Each year the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center funds research dedicated to finding solutions to the most vital social issues facing people of all genders. We fund faculty and student research , as well as events, programming, and publications that distribute their work to a wider audience.
Blood, Milk and Water: Rastafari Women’s Reproductive Health and Wellness
Shamara Wyllie Alhassan
African American Studies
A transnational ethnographic exploration of Rastafari women’s reproductive health in Ghana, Jamaica, and United States. Specifically, this project analyzes Rastafari women’s reproductive health as an important milestone for reflecting upon their spiritual and physical wellness practices. With increasing emphasis on Black maternal health due to high rates of maternal and infant mortality, the project analyzes ways spirituality provides another public health resource for healthcare providers and another resource for Rastafari women to care for themselves and their children.
This Person Does Not Exist: Reality and Simulation in Synthetic Face Datasets
Nina Dewi Toft Djanegara
Institute for Technology, Policy, and Law
The project investigates the growing use of “synthetic data” to train artificial intelligence (AI) models and asks how these datasets complicate ideas about reality, authenticity, and ground truth. Synthetic data is a method for creating entirely new data by mimicking the statistical patterns of a smaller, real-world dataset. Proponents claim synthetic data is better, cheaper, and faster than collecting new observational data. Skeptics point out that synthetic data has the potential to amplify data biases.
Welcome to the Jungle or A microphone is power
Miguel Gutierrez
World Arts and Cultures/Dance
An interdisciplinary dance solo Welcome to the Jungle or A microphone is power draws inspiration from Latin American artists who worked within repressive environments of dictatorship, armed conflict and governmental neglect. Welcome creates a reflective and humorous space for the collective rage so many of us are experiencing in the U.S. due to the government’s current gestures towards fascism.
Brown Exposures
Joshua Javier Guzmán
Gender Studies
Brown Exposures will focus on experimental Latinx and queer punk photography in California and New York City from 1979 to 95 to show how visualizing intimacy, play, and kinship constituted the quotidian worlds of subjects neglected by the rapid privatization of the public sphere. Utilizing archival materials from a group of 80 s queer punk photographers known as The Boston School, which included Morrisroe, Goldin, and Armstrong, the project draws connections between the archive and photographic, video, and literary works.
Debating “Zone Zero”: Gendered dimensions of wildfire mitigation, mobilization, and meaning-making in California
Liz Koslov
Urban Planning and Environment and Sustainability
This project analyzes efforts to reduce wildfire risk to homes and communities. Using ethnographic and intersectional feminist approaches, it follows unfolding debates over California’s new “Zone Zero” regulations. The regulations, currently being finalized, will restrict or require the removal of plants, trees, and flammable material within the five-foot perimeter around every structure in designated high fire hazard zones. These zones are expanding.
A Feminist Lens on Paid Caregiving in Institutional Long-Term Care: Juxtaposing Women as Caregivers and Women as Care Receivers
Lené Levy-Storms
Luskin School of Public Affairs
In nursing homes, women’s increased health and social risk become juxtaposed. The most vulnerable older women populate nursing homes, where some of the most vulnerable younger women provide care to them. Roughly two thirds (about 65–70%) of U.S. nursing facility residents are women, making long term care a strongly gendered institution. The notion of a gendered institution includes the extremely low paid caregivers. Certified nursing assistants or CNAs provide 90% of the direct care to nursing home residents, and 90% are women, themselves. Further, 60% of CNAs represent persons of color, and about 20% of them are immigrants.
Shelter as Form: Rebecca Belmore’s Marble Tent
Saloni Mathur
Art History
The Shelter as Form: Rebecca Belmore’s Marble Tent project takes as its point of departure a marble tent-sculpture by the veteran Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore, made for Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017. Titled Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside), the hand-carved work was installed outdoors on a small hilltop park directly facing the Acropolis and the Parthenon.
Infrastructures of Collaboration: German Film Feminisms
Kalani Michell
European Languages and Transcultural Studies
“Feminism” is a problem. Not in and of itself, but the term: “As soon as any radically innovative thought becomes an ism, its specific groundbreaking force diminishes, its historical notoriety increases, and its disciples tend to become more simplistic, more dogmatic, and ultimately more conservative” (Johnson [1980] 2014: 327). This project sustains the vitality of feminist thought by approaching it as inherently plural. Multiple “feminisms,” or diverse approaches to feminist theory and practice, emerge even within small artistic communities.
Mexican Migrant Women in the Age of A.I.: A Data Borders Inquiry
Melissa Villa Nicholas
Information Studies
Mexican Migrant Women in the Age of A.I.: A Data Borders Inquiry reveals how Mexican migrant women in the California borderlands are not just surveilled subjects but visionary contributors to the evolution of technology—from radio to AI. By centering their stories and expertise, it calls on readers, technologists, and policymakers to fundamentally reimagine the design and purpose of our digital systems through the knowledge of those who have long navigated and reshaped them with resilience, strategy, and insight.
