Student Research Awardees

Livia Alfonsi

Ph.D. Candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley

Project: The Shecession of 2020: Evidence from Uganda

Livia Alfonsi is an applied micro-economist with research at the intersection of Development, Labor, and Behavioral economics. Her main strand of research focuses on labor market frictions in low-income countries. In separate work, she also studies how human capital investments and social networks affect individual preferences and behaviors.

Contact: livia.alfonsi@berkeley.edu

Keith Brower Brown

Ph.D. Candidate in Geography at UC Berkeley

Project: Solar Power and Worker Power in California’s San Joaquin Valley

Keith Brower Brown is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at UC Berkeley. Drawing on his past work in California’s clean energy sector and labor organizing roles, his dissertation researches how a boom in unionized solar and high-speed rail jobs in the San Joaquin Valley has shifted labor conditions and worker power. Along with IRLE, Keith’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the UC Berkeley Latinxs & The Environment Initiative, and the journal Human Geography. His prior work has been published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, New Geographies, Antipode, Climate & Development, and Labor Notes.

Contact: kbbrown@berkeley.edu

Derek Brown

Ph.D. Candidate in Management of Organizations at UC Berkeley

Project: Equality is Misperceived as Harmful to Advantaged Groups

Derek Brown is a Ph.D. student in Management of Organizations at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Derek explores the psychological barriers that curb efforts to reduce inequality within organizations and society. In particular, he studies the ways that diversity, prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and hierarchy shape how we interact with others and the increasingly diverse society around us.

Contact: d_brown@berkeley.edu

Luisa Cefala

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at UC Berkeley

Project: The Causes and Consequences of Persistent Over-Optimism among Job-Seekers

Combining insights from behavioral economics to labor economics, my research agenda focuses on understanding the determinants of job search in low-income countries, where informal labor markets are widespread. In a current project, I explore the causes of persistent over-optimism in job finding probability among casual workers in India. I hope that my research can contribute to our understanding of how poverty and its interplay with (lack of) institutions can affect workers’ decision-making.

Contact: luisa.cefala@berkeley.edu

Justin Germain

Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley

Project: On the Road Again: Spatial Barriers to Employment Among the Rural Poor

Justin Germain is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Justin’s research centers around the ways that physical space influences social and economic inequality, and is working with IRLE to understand how transportation barriers affect employment opportunities for low-income families living in rural areas.

Contact: justin.germain@berkeley.edu

Arlyn Moreno Luna

Ph.D. Candidate in Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender at UC Berkeley

Project: Migrant Workers’ Attitudes Toward Early Childhood Care

Arlyn Moreno Luna is a doctoral student in the Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. Her scholarly interests include access and equity to early childhood education for migrant workers, barriers that migrant workers face as they access early childhood education, and access and equity in higher education for first-generation and traditionally underrepresented students. Arlyn was born and raised in Mexico, migrating to the U.S. as a teen. She received her Bachelor of Science in BioResource Research in 2013 (with Honors) and a Master of Public Policy, with a focus in Social Justice in 2015 from Oregon State University. In 2021, Arlyn received a Master of Arts in Education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Contact: arlyn_morenoluna@berkeley.edu

Cristobal Otero

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at UC Berkeley

Project: The Effects of Managers on Public Health Outcomes: Evidence from Chile

Cristóbal is a PhD Candidate in Economics at UC Berkeley. He holds a BA and an MA in Economics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He also obtained an MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics. His fields of interest are labor and public economics, and more broadly public policy. His website can be found here.

Contact: cotero@berkeley.edu

Zabdi Salazar

Ph.D. Candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley

Project: Immigration Judges & Bureaucracy: The Impact of Case Quotas

Zabdi Salazar is a rising third-year student in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) PhD program at UC Berkeley. Her research interests include refugee and asylum law, immigration law, sociology of law, and administrative law. Her current project explores the impact of a case quota policy on US immigration judges. The study will use a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach to examine how the fiscal year (FY) 2019 performance standards, particularly the requirement for judges to complete 700 cases each year, impacted judicial behavior and case outcomes.

Contact: zsalazar2019@berkeley.edu

Alex Stephenson

Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley

Project: The Effect of Knowledge of Racial Covenants on Attitudes towards Present-Day Redistribution

Alex Stephenson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science, where he researches the effects of past discrimination on modern political and economic inclusion, order, and violence. He is also interested in developing methods and tools for causal inference. His research supported by IRLE experimentally assesses whether learning about the historical roots of present-day segregation affects respondents’ support for addressing present-day racial inequity in the United States via redistribution.

Contact: alexander_stephenson@berkeley.edu

Enrique Valencia Lopez

Ph.D. Candidate in Policy, Politics, and Leadership at UC Berkeley

Project: Migrant Workers’ Attitudes Toward Early Childhood Care

Enrique Valencia López is a PhD student in the Policy, Politics and Leadership cluster at the Graduate School of Education. His research interests relate to three broad areas: the stratification of education by gender, immigration status and ethnicity; the measurement of teacher working conditions and well-being; and education in Latin America. He is currently researching (with Arlyn Moreno) the attitudes of farmworker immigrants towards early childhood care using mixed methods. The research aims to inform the main drivers and constraints Migrant Farm workers face when choosing options for early care for their children.

Contact: evalencialopez@berkeley.edu

Liubing Xie

Ph.D. Candidate in City and Regional Planning

Project: Governing Migrant Labor through Rental Housing: Differentiated Rental Housing Schemes for Migrants in China and India

Liubing Xie’s research focuses on social-spatial inequality, living conditions, and lived experiences of migrant workers in Chinese and Indian cities at the intersection of migration, labor, and housing studies. He is especially interested in investigating the recent Chinese and Indian state initiatives to promote market-led but state-mediated rental housing for both skilled/educated and unskilled migrant labor forces in the large cities in China and India. He pursues these topics primarily through the methods of comparative urban studies and urban ethnography.

Contact: liubing.xie@berkeley.edu

Alan Yan

Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley

Project: Class-Based Origins of Immigration Attitudes

Alan Yan is a PhD student in the Political Science department. The primary question motivating much of his research is: Why isn’t there a rise in left voting as inequality has risen? His main focus is on class in American politics. Specifically, he is interested in how people conceptualize class, how people connect their class to politics, and how people understand their class interests. He is also interested in questions related to workplace democracy, ideology, and race.

Contact: alanyan@berkeley.edu