School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-93 of 93 Results
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Bryn Bandt Law
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on the dynamic interplay of psychology, law, and social policy and their impact on the workplace, education, and social, heath, and legal services. This research covers several topics, including social perception, law and policymaking and enforcement, and cultural narratives and representations, that are unified around identifying and addressing the factors that advance inequality and limit the promise of civil rights.
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Luca Bellodi
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioLuca Bellodi is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. His current research focuses on American political institutions, specifically the interaction between politics, bureaucracy, and populism, and its consequences for the quality of government.
In Bellodi’s primary line of research, he studies politicians’ incentives to control the behavior of bureaucratic agencies, lawmakers’ reliance on bureaucratic expertise, and the role of bureaucracy in shaping the political agenda. He introduces innovative measurement strategies that combine natural language processing techniques and machine learning to address novel questions in the study of oversight, rulemaking, and the use of information in the policymaking process.
In a related line of research, Bellodi investigates why politicians adopt populist behaviors and examines the consequences of populism for government performance and the quality of bureaucracy.
Luca Bellodi holds a PhD in political science from University College London. Before joining Stanford, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Bocconi University in Milan. -
Yunwei Chen
Postdoctoral Scholar, Economics
BioYunwei Chen is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University, affiliated with the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is also a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Stanford Impact Labs and a Global Health Postdoctoral Affiliate with the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health.
Her academic training is in global health economics. Prior to joining Stanford, she earned a PhD in Health Policy and Management (Economics Track) from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2024.
Her research explores innovative solutions for effective delivery of public health interventions in resource-limited settings through rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs. Her current research agenda is centered on integrating digital health technologies to develop comprehensive and tailored interventions for children and mothers living in resource-limited settings during crucial developmental stages, aiming for both effectiveness and scalability. -
Onja Davidson Raoelison
Postdoctoral Scholar, Economics
BioOnja Davidson Raoelison is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the King Center on Global Development. Prior to joining Stanford, she earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a joint MSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UCLA and in Civil Engineering from ESTP Paris, France.
Her overarching research focuses on the connection between wildfires, the environment, and human health, aiming to develop sustainable engineering solutions to mitigate the negative impacts of wildfires on water quality. Specifically, her research agenda at the Stanford Department of Medicine aims to understand how wildfires increase the risk of infectious diseases through their impacts on the environment -
Matthew DeVerna
Postdoctoral Scholar, Communication
BioFor the most up-to-date information about my research, please visit my personal website.
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Roberta Leonie Claude Fischli
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioRoberta Fischli is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the social and political impact of artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on how novel AI systems can promote personal freedom and democracy.
Roberta was previously a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google, where she worked on AI agents and value alignment. Previous research appointments include the University of California Berkeley, Georgetown University, and the University of St. Gallen. She is a research affiliate at the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab at Australian National University, led by Seth Lazar.
Roberta holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in International Affairs and Political Economy from the University of St. Gallen. Her dissertation monograph "Freedom after Algorithms" investigates the changing role of freedom in the digital age. Her research has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, the European Journal of Political Theory, and History of Political Thought, among others. Roberta also works as a freelance journalist. -
Zainab Hosseini
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCulturally - contextually responsive psychosocial support services for refugees
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Christina Langer
Postdoctoral Scholar, Economics
BioChristina Langer is a Postdoc at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Her research interests cover the fields of empirical labor economics and economics of education with a focus on the future of work.
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Paul Lendway
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioThe norms and rules that comprise American democracy are eroding. Why? What are the consequences of this trend? And what can be done to address this issue? My research program aims to address these questions. One stream of my research investigates how various forms of political communication (i.e., sermon rhetoric, populist appeals, etc.) shape political preferences. Another strand of my research probes the role of information (i.e., information about social movements or inequality) in structuring public opinion and policy preferences. A final line of my research explores solutions to mass polarization. This includes a project that tests Americans' willingness to compromise on a series of multi-dimensional policy tradeoffs (i.e., a conservative immigration policy and a liberal abortion policy, etc.).
My research is published in Political Behavior, American Politics Research, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Environmental Politics. My co-authored paper that meta-analyzes the literature on populist appeals and vote choice has a R&R at the American Journal of Political Science. Additionally, my research on sermon rhetoric and White evangelical support for the Republican Party has an R&R at Political Behavior. I have presented my research at a wide range of organizations, including the American Political Science Association, Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University. Funding for my research has been provided by the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and other organizations. -
Jeremy Martin
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioJeremy T. Martin is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Political Science and affiliate researcher in the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University. His research examines the politics of philanthropic organizations and their involvement in K-12 public education, with a particular focus on foundations that are created by Black people. More broadly, his work investigates how elite and non-state actors shape education policy.
Jeremy’s postdoctoral research project is a national, multi-year, multi-method study examining how foundations are responding to federal actions and political pressures. The project explores if and how philanthropic strategies and priorities are shifting—and what these changes mean for receiving communities. His postdoctoral research is supported by grants from multiple foundations, including the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and the Stuart Foundation.
Prior to joining Stanford, Jeremy was a Eugene Cota-Robles Doctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. His dissertation research on Black foundations is organized around three core questions: (1) Why and how were Black foundations created? (2) What political ideological frameworks do foundations adopt? (3) And how do those ideologies shape grantmaking behavior? His dissertation represents the first national empirical study of Black philanthropic foundations.
Jeremy’s work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Du Bois Review, Philanthropy & Education, Urban Review, and others.
He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. -
Alexandria McPherson
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioAlexandria (Xan) McPherson is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Xan completed her PhD in Applied Physics at the University of Washington, I-LABS with Dr. Samu Taulu as her advisor. There, she developed improvements to the methodology and instrumentation for on-scalp MEG systems, such as OPM-MEG, with the goal of implementing reliable and robust methods for OPM data collection and processing. During her postdoc, she is continuing her work on OPM-MEG systems with Dr. Laura Gwilliams to further the study of speech comprehension.
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Cliona O Doherty
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioClíona is a postdoc with Cameron Ellis’ Scaffolding of Cognition Team and Dan Yamin’s NeuroAILab. She earned her PhD from Trinity College Dublin, where she worked on developing cognitive computational methods for infant neuroimaging with Prof. Rhodri Cusack. Her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience was also completed at Trinity College Dublin. Clíona is interested in how human infants learn to be so intelligent with such efficiency, how this can be modelled using the latest advances in AI, and how these methods can inform our understanding of the developing mind.
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Rui Pei
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioRui (/ˈreɪ/) received her B.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in understanding how adolescents and young adults make social decisions in the context of psychological and neural development. Her research focuses on social risk taking, or risk taking behaviors that bring social consequences. Some of the questions that her research tries to answer include: what motivates people to take social risks, and how does social risk taking contribute to adolescent health and well-being?
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Valeria Ramirez Castaneda
Postdoctoral Scholar, Economics
BioValeria Ramírez Castañeda is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the intersection of urbanization, sustainability, and disease ecology, with a focus on Amazonian cities. She studies how urban expansion interacts with environmental change and vector-borne disease dynamics, using participatory research approaches to co-develop solutions with local communities. In addition to her ecological research, she examines the dominance of English in science and its structural consequences, working to promote more inclusive and multilingual scientific practices. Ramírez-Castañeda received her PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Emily "Sal" Salamanca
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAncient political thought, Renaissance and early modern political thought, intellectual history, classical reception, history of democratic theory, aristocratic institutions, political aesthetics
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Jonas Paul Schoene
Postdoctoral Scholar, Sociology
BioJonas is a computational social psychologist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Polarization and Social Change Lab. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Prof. Brian Parkinson and Prof. Amit Goldenberg of Harvard Business School. Jonas’s research focuses on how technology, such as social media and emerging large language models, can change individual and collective emotions for better or for worse. In one line of his work, he examines how these technologies influence the expression and sharing of emotions and their subsequent impact on political behavior. In another, he explores how these technological advancements can be utilized to enhance well-being. Beyond academia, Jonas is passionate about soccer and has been a goalkeeper since he was 8 years old. He tries to foster a community among students and locals through sports.
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Will Schulz
Postdoctoral Scholar, Communication
BioWill Schulz received his PhD in 2024 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where his doctoral research sought to resolve two seemingly contradictory facts of American politics: (1) most people hold moderate or mixed political views, and yet (2) online political discourse is (apparently) polarized. Will's work includes both research and also the development of tools for data collection and analysis to facilitate that research. In his dissertation, Will developed an original method for characterizing individuals' political speech, and for estimating preference falsification and self-censorship, using a survey experiment exploiting contemporary political catchphrases. Most recently, he is focused on developing and implementing research projects with Argyle, which is a social media research tool adapted from the open-source Mastodon platform. Currently, Will is most interested in studying why certain individuals abstain from expressing their political views online, and the role of recommendation algorithms in contributing to differences in rates of online political expression.
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Mikaela Spruill
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioMikaela Spruill is a postdoctoral fellow with the SPARQ research collaborative in Stanford University's Department of Psychology.
An expert in psychology and law, the objective of her research is to examine how the law shapes individual psychologies, and how individuals produce judgments that define laws and policies. Leveraging quantitative and qualitative experimental methods, she tests how individually expressed factors and structurally imposed factors inform the judgments and decisions that people come to. Her research reveals how the racialized experiences that people have in stratified societies translates to decision making, and demonstrates how those decisions define and reinforce larger inequalities in society. -
Ariel Yingqi Tang
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEnlightenment political thought, contemporary political theory, history of universities, history of knowledge, philosophical anthropology, philosophy and literature.
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Aube Tollu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Sociology
BioDr. Aube Tollu is currently working on a new book on childhood, affect and war-making.
Aube works on armed movements in Europe and elsewhere, focusing on micro and intimate dynamics of relationalities in violent environments.
In addition to their PhD from Lund University, they hold a Mphil in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, a MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, a Bachelor with honors in European Studies (and War Studies) from King's College London and Sciences Po Paris. Previous to their postdoctoral appointment as a Wallenberg Scholar at the University of Stanford Ethnography Lab, they have been a visiting scholar at the University of Stanford and at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology.
Aube is a reviewer for Taylor and Francis' Critical Studies in Terrorism.
Publications:
Tollu, Aube. "Who’s afraid of the vulnerable terrorist? Framing violent jihadists’ life and intimate relationships." Critical Studies on Terrorism 16.2 (2023): 328-350. -
Jenessa Williams
Postdoctoral Scholar, Communication
BioDr Jenessa Williams (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Researcher of Communication at Stanford University. Her academic research explores race, gender, social justice and feminist representation in popular music, intersecting with the study of online fan communities and internet cultures. Her forthcoming monograph is an investigation of audience reactions to #MeToo-era allegations of gendered misconduct made against alternative rock and hip-hop musicians. Jenessa has also worked as a consumer music journalist, writing for the likes of The Guardian, NME, The Forty-Five, Pitchfork, DIY and Alternative Press.
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Yuyin Xiao
Postdoctoral Scholar, Economics
BioYuyin Xiao is the postdoctoral researcher of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She received her MS and PhD from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Her research focuses almost exclusively on low- and middle-income countries and is concerned with: health policy, including health equity, supply, demand and utilization of health service programs, and research on health service systems; health technology and innovation, including digital health, development of digital health tools, and evaluation of the effectiveness of digital interventions. Yuyin’s papers have been published in leading academic journals, including British Medical Journal, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, BMC Public Health and others.
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Chunchen Xu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioI am currently a postdoc researcher at the Psychology Department at Stanford University. I study culture and the self in the context of AI-based smart technological developments. The first line of my work focuses on understanding and critiquing extant technological systems from a cultural perspective. I unpack cultural assumptions underlying conceptions of smart technology and examine technology's social and psychological impact. The second line of my work seeks to untether the self from extant mainstream meaning systems and open the space of the imaginary. I explore how historically marginalized cultural worldviews offer clues for diversifying conceptions of smart technology towards building a more equitable society and a caring ecology.
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Yuli Xu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Sociology
BioYuli obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California San Diego in 2025. Her research fields are Labor and Health Economics, with a focus on Female Labor Supply, Fertility, and Human Capital.
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Rebecca Zhu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychology
BioI am a postdoctoral fellow in developmental psychology at Stanford University, working with Michael C. Frank. Previously, I was a PhD candidate and postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Alison Gopnik, and a lab manager at Harvard University, working with Susan Carey.
My research investigates when and how children acquire, and consequently learn from, symbolic systems such as language and pictures. In one line of research, I investigate the mechanisms underlying children’s acquisition of various kinds of non-literal language, such as metaphor and metonymy, as well as how children’s non-literal language comprehension may further guide their thinking and reasoning. In another line of research, I work with urban and rural Kenyan children to investigate the efficacy of picture-based learning materials and the validity of picture-based assessments across cultures and contexts. My work in Kenya is conducted in close collaboration with researchers and non-profit organizations in Kisumu, Mombasa, and Nairobi.
This research program is innovative and interdisciplinary: these findings not only address fundamental debates in psychology, philosophy, and linguistics (i.e., by providing empirical insight into the mechanisms underlying children’s ability to acquire and learn from symbolic systems), but also have direct implications for applied research in education, public health, and developmental economics (i.e., by improving the learning materials and assessment tools used in global early childhood development programs).
