Fresh Ideas

Graduate students teach classes, assist faculty and conduct research of their own. They are tomorrow’s professors and their ideas are new and groundbreaking, but too often their achievements go unsung. Meet three UVA grad students in the social sciences and learn about their discoveries.

Myles Durkee

Doctoral candidate in educational psychology, Curry School of Education

What questions are you trying to answer?
My research focuses on the impact of contact between different racial or ethnic groups as well as within-group contact among members of the same racial group. I’m particularly interested in how adolescents and young adults perceive racial discrimination when it occurs from individuals outside of their race, compared with experiences of racial discrimination by members of their race.

Most interesting finding?
When I began, I was well aware of the fact that within-group discrimination occurred from time to time. However, I was surprised to discover how prevalent these experiences were in the lives of our participants. The most common instance of within-group discrimination included experiences in which participants have been ridiculed by peers after being perceived as a “nonauthentic” member of their race, and received insults such as “not black enough” or “acting white.” We found that the frequency in which individuals received these insults was associated with significantly more symptoms of psychological dysfunction—such as depressive symptoms and anxiety—and significantly less identification with their racial or ethnic group.

How might this knowledge change the world?
Within-group discrimination is often overlooked in many contexts, including school environments, so it is extremely important to consider how these experiences may have a negative impact on the identities and overall well-being of black students.

Ashley Kerr

Doctoral candidate in Spanish, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

What questions are you trying to answer?
I am trying to better understand how the indigenous populations in Argentina were viewed in the late 19th century, particularly how anthropology and related issues of the origins of humans, the unity of the human races and evolutionary theory were used to either include the native groups in the idea of the nation or to exclude them, often justifying policies of isolation or extermination. My primary source documents include texts as diverse as scientific journals, newspaper articles, travelogues and poems.

Most interesting finding?
It’s amazing how indigenous peoples’ rights were trampled in the name of science. For example, one Tehuelche leader named Inacayal was taken prisoner by the Argentine army in 1884 and then “rescued” by the founder of the La Plata Museum, Francisco Moreno. Moreno took Inacayal and several others to the museum, where he had them live as a sort of interactive live exhibit. When one of them would die, his or her skeleton would be displayed in an adjacent area, where both museum goers and the still-living Tehuelches could see it. Inacayal lived several years in the museum with the skeleton of his wife in a nearby case.

How might this knowledge change the world?
Even today there are misconceptions about the native populations in Argentina. While it is commonly said that the Argentine Indians were exterminated at the end of the 19th century, there are still representatives of these groups living in the country and actively fighting to defend their rights and cultural heritage. Research like mine addresses important questions about culture, rights and the benefits and challenges of science.

Jack Stoetzel

Doctoral candidate in anthropology, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

What questions are you trying to answer?
I’m exploring how social change may have caused environmental transformation along the Swahili Coast of Africa between A.D. 600 and the modern period. My research addresses human-induced change in environmental residues through examining a combination of prehistoric charcoal and microscopic plant remains. I traveled to three known Swahili archaeological sites along the coast of Tanzania to recover both.

Most interesting hypothesis?
We know that Swahili people underwent a wide variety of social transformations. They integrated into the world economy, developed dense urban settlements, converted to Islam, adopted food production methods including wet rice agriculture and were subjugated by a variety of European colonial governments.

I hypothesize that each social transformation altered the ways in which Swahili people conceived of and used available environmental resources. I look for patterns of human-induced change in environmental residues that correspond temporally with social transformations. These patterns, in turn, create a cause-and-effect relationship between social, biological and physical changes.

How might this knowledge change the world?
By reconstructing the ways in which Swahili people conceived of and altered their plant communities through time, I hope to articulate an important iteration of human-induced environmental change. On a local level, the research will demonstrate particular results from human decisions. Understanding such a direct cause-and-effect relationship can inform contemporary environmental policy decisions across the region.