Emily M. Waters

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Emily M. Waters is an incoming Doctoral Student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and works as a Policy and Research Advisor at the Transgender Law Center. Emily has extensive experience conducting community-based research and policy advocacy on issues related to queer and trans rights, with a particular focus on domestic, sexual, and state violence. She focuses on developing and advocating for policy solutions that move power and resources into community and challenge systemic oppression rather than reinforce the carceral state. Her work can be found in The New York Times, HuffPost, and The Advocate. 

As a Doctoral Student, Emily is interested in exploring the social and political regulation of gender-segregated services and environments (e.g., domestic violence shelters, bathrooms, or sports teams). She would like to examine the social norms, attitudes, and beliefs that uphold the perceived need for gender-segregated spaces. For example, gender essentialism and benevolent sexism which uphold the perceived need for segregation for ‘women’s’ safety. She is particularly interested in the association between these beliefs and implicit and explicit prejudice toward transgender and gender nonbinary people. Finally, she would like to explore how people from seemingly different political affiliations (e.g., conservative and feminist) find alignment in their political goal of maintaining gender-segregated spaces. 

Previously, Emily served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Social Work at Columbia University, where she taught courses on Program Evaluation and working with LGBTQ Communities. She holds a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Human Rights from the University of Southern California.

Personal website: Emilywaters.com

Juan C. Jauregui

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Juan C. Jauregui, MSW, MPH is a 4th year doctoral student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research centers LGBTQ+ young people and explores the intersection of social processes with health outcomes. Juan’s work specifically investigates the relationship between social connectedness, stigma, and the mental health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities in low and middle-income countries.

Before entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Juan worked with the Resilience + Resistance Collective at the University of Michigan School of Public Health where he was involved in LGBTQ+ mental health and sexual health projects in the U.S., Kenya, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic. Juan’s previous professional experiences include working as a Research Associate for the UCLA Adolescent Trials Network and as a Crisis Worker for a national suicide hotline.

As a doctoral student Juan has continued to build his global health research agenda. His doctoral research has involved co-leading the launch of a national survey focused on LGBTQ+ youth mental health both in Peru and the Philippines. Juan is a recipient of a NIMHD T37 LEAD Global Training Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as a recipient of the 2023 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.

Juan is currently based in Lima, Peru, where he will be conducting his dissertation fieldwork through December 2025. His qualitative dissertation titled “Exploring Stigma, Mental Health, and HIV Treatment Engagement Among Sexual and Gender Minority Young People Living with HIV in Peru” was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health as part of the Fogarty UCGHI GloCal Health Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. The project prioritizes knowledge that will improve community-based service provision and interventions that address the mental health and HIV care needs of this vulnerable population.

Juan is a first-generation student and earned his BS in Psychobiology from UCLA in 2017 and Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan in 2021.

Selected Publications:

Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Jauregui, J. C., McDowell, H., Davis, K., LaBoy, R., Johnson, G. L., Hosek, S., Harper, G. W. (2023) “They’re not feeling the love they need to feel”: HIV stigma and other intersecting stigmas among Black gay and bisexual men and transgender women in house and ball communities. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health. doi: 10.1080/19359705.2023.2200375

Lewis, K. A., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Walimbwa, J., Ogunbajo, A., Jauregui, J. C., Onyango, D. P.,  Moore, D. M.,  Johnson, G. L., Odero, W., Harper, G. W. (2023). “You’ll Be Chased Away”: Sources, Experiences, and Effects of Violence and Stigma among Gay and Bisexual Men in Kenya. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20, 2825. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20042825

Jauregui, J. C., Rucah, C., Crawford, J., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Concehla, C., Onyango, D. P., Harper, G. W. Experiences of Violence and Mental Health Concerns among Sexual and Gender Minority Adults in Western Kenya. LGBT Health. 2021 Oct;8(7):494-501. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2020.0495. Epub 2021 Aug 31. PMID: 34463158.

Julia Lesnick

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Julia Lesnick is an emerging scholar of youth justice. Her research agenda aims to shift policy, practice, and public narratives investing in youth to pursue a more just society. She takes a multi-disciplinary approach grounded in social welfare, sociology and developmental psychology to examine the following areas: young people’s experiences with policy advocacy and implementation; the use of evidence to inform juvenile system change; emerging alternative models of youth justice practice; and public and political narratives about youth justice.

As a second-year doctoral student at UCLA, Julia’s research focuses on juvenile legal system change. Some of her recent and ongoing projects include a first-authored critical review of paradigms influencing national trends of juvenile system reform, leading a qualitative study of stakeholders’ visions for the future of youth justice, conducting a comprehensive synthesis of evidence on credible messenger mentoring with youth in the juvenile system, collecting data for evaluation of a youth re-entry program, and serving as a research consultant for the state of California in the implementation of juvenile justice reform legislation.

In addition to her research at UCLA, Julia is a practitioner and advocate for justice. Prior to UCLA, she worked as a program analyst at the NYC Division of Youth and Family Justice and in community-based social services, as a therapist and case manager for youth on probation, and as a teacher in prison-based college degree program. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Human Development from Cornell University in 2018, and her Master’s of Social Work from UCLA in 2023.

Ultimately, Julia aspires to a career conducting research that advances equitable, youth-centered, and community-led change in youth justice policy and practice. She aims to contribute innovative, applied research that bridges organizing, science, policy, and practice to promote socially just youth policy.

Sawyer Hogenkamp

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Sawyer completed an M.Ed. in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University. He also holds a M.Ed. and B.Ed. from Queen’s University, and B.A. from University of Waterloo, majoring in Music, and Human Geography & Environmental Management. He is pursuing a PhD to further the study of relational youth violence and school climate to encompass under-supervised contexts within and outside of school grounds, such as in neighborhoods, virtual spaces, or on school buses. He serves as a consultant with an organization in Canada that trains school bus drivers on bullying prevention and mental health awareness. He’s also engaged in supporting social emotional learning in underserved populations domestically (urban and rural America), and abroad (urban and rural China). Research skills include both qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as mixed methods, having participated with interdisciplinary research groups collaborating with Canadian Federal and Provincial Government Agencies, Universities, and private organizations. Currently Sawyer is working with the APA Taskforce on Violence Against Educators, organizing and analyzing data and policy of qualitative data from school psychologists, social workers, counselors, administrators, teachers, and school staff.

Kimberly Fuentes

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Kimberly Fuentes, MSW is a recent graduate of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in Social Welfare. She is currently a first year PhD student in Social Welfare at Luskin where she studies the impacts of criminalization on sex working communities, the ways they resist criminalization, and the role that social work can play in uplifting this resistance. She hopes to utilize participatory action research and art-based methods to identify the alternative systems of community care that are used to mitigate and resist the forces of the police state and theorize the state from the vantage point of sex workers. She serves on the board of directors at the Sex Worker Outreach Project – Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) where she leads a nationwide support group for current and former sex workers and provides direct support to street-based workers through a harm reduction framework. Kimberly is a student affiliate of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. She is currently a research assistant at the UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice where she works on research studies exploring the effect of criminalization on violence and victimization of sex workers.

Kimberly earned her Master of Social Welfare in Social and Economic Justice with a certificate in Global Health and Social Services. During her time in the MSW program, Kimberly received the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (GOFP) and served as a Luskin Leadership Fellow at the Office of Child Protection (OCP). Her completed research capstone, “Revolutionizing Community Under the Red Umbrella: Intersectional Inquiry with Sex Workers on Protective Factors in Los Angeles, CA”, received awards from the Center for the Study of Women’s Black Feminism Initiative, UCLA Lewis Center for Policy Research, Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. Social Justice Award, and a departmental award for outstanding research.

She is a proud first-generation student whose family immigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico. Prior to UCLA, she earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Geography with a minor in Math and Science education from UC Santa Barbara.

 

Jessica Bremner

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Jessica Bremner is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests lie at the intersections of spatial justice, gender, housing, participatory practices, and democracy. Her dissertation research examines the processes that shape the spatial inequality of water access in the Coachella Valley. Jessica was awarded the Babbitt Dissertation Fellowship from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to support this research.

Prior to entering the PhD program at UCLA, Jessica was the Planning Director of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a non-profit community development and design firm based in Los Angeles, USA and Nairobi, Kenya. Jessica has coordinated, supervised, and implemented community development programs aimed at empowering communities around the world. Her projects have ranged in scope and scale from a on online portal to identify water and sanitation connections in Kibera, Kenya to a Play Street pilot project for the City of Los Angeles to the development of a 5-acre park in the Eastern Coachella Valley. She has led dozens of participatory workshops to design, build, and implement public space projects that address social, economic, and physical needs of low-income communities. Her projects and processes have been featured in the New York Times and exhibited at the Louisiana Art Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt in New York, USA. Her dissertation builds from six years of working in the Coachella Valley with KDI.

Before joining KDI, she assisted management and evaluation of the Inter-American Foundation’s Brazil and Ecuador grant portfolios and worked for the Planning Department of the City of West Hollywood. Jessica holds a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and dual Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Past research projects include examining informality and slum upgrading programs in Brazil and community-engaged research on unpermitted housing and displacement in Los Angeles.

Madeline Wander

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Madeline Wander is a UCLA Urban Planning PhD candidate and a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Her research examines transportation disparities and justice amidst the changing geography of low-income communities of color, particularly in suburbs. Madeline holds a BA in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA. Madeline sits on the Board of Directors of the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, she was a Senior Data Analyst at the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (now USC Equity Research Institute) where she worked with community-based organizations, foundations, and government agencies on research around equitable urban planning, social-movement building, and environmental justice. Prior to that, she was involved in a variety of organizing efforts, including the affordable housing coalition Housing LA and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in Colorado.

Madeline is co-author of several publications, including: Housing Affordability and Commute Distance (Urban Geography); Carbon trading, co-pollutants, and environmental equity: Evidence from California’s cap-and-trade program (PLoS Medicine); The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone: The Relationship Between Social Inequality and Environmental Quality (Annual Review of Public Health).

Madeline lives in northeast Los Angeles with her partner Ben and their children Hannah and Noah.

Jihyun Oh

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Jihyun Oh earned her BA in Social Welfare at the Catholic University of Korea, her MA in Social Welfare at Seoul National University, and her MSW at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. Prior to entering the UCLA doctoral program, in 2006-2011, she worked for various projects regarding measuring national minimum cost of living and producing Korean Welfare Panel Study data in the Division of Basic Social Security Research at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (a government-funded think tank). After completing her MSW, in 2017-2018, she interned in Partners for Our Children (UW-affiliated child welfare research center) in Seattle. Drawing on her research and practicum experiences in both Seoul and Seattle, Jihyun’s main research interest is child welfare and its association with relevant factors from both institutional and intergenerational contexts including parenting quality. Through her doctoral study at UCLA, Jihyun hopes to develop more comprehensive and systematic analysis that can contribute to improvements in child support policy and practice.