped intellectual agendas in each of these fields, and he has played a crucial role in building bridges among and between them. Read entire AAG press release here.
Note the red decoration on Johno's lapel--he is a "Hero of Socialist Labour"!

Johno AAG Award

The new Center for the Governance of Natural Resources has been created and formally recognized by the IBS Board of Directors. The Center is co-directed by Lee Alston and Krister Andersson and falls under both the Institutions and Environment and Society research programs.

IBS is honored to be hosting two week-long ICPSR summer short courses in 2013:
July 8-12 Applied Multilevel Models for Longitudinal Data
July 15-19 Applied Multilevel Models for Cross-Sectional Data

The ICPSR Summer Program is recognized throughout the world as the preeminent forum for basic and advanced training in the methodologies and technologies of social science research. This is a great opportunity for students, staff and faculty at the University of Colorado to participate in this prestigious program without the extra expense of travel and accommodations.

If you would like to attend, you need to register through ICPSR at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/ Registration for courses in the 2013 Summer Program is very easy. Just go to the online portal (located on the "Registration & Fees" page of the Summer Program website), log in to your ICPSR MyData account (if you do not have an existing MyData account, you will be prompted to create one), enter your personal information, select your courses, and make arrangements for payment. The ICPSR member fee for a week-long short course is $1500.

The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is pleased to announce the launch of Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, a new online database designed to help public agencies, schools, community organizations and individuals easily identify cost-effective programs that meet the highest standard of evidence for helping young people reach their full potential. The new website offers programs that address an expanded range of outcomes. Programs now address education, emotional well-being, physical health and positive relationships, in addition to problem behaviors.

Blueprints Can Help: 1) Plan for prevention, intervention and targeted treatment programs that respond to children's needs. 2) Identify programs to include in federal and state grants, school improvement plans and community initiatives. 3) Promote Model and Promising programs that meet the highest standards of evidence in their fields.

Search Programs by: 1) Outcome area: behavior, education, emotional well-being, physical health or relationships. 2) Risk and protective factors: individual or environmental influences targeted by the program. 3) Developmental stage: infancy (0-2 years), early childhood (3-4 years), late childhood (5-11 years), adolescence (12-18 years) and early adulthood (19-22).

Visit the site to view model and promising program profiles, learn about program criteria, or nominate a program for review by the independent advisory board: www.blueprintsprograms.com

2012

Chuck Howe is quoted in the Dec 10 issue of the New York Times, in an article about water, Denver, and the diminishing flow of the Colorado River. See the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/science/earth/federal-plans-for-colorado-river-include-pipeline.html

IBS was well represented at the national conference of the American Society of Criminologists, held in Chicago, November 14 - 17, 2012. This year's presenters were: Joanne Belknap, Del Elliott, Anjali Nandi, and Kathryn Nowotny.

Lori Hunter wrote a piece for the WorldWatch Institute published online November 13 as part of outreach efforts on behalf of the CU Population Center. The piece is called "Climate Change Migration Often Short-Distance and Circular" and appears here in Vital Signs Online, WorldWatch Institute: http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/climate-change-migration-often-short-distance-and-circular

Wee-Kiat Lim presented his research on organizational disaster preparedness on November 6 at a brown bag session organized by the Center for Crisis Management Research at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University ranks as one of the top two universities in China. Wee Kiat will stay in Beijing to conduct his dissertation fieldwork on the Chinese emergency management sector.

Kathleen Tierney has an article featured in the New York Times October 30 Room for Debate Opinion Pages. See the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/10/30/do-we-really-need-fema/the-us-emergency-management-system-is-not-perfect-but-it-works

Jason Boardman's research on genetics and friendship is featured in the Oct 31 CU News Headlines. Read the news release here: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/10/31/social-factors-trump-genetic-forces-forging-friendships-cu-boulder-led

Brandi Gilbert and Nnenia Campbell participated in the 26th Annual Conference of the American Evaluation Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota, held October 24-27, 2012. Nnenia is a member of the 2012 cohort of AEA Graduate Education Diversity Interns and Brandi served as chair of the Disaster and Emergency Management Evaluation Topical Interest Group and is a Presidential Strand committee member while presenting a paper. Congratulations!

Beth Whalley and Joanne Belknap have been very active in advocating for Joanne's former CU student, Molly Bowers regarding her wrongful prison conviction. Beth and Joanne attended Molly's Community Corrections Board hearing with Molly's parents and lawyers on Oct. 23rd and this article was in the Camera citing Joanne's advocacy: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_21853641/molly-midyette-convicted-2006-death-son-transferring-boulder

The research of John O'Loughlin, Frank Witmer, and Andrew Linke on climate variability and conflict risk in East Africa is featured in the press. Read about it here at CU: http://www.colorado.edu/node/1801095 and here in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/22/climate-change-global-warming-violence-war/1649985/. USA Today is the 2nd biggest selling paper in the US and the story has already been picked up by over 100 other papers through the USA Today news service. The story was also featured in the Science sections of the Los Angeles Times and in Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, both major Dutch papers. See the research paper from Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences, now online: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1205130109.

Kathryn Nowotny presented her paper "Adult Social Bonds, Crime, and Drug Use Behaviors among Mexican American Gang Members" on Friday, September 28, in San Diego, CA at the 12th annual meeting of the National Institute on Drug Abuse sponsored National Hispanic Science Network as a NIDA Scientific Development Travel Fellowship Recipient.

Anjali Nandi presented on Evidence-based Practices in Corrections: From Research to Practice at the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections SB 94 Practitioners Conference held in Beaver Creek, CO on Oct. 4th.

On September 18, Joanne Belknap, Beth Whalley, and Kathryn Nowotny presented findings from their DOJ-funded study to 20 members of the Denver County Jail administration: "Women's Pathways to Jail: Roles and Intersections of Serious Mental Illness and Trauma."

Wee-Kiat Lim presented his paper on Monday, September 10, at the 2012 Annual Conference of the Hazard and Risk Science Base at Beijing Normal University in China. His paper is titled "Going Forward and Looking Back: A Historiographical Account of Risk Governance in Imperial China." Wee Kiat will continue to stay in Beijing to conduct fieldwork on the Chinese emergency management sector.

On Friday, September 7, Mike Radelet received a Special Service Award from the Florida Public Defender Association, "in grateful recognition for outstanding service in academia and litigation on behalf of the cause of capital defense." The Award was presented at a conference on the death penalty attended by 400 public defenders in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The plaque also came with a check, which Radelet donated to an organization that provides small gift packages for indigent inmates on Florida's death row.

LEED Platinum Status for our building!

The IBS Building Committee is thrilled to announce that our new IBS Building was just awarded LEED Platinum status! This is the highest—and most elusive—designation for a new building having been constructed according to the most exacting sustainability standards. We are indebted to our project manager, Larry Hill, the campus architect, Paul Leef, the Fac Man staff, especially the campus sustainability czar, Moe Tabrizi, our architects, John Graham and Paul Haack, and FCI, our great contractor team.

We have all been enjoying our wonderful new work space; now it is gratifying to know that its construction was carried out with sensitive regard to our environment and, indeed, to that of the fragile planet we live on.

There will be a plaque installed in the main entry celebrating this very special achievement.

Lori Hunter gave two invited presentations in the Czech Republic the first week of September:

Brandi Gilbert presented a paper entitled "The Activism that Never Happened: A Case Study of Youth Volunteerism Following the BP Spill" at the Society for the Study of Social Problems meetings, held August 16-18, 2012, in Denver, CO.

Nnenia Campbell and Brandi Gilbert presented a paper entitled "You're Not From Around Here, Are You?": Self-Presentation in the Field" at the Association of Black Sociologists conference, held August 16-18, 2012 in Denver, CO.

Fred Pampel's research on elite cultural activities and body weight was written up in Arts & Sciences Magazine at: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2012/08/to-stay-thin-eat-more-like-the-culturally-elite/.

The American Sociological Association's annual meeting was held in Denver, August 17-20. Participants from IBS included: Nicole Angotti, Jennifer Bair, Jason Boardman, Nnenia Campbell, JD Daw, Danielle Denardo, Liam Downey, Laurie Hawkins, Lori Hunter, Sarah Lake, Elizabeth Lawrence, Joshua LePree, Sanyu Mojola, Stefanie Mollborn, Raphael Nawrotzki, Kathryn Nowotny, Fred Pampel, Richard Rogers, Christie Sennott, Nitika Sharma, Kathleen Tierney, and Michelle Walker.

Nnenia Campbell has received the American Evaluation Association's Graduate Education Diversity Internship award (http://www.eval.org/gedi.10ap.htm). The GEDI program provides students with training in evaluation, hands-on work experience in the field, and professional development through conferences, workshops, and targeted networking opportunities. She will be a part of a cohort of six individuals selected out of approximately 75 applicants. As part of her participation in the program, she will be working on multiple evaluation and policy projects at Spark Policy Institute (http://sparkpolicy.com/about.htm), a Denver-based organization that partners with communities, policymakers, leaders, and the general public to produce stakeholder-driven research and policy solutions. The award amount includes an $8,000 stipend plus travel and training costs.

Joanne Belknap was recently elected to serve as president of the American Society of Criminology for 2013-2014. Congratulations, President Belknap!

Kathryn Nowotny was nominated and her application approved for membership to the National Hispanic Science Network (NHSN) which is associated with the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Kathryn Nowotny's paper entitled "Adult Social Bonds, Crime, and Drug Use among Mexican American Gang Members" was nominated for inclusion in a special breakout session entitled "The Science of Adaptation: Improving prevention services for minority youth" which will be presented at the annual NIDA sponsored NHSN conference September 2012 in San Diego. This paper selection includes a full travel award.

Jennifer Bair is just back from Japan, where she presented a paper entitled "Civil Society and the Internationalization of Supply Chain CSR" at the conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World, which was held at the International House of Japan in Tokyo.

Jason Boardman has won a 2012 CU-Boulder Provost Faculty Achievement Award. The awards are presented annually to selected faculty who have offered recent significant publication or creative contributions in their academic fields. The award will be presented at the Fall Convocation Event on September 28th, 2012 at 1:30 pm in the Center for British and Irish Studies in Norlin. Congratulations to Jason!

Congratulations to Kathryn Nowotny, who was chosen to receive a $1,000 Investigator Travel Award from the Center for Advancing Longitudinal Drug Abuse Research at UCLA, to attend the Summer Institute Aug 13-15. She was awarded this to present a paper co-authored with Alice Cepeda, "A Comparison of Injecting and Non-injecting Mexican Female Sex Workers on the US-Mexico Border: Bi-National HIV Implications."

Stefanie Mollborn has received the Distinguished Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association's Children and Youth section. This award is given every other year and "recognizes exceptional achievement and scholarly contribution to research on the sociology of children and youth early in one's career."

Congratulations to Kathryn Nowotny, who completed an 11-day research fellowship in June, "Interdisciplinary Research Training Institute on Hispanic Drug Abuse," funded by NIH and NIDA, in Los Angeles, CA.

Lori Hunter was invited to co-convene a panel on "Population Dynamic and Human Well-Being" at the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation in Rio de Janeiro in June. The conference is a pre-event of the Rio+20 "Earth Summit". Blog coverage highlights Lori's panel and presentation: http://www.icsu.org/rio20/science-and-technology-forum/blog Lori was also quoted in the UK Guardian's coverage of the Rio presentation at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/14/rio-earth-summit-population-consumption

Tracy Kirkland was accepted to the Borlaug Summer Institute on Global Food Security and will be spending two weeks at Purdue developing a better understanding of global food security problems and solutions. See: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/food/borlaugfellows/summer-institute/index.php

Fred Pampel's research on the association between sedentary culturally elite activities and obesity has been receiving a lot of press, among other things in the Freakonomics blog and Mark Bittman's NYtimes blog. Here's the link: http://www.psmag.com/health/to-stay-thin-eat-like-the-cultural-elite-42154/ It is on the "most read" list for the website.

Stefanie Mollborn was elected to the council of the ASA Section on Children and Youth for a 2-year term.

Congratulations to Raphael Nawrotzki, who passed his specialty comprehensive exam in Environmental Demography.

Kudos to Brandi Gilbert, who has received a $300 travel award from the University of Colorado Graduate School. The funds will partially support Brandi's travel to the American Evaluation Conference in Minneapolis, MN.

Sarah Lake was invited to be part of a panel on food and energy at the World Renewable Energy Forum in Denver held May 13-17th. She presented her research on WalMart's local food program and the energy inefficiencies of local food systems when sold through retail stores.

Rick Rogers and Fred Pampel are featured in an article in Arts & Sciences Magazine about their research on education and mortality. See: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2012/05/want-to-have-a-longer-life-go-to-college/

Jason Boardman is the 2012 recipient the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. This award, presented for the first time this year, recognizes the career of a promising scholar who is a member of PAA and who received the PhD in the previous 10 years. The presenter of the award said about Jason that "His research has been at the forefront of the integration of demography, genetic epidemiology, and public health. Using creative research designs, he has combined insights form behavioral genetics and population science to provide innovation and leadership in research on gene-environment interactions that influence health related behaviors (e.g., smoking) and health outcomes. Not only has he been an incredibly productive scholar during his first 10 years post-PhD -- -amassing an impressive body of work (nearly 40 publications in leading public health, sociology, demography and behavioral genetics journals, with nearly 1300 citations according to Google Scholar) --but he has also been an outstanding citizen, with a stellar record of service both to his institution and also to our profession." Visit this link for more information on this prestigious award: http://www.populationassociation.org/sidebar/annual-meeting/awards/early-achievement/

There is an article about Jason and his award in the Colorado Arts & Sciences magazine here: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2012/05/boardman-receives-early-achievement-award/

Christie Sennott was chosen as a recipient of the American Association of University Women Boulder Branch's Brown/Ricketts/ Udick Grant ($1000). This annual grant is awarded to female graduate students at CU. The award ceremony will be held at the CU Alumni Center in September.

Lori Hunter was an invited plenary speaker at the Western Regional International Conference on Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, held April 27-29. Lori spoke on her collaborative work in South Africa linking HIV/AIDS mortality and household reliance on natural resources. She reports that getting on a plane for the first time since chemo was scary and full of strange emotions. Still, Lori was happy to have a familiar city at the end of her first journey away from the safety blanket home. http://wrihc.org/

Wee-Kiat Lim has been awarded the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) Graduate Fellowship. It is a competitive grant program for graduate students in CU Boulder College of Arts & Sciences social science departments. The fellowship program supports pilot projects designed to increase the chances of securing external funding support as well as field research, data acquisition, travel, and other research costs essential to successful completion of research required for MA or PhD degrees. The grant amount is $1,000.

Congratulations to Laurie Hawkins, who passed her specialty comp exams.

Congratulations to these IBS recipients of the end-of-year SOCY departmental awards: Bethany Everett for the outstanding graduate student paper award, Kari Alexander for the GPTI of the year award, Brandi Gilbert for the Dakin award, and Jane Menken for the outstanding faculty mentor award.

IBS was well represented at the 2012 Population Association of America meetings in early May. Participants and attendees included: Rick Rogers, Fred Pampel, Jane Menken, Stefanie Mollborn, Lori Hunter, Jason Boardman, Jill Williams, Jani Little, JD Daw, Laurie Hawkins, Christie Sennott, Raphael Nawrotzki, Rob Kemp, Liz Lawrence, and Bethany Everett.

Tracy Kirkland won first place in the graduate non-fiction category of the Center for the American West's Thompson Award for Western American Writing for her paper "Renewable Energy Development & Symbolic Landscapes of the American West." The paper is based on collaborative work with Kathleen Tierney, Lori Hunter and Barbara Farhar on solar power development in Colorado's San Luis Valley. The project was funded by the pre-cursor to CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. Read more here: http://centerwest.org/academics/writing-awards/

Sanyu Mojola gave an invited talk on her book in progress, "Consuming Women: Becoming Modern in the Age of AIDS," at Colorado College in the Sociology department last Friday.

Bethany Everett successfully defended her finished dissertation, titled, "Sexual Minority Status and Health: Investigating Health Disparities among Vulnerable Subpopulations." (Committee: Rick Rogers (chair), Jason Boardman, Stef Mollborn, Joanne Belknap, and Dick Jessor.)

Brandi Gilbert was selected to receive the prestigious American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship. This dissertation fellowship provides financial support for her final year of doctoral studies. It also provides funding for Brandi to attend a researchers meeting to present her dissertation study findings upon completing the program.

In addition to participating in the plenary session of the upcoming Amnesty International meeting, Mike Radelet has won one of the 2012 Marinus Smith Staff/Faculty Recognition Awards, which recognizes faculty "who have shown caring and concern for their students ... [and] who have had or are having a significant, positive impact on the lives of one or more CU-Boulder undergraduates." The honor is given by the CU Parents Association, and will be formally presented at a luncheon on April 21.

On March 1, 2012, Amanda Giguere, Philip Sneed and Timothy Orr of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and Linda Cunningham of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence presented a workshop on Shakespeare and Anti-bullying at the annual Shakespeare Theatre Association's Shakespeare Here and Everywhere in Orlando, Fla. The two departments of the University of Colorado have been working in collaboration to bring a tour of Twelfth Night to K-12 schools in Colorado. The tour features a performance, materials from the Center and anti-bullying workshops led by the actors. All of the materials (study guide, script, workshop outline, and bullying prevention fact sheets) were made available at no cost to all of the theatres in attendance in the hopes that Shakespeare theatres across the world will replicate this program. The audience members (mostly Education Directors and Artistic Directors from Shakespeare theatres across the world) were eager to learn more about this program and several have already requested information to begin a similar program at their theatres. In the 2011-2012 school year, 49 schools participated and 11,594 students (twice what was anticipated) saw the performance. More than 3,500 students participated in the workshops and 85% of those students indicated that they would be more likely to report bullying after seeing the performance.

Sarah Lake and Josh LePree are recipients of the Beverly Sears Award, a $1000 financial award given by the Graduate School.

Elizabeth Lawrence successfully defended her Master's thesis, "School Influences on Parents' Educational Expectations."

Chris Jochem, one of our Population Program graduate students, has been awarded a very prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This provides 3 years of support during his PhD program and includes tuition, fees, and a stipend. In his research, Chris is interested in understanding the social and environmental factors that influence geographic patterns of human health and disease. In hia application to the NSF he has proposed to study the health effects of arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water in rural Bangladesh. Arsenic is a potent toxin and carcinogen that contaminates groundwater in areas of the U.S. and around the world. Bangladesh experiences some of the highest levels of contamination in the world, but arsenic exhibits high spatial variability because of local geology. At the same time exposure to arsenic is uneven due to social factors. Therefore an understanding of human-environment interactions is necessary to understand this exposure and to examine the spatial variations in health outcomes. This work will build from Chris' involvement in the Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey 2 which is being led by researchers at IBS and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). Websites: http://www.nsfgrfp.org/ and http://www.nsf.gov/grfp

Mike Radelet is among the winners of the 2012 Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarly, and Creative Works, one of the top research awards on the Boulder campus. He was nominated for the Award by Professor Jane Menken. Mike also won a BFA Award (for Service) in 2008.

Congratulations to Nitika Sharma, who was invited to present some of her dissertation findings to The Open Society Foundation Conference in New York City in March. Her presentation was titled, "Menstrual Identity Management among Hindu Women of Nepalese Origin."

Several IBS colleagues were on the program of the Pacific Sociological Association meeting, held March 22-25 in San Diego: Joanne Belknap, Josh LePree, Adelle Monteblanco, and Stefanie Mollborn.

Sarah Lake passed her prospectus defense. The title of her project is "The Shock of Natural Disasters: Disasters as a Source of Contested Governance in Global Commodity Chains and the Implications for the Environment."

IBS is honored to be hosting three ICPSR summer short courses in 2012. The ICPSR Summer Program is recognized throughout the world as the preeminent forum for basic and advanced training in the methodologies and technologies of social science research. Most sessions are held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, but a few are hosted by qualifying institutions around the country.

This is a great opportunity for students, staff and faculty at the University of Colorado to participate in this prestigious program without the extra expense of travel and accommodations. If you would like to attend, you need to register through ICPSR at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/

The short courses hosted by IBS are:
July 9-13 Applied Multilevel Models Using SAS and SPSS
July 9-13 Item Response Theory
Aug 6-8 Hierarchical Linear Models for Longitudinal Data

John Tribbia successfully defended his dissertation, "What's So Local About Global Climate Change?", which uses data drawn from this nation's counties and its 100 largest metropolitan areas to examine the determinants of local variation in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. John has been offered a post-doc position at the University of Washington and is also interviewing with local companies in the Boulder area. Congratulations, Dr. Tribbia!

Congratulations to Nitika Sharma, who successfully defended her dissertation proposal. Nitika's proposal was titled, "Menstruation Taboos and Rituals among Women of Nepalese Origin."

Tim Wadsworth and economics professor, Don Waldman, received a $36,345 grant from the University of Colorado Innovative Grants Program for their new project, "The Influence of Reference Groups on Assessments of Subjective Well-Being." Just 21 applications were funded out of 122 submissions this year, and our department received 2 of them! ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades, a growing body of literature on the correlates of subjective well-being, has emerged in the social sciences. Coming primarily out of the subfields of "happiness economics" and "positive psychology" the research demonstrates that a number of social and psychological factors (e.g. income, marital status, and sexual activity) are influential in shaping happiness and life satisfaction. Exactly how and why these and other characteristics matter has been less explored. Recently, scholars have demonstrated that the effect of income on happiness has a significant relative component. More income makes people happier in part because it encourages a positive assessment of their life when their success in this domain is compared to their reference group. The role of reference group comparisons in life assessments appears to be an essential, yet often overlooked factor in understanding subjective well-being. To our knowledge the role of reference group comparison in the study of subjective well-being has been limited to income. We suggest that the process by which other correlates of happiness and life satisfaction are influential may partially depend on the role of reference group comparison. The proposed work aims to both extend and refine our understanding of the process by which reference groups influence individuals' levels of self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. To do so we explore the creation and influence of reference groups using existing data, apply network analysis to the study of reference groups, and develop and test a pilot survey aimed at determining how individuals create and use reference groups.

Jane Menken traveled to South Africa for three weeks in January and February. At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she served as consultant to a faculty/administrator group which is working to establish interdisciplinary research institutes and wanted to learn more about the CU model. She then attended the Agincourt Scientific Meeting in Bushbuckridge, where Wits has its Wits/MRC Rural Health Transitions Unit. CU was well represented by current postdoc Nicole Angotti, CUPC Assistant Director Brian Houle, former postdocs Sam Clark (UW) and Enid Schatz (Mizzou) at the meetings, all of whom, including Jane, gave research presentations.

Joanne Belknap was the key note speaker at a symposium in Februrary at Duke Law School, and presented a paper entitled, "The Roles of Phones and Computers in Threatening and Abusing Women Victims of Male Intimate Partner Abuse," that will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Duke Journal of Gender & Law and Policy. Her paper is co-authored with Ann T. Chu and Anne P. DePrince.

Wee-Kiat Lim's paper (co-authored with a PhD student, Fenn Faber, based in Germany) has been accepted to a highly refereed conference, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium, to be held in Helsinki, Finland this July. Title: "Hiding in plain sight: Revealing institutions and institutionalization through neoinstitutionalism in organizational risk research."

Good news--Lori Hunter is back home after surgery on Monday, Feb 13th. It was a 13-hour ordeal, with 3 nights in the hospital, and recovery will take several weeks. She's more comfortable with each passing day, thanks to big pain pills, and she'll be back on email as of Monday, Feb 27th. This is the final stage of this 8-month journey and she's looking forward to returning to a more regular life.

Christie Sennott just returned from participating in the Sixth Annual PopPov Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development held in Accra, Ghana from January 18-21. She attended the conference as part of her Hewlett/IIE Dissertation Fellowship. The PopPov conference brings together current and past Hewlett/IIE Fellows, senior researchers, and policy makers - most with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa - to share their research results and work together to effectively inform policy. After the conference, Christie headed to rural South Africa (Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site) to train field workers with co-Principal Investigator, Nicole Angotti (Hewlett Post-Doc Fellow at IBS). They are beginning a new data-collection project entitled, "Conversations about HIV/AIDS", which uses local field workers as ethnographers to learn more about everyday conversations about HIV/AIDS occurring in the study site. The trip was funded by the Hewlett Foundation/IIE, CARTSS, and UGGS.

Erin Trapp, former IBS grad student, just accepted a prestigious position at Metro State University in Denver as VP of advancement and external relations. Read about that here: http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/VPTrappTWV9010612.shtml

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