Spring 2026 SSFs

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Creating Inclusive Classrooms in Childhood: Theory, Research, and Applications

Developmental science perspectives on social exclusion provide a window into determining how to reduce social inequalities and increase positive social relationships. Children begin to understand concepts of fairness and equality early and recognize that social groups often exclude others for unfair reasons. Challenging groups to be more inclusive is costly, however, and may result in exclusion from their group which provides protection, safety, and enjoyment. Facilitating positive cross-group friendships helps reduce “in-group vs. out-group” attitudes which are a salient part of why biases form in the first place. The negative consequences of experiencing social exclusion based on group identity include depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. This necessitates action to promote healthy child development and a more inclusive society. In this talk, Dr. Killen will discuss her recent research findings on children’s viewpoints about fairness and social exclusion. Then she will discuss their school-based program called Developing Inclusive Youth.  Her team is currently creating an AI-powered Teacher App to accompany the program, which she will describe during the talk.

Hosted by the Department of Psychology and co-sponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship and the Department of Education.

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Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom:
Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the vast majority of the nation’s people of color were enslaved. Yet nearly half a million of these people were free. For the first time, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. recounts the story of free people of color in the Civil War era United States. He shows how the nation’s growing divide in the years leading up to the war, the events of the war itself, and the policies of the postwar period shaped the lives of free people of color living in various regions of the country. His telling also reflects on the ways free people of color used their voices, military service, and political acumen to push for a better version the United States. Calling upon their experiences fighting for equal rights in the prewar years, free people of color took advantage of the disruption created by the war to lobby for the end of discrimination across nation.

Hosted by the Department of History and co-sponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship.

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The Technological Future: Shifting the Focus from What We Build to Who We Build It For

We are at a crossroads where the technologies we create today will shape democracy, work, and community for years to come. Yet too often, conversations about artificial intelligence focus on technical capabilities rather than human consequences — on what these systems can do, rather than who they’re designed to serve. Dr. Amber Spry brings a unique dual perspective as both an academic researcher studying political behavior and identity, and a practitioner embedded in the tech industry working on responsible innovation. In this talk, she urges us to consider how the design of AI systems encodes choices about whose values are upheld, whose intelligence counts, and whose futures are prioritized. Drawing on her work developing frameworks for algorithmic fairness, co-designing new technology with communities, and studying how democratic institutions adapt to technological change, Dr. Spry explores what it means to create innovation that genuinely serves the public good. She provides a vision for recognizing everyday people as partners in shaping technological futures, and why making technology responsive to human experience isn’t just an ethical imperative, it’s essential for creating technology that actually works for the complex, interconnected world we live in.

Dr. Amber Spry is an Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. She is a thought leader bridging social scientific insights with application in the tech industry, most recently as Meta’s Academic Collaborator for Social Impact Research where she led the creation of measurement systems to understand social outcomes across Instagram, Facebook,  AR and VR applications, and artificial intelligence. She is a founding member of Meta’s Co-Design Lab, a central organization that brings everyday people alongside engineers and designers to create new technologies with, not just for, the communities who use them. She also convened the Responsible Innovation in AI Workshop in collaboration with the New York Academy of Science and Arizona State University, which gathered technologists, academics, and civil society to create actionable frameworks and guidelines for solving pressing technological challenges.

Dr. Spry’s expertise is in research design and analysis focusing on identity, beliefs, and behavior in our social, political, and digital lives. Her forthcoming book Identity Inventory: What Group Ties Can (and Can’t) Tell Us About Politics argues that measurement matters for our understanding of identity politics in the US. She uses innovative survey design methods to observe identity across multiple dimensions, demonstrating that our inferences about what groups want from the government can shift depending on how individuals are asked to self-identify. Her work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Spry holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, and she is a proud alumna of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Media and Communications Studies.

Hosted by CS3 with support from the Division of Research and Creative Achievement and the Department of Media & Communication Studies.

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Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement

Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and racial stereotypes. Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and microlevel processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways.

Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines what motivates people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of “food justice” and “healthy food” operate as racially coded language, reinforcing the idea that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future.

Hosted by the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health, and co-sponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship.

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How People Make Nature Better:  Measuring Progress Toward a World Where People and Nature Thrive Together using the Nature Relationship Index (NRI)

Cosponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.