Students and Trainees

Population Health PhD Student at NYU

As part of my Masters of Public Health at Queens University, I assisted with field data collection and monitoring in Haiti. In addition, I contributed to a secondary analysis to understand the perceptions of local Haitian community members around sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers.

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Email: kingc11@nyu.edu

Fourth year medical student at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Sudbury

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While transitioning from my undergraduate studies at Queen's University to medical studies at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, I worked in the DRC during the summer of 2018 helping to develop and implement research assistant training, as well as oversee data collection to ensure quality and accuracy. I am currently looking at creative methods of disseminating DRC results to host community partners with the goal of broadening the impact of our work.

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Email: annievdube@gmail.com 

Health Analyst

I worked with the DRC Sensemaker data for my master's thesis. My area of focus within the project was to use the mixed-methods data to understand the characteristics of peacekeeper sexual interactions, and develop an index to measure an individual's degree of exposure to peacekeeper-perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse. The relationship between this index measure and the outcome of public and structural stigmatization was assessed for Congolese women and girls using regression modelling.

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Email: salexgray@gmail.com 

PhD Candidate, Socio-Legal Studies, York University

My doctoral dissertation, supervised by Dr. Annie Bunting, draws on the SenseMaker data and qualitative interviews to elucidate conceptions of justice in relation to peacekeeper SEA, uncovering a sense of ambivalence toward law and human rights paradigms in relation to sexual abuses. I joined the DRC SenseMaker project in September 2017, contributing to the survey design. I later assisted with research training and early data collection supervision in May 2018, and focus group discussions and meetings with MONUSCO personnel in March 2020, both in Goma.

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Email: hctasker@yorku.ca 

Economics PhD candidate at North Carolina State University, AgBioFEWS Fellow

In-country research manager for 2017 Haiti field data collection. Supported mixed methods data analysis of Haiti data to present Haitian perceptions of the UN MINUSTAH mission.

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Email: ghferraro@gmail.com

Legal Assistant at an immigration law firm

Using both the SenseMaker data from Haiti and qualitative interviews with MINUJUSTH officials, I focused my research on the extent to which "peace babies" are considered victims both in theory and practice, and in light of new UN policies based on a victim-centred approach, what legal responsibilities the UN may have toward peace babies specifically.

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Email: katiealtar@me.com 

PhD Candidate in Public Health Sciences at Brown School, Washington University in Saint Louis

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Using qualitative and quantitative data collected in Haiti pertaining to women/girls' experiences with UN peacekeepers, I explored (i) The distribution and consequences of peacekeeper-perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse, (ii) Gender-stratified differneces in perceptions of sexual abuse and exploitation, and (iii) The lived experiences of mothers raising peacekeeper-fathered children in Haiti. The analyses supported my master's thesis in epidemiology and a separate reserach assistantship. I also had the opportunity to travel to Haiti in 2019 to conduct field work and contextualize fundings with the Haitian community partners.

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Email: 16LV6@queensu.ca 

PhD Candidate, International Development, University of Birmingham, UK

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My doctoral dissertation draws on the qualitative data collected in the DRC and thus, I had the opportunity to support the SenseMaker and qualitative study in Goma in 2018, contributing to the research training and early implementation stage of the project. Following an interdisciplinary approach, I have consolidated knowledge from psychology and peace and conflict studies to facilitate a comprehensive assessment of the challenges peacekeeper-fathered children (PKFC) face in Congolese communities. More specifically, I have situated a psychological analysis of identity, well-being and status in a socio-ecological model that conceptualizes the broader social, cultural, and political structures that make their life courses difficult and impact their chances of becoming happy and healthy adults.

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Email: kww705@bham.ac.uk 

First year medical student at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

Under the supervision of Dr. Susan Bartels, I worked on two research projects using secondary data analysis based on SenseMaker data from Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo during my undergraduate degree at Queen's University. The first was a qualitative analysis of micronarrative data to explore local Haitian perceptions of the origins of the 2010 Haiti cholera outbreak, which was caused by United Nations peacekeepers. The second was a mixed-methods project that examined the perceptions of adolescents aged 13-17 on how the lives of women and girls have been affected by the presence of UN peacekeepers within the DRC.

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Email: gfraulin@ualberta.ca 

MA student at Queen's University, Kingston

Under the supervision of historian, Dr. Karen Dubinsky, I am working with the Haiti Sensemaker data to explore how the MINUSTAH peacekeeping operation impacted Haitian Governance efforts. Paying close attention to the racialized and gendered dynamics of the intervention, I hope to uncover how the MINUSTAH force is both a continuation, and a break, from past practices of international assistance in Haiti. In 2019, I was fortunate enough to travel to Haiti as part of a research team tasked with discussing the results of the Sensemaker data with Haitian community partners.

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Email: 18trk1@queensu.ca 

PhD Candidate in Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Under the supervision of Dr. Allison Goebel, I am working with the long-form DRC interviews to explore women's experiences of sexual encounters with MONUSCO agents. I have been particularly interested the extent to which the experiences of local women 1) challenge the common victim-centric narratives of sexual interaction in the DRC, 2) complicate our understanding of consent in a peacekeeping economy, and 3) highlight the limitations of the UN's current Zero-Tolerance policy.

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Email: a.dixon@queensu.ca 

Under the supervision of Dr. Allison Goebel, I completed my Master's Research Project using the DRC SenseMaker data. Analyzing a small sub-set of the micro-narratives collected, I focused on the complex and varied sexual interactions and relationships between UN personnel and local Congolese women. In particular, my work explored the interplay between 'love', sex, and economics within the narratives, utilizing and expanding upon the Peacekeeping Economy framework. This work is being further explored in collaboration with Dr. Goebel and Alina Dixon.

Masters Candidate, International Affairs, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

I have been working under Dr. Annie Bunting since 2019. In our first study, I worked with the qualitative data from DRC to understand how current policies related to peacekeeper fathered children are not being enforced and how mothers found reporting inaccessible. We are now transitioning to our second study where I will be again working with the qualitative data to understand the differences between relationships and encounters of of-age women and under-age girls with MONUSCO peacekeeping personnel. I will be incorporating data from this project into my masters thesis which is being supervised by a medical anthropologist, Dr. Vinh-Kim Nguyen, at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

Undergraduate student, Queen's University

I am completing my undergraduate thesis project at Queen’s University under the supervision of Dr. Susan Bartels and Dr. Melanie Walker. Using the SenseMaker data from Haiti, I am examining the association between exposure to peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA and satisfaction with life among Haitian community members.

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Email: kenziemaskery@gmail.com