December 21, 2023
Year in Review: Faculty supported by $5 million in research grants
Research is foundational to the undergraduate experience at Providence College and is critical to engaged learning through student-faculty partnerships across campus. PC faculty, working in partnership with the Office of Sponsored Projects and Research Compliance, were awarded research grants totaling nearly $5 million in 2023.
Here is a sampling of the depth and breadth of faculty research projects awarded this year:
James Bailey, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics
Funding Agency: Institute for Humane Studies
Title: Certificate of Need and the Labor Market
Bailey’s research focuses on Certificate of Need laws that require healthcare providers to obtain permission from state boards to certify economic necessity when attempting to open a new facility or purchase major new equipment. This research will produce two articles addressing the barriers affecting the economic wellbeing of healthcare workers.
Rebecca Fenerci, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology
Funding Agency: The Caplan Foundation
Title: Identifying Parenting Education Needs Among Mothers Who Have Survived Maltreatment
Fenerci seeks to conduct a series of qualitative interviews with mothers who have survived maltreatment to explore and identify parenting working models, concerns, resilience, and needs specific to this vulnerable population. Findings will provide the essential conceptual foundation for the next phases of research with the goal of designing and piloting a parenting education program tailored to address the unique educational needs and promote resilience among parent-survivors of maltreatment.
Noah Hammond, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Physics
Funding Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Title: Coupling Europa’s Tides, Fault Motions, and near-Surface Melt Dynamics
Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, is a tectonically complex world with many strike-slip faults. It is unknown how strike-slip faults develop in Europa’s ice shell. Hammond’s research will investigate unexplored fault dynamics, including the coupling between slip and melt generation, and whether there is a correlation between strongly slipping faults and geological surface expressions.
Alyssa Lopez, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History
Funding Agency: Institute for Citizens & Scholars
Title: Reel Freedom: Black Film Culture in Early Twentieth Century New York City
This career enhancement fellowship will allow Lopez to dedicate her time and focus on peer reports of her manuscript, to write a second peer-reviewed journal article, and to begin important archival work on her next research project.
Seann Mulcahy, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health
Title: Harnessing Atropisomerism in beta-Carbolines for the Discovery of New Reactions and Small Molecule Probes
Mulcahy’s research involves the study of the unique stereochemical property of small molecules known as atropisomerism. In addition to contributing to therapeutic developments for healthcare, the project is exposing undergraduate students to scientific inquiry in a liberal arts setting and inspiring students to continue in a STEM or health-related field upon graduation.
Laura Murray, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Title: Quantum Field Theories and Elliptic Cohomology
The goal of Murray’s research is to clarify high-categorial data involved in several approaches to elliptic cohomology and field theories that will be achieved through three specific research aims.
Daria Spezzano, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Theology
Funding Agency: Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Title: Teacher-Scholar Grant
In response to a sharp decline in church attendance among those with religious affiliations and a rapidly increasing number of individuals who claim no religious affiliation, especially among millennials, Spezzano’s project draws on the teaching of theologian Thomas Aquinas to provide persuasive tools for evangelization that respond to a hunger for confidence in the goodness, truth, and beauty that can be found in faithful worship.
Gizem Zencirci, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science
Funding Agency: Humboldt-University zu Berlin
Title: Mapping the Contested Heritage of Neo-Ottomanism in Turkey: Decentering the West Through Reviving Ahi (Craft) Guilds
Zencirci’s research explores the transformation of Ottoman heritage in Turkey by focusing on the imagination and contestation of a new heritage discourse centered on Ottoman ahi (craft) guilds. It considers two dimensions of the heritage politics of neo-Ottomanism: the government’s reproduction of economic heritage and the social and political implications of these novel understandings of Ottoman economic heritage.
