Research opportunities for Lafayette students

• Jun 23, 2026 Working paper
  GML Working Paper #5: Climate change news and environmental protection

  By Alexander Brown, Salma Emmanuel, Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, Beatrice Montano, and Bardia Rahmani. In a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Tanzania, two short radio news reports raised knowledge that climate change is human-caused and support for low-cost local action, such as voting for pro-environment candidates. Neither report changed costly behaviors like paying more for solar power.

• May 15, 2026 Student milestone
  Isabella Tang defends her honors thesis

  Isabella Tang defended her honors thesis, “Stigma as a Barrier to the Reintegration of Human Trafficking Survivors: Evidence from Tanzania.” The thesis uses a vignette experiment embedded in a survey of 1,082 villagers in coastal Tanzania, collected as part of the lab’s first community survey. Sexual servitude and returning with wealth triggered the most stigma.

  
• May 13, 2026 Student milestone
  Alexander Brown defends his honors thesis

  Alexander Brown defended his honors thesis, “International Responses to Starvation as a Weapon of War.” The thesis examines whether publicly shaming perpetrators of intentional starvation changes their behavior.

  
• Apr 23, 2026 Presentation
  Savannah Nivin, Kate SantaMaria, and Isabella Tang present at MPSA

  Three GML student researchers presented at the Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago.

  • Savannah Nivin: “The long-term and spillover effects of a radio drama on HIV knowledge, expressed stigma, willingness to disclose, and political priorities,” with Alphoncina Kagaigai and co-authors
  • Kate SantaMaria: “The authority gap: differential effects of judicial and religious elite messaging on social and policy attitudes in Tanzania,” with Benjamin Risley, Zakayo Zakaria, and co-authors
  • Isabella Tang: her honors thesis on stigma against human trafficking survivors
  
• Mar 27, 2026 Presentation
  Athena Wagner presents at PPSA

  Athena Wagner presented at the Pennsylvania Political Science Association conference. Her paper with Salma Emmanuel studies what drives household solar uptake in Tanzania.

  
• Mar 7, 2026 Working paper
  GML Working Paper #4: Journalism and blame attribution

  By Benjamin Risley, Zakayo Zakaria, and Dylan W. Groves. In a pre-registered experiment with 1,009 respondents in 15 Tanzanian villages, a news report blaming the Member of Parliament for a water service failure reduced willingness to vote for the MP by 8 percentage points, relative to a report that blamed the water bureaucracy.

Lafayette students have worked with the Economic and Social Research Foundation, an independent policy research institute in Dar es Salaam, on projects ranging from public health to youth political participation.