Scholars from the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) occasionally provide video interviews and commentary about their work and expertise. View recent selections on the WCW YouTube channel.
The Centers also occasionally hosts special events allowing WCW scholars and colleagues to share their expertise and perspectives on various topics pertaining to current events, policy work, and social science research. Recordings of some past events and seminars are available as video files via the links below.
Please note: You may need to adjust the volume when playing a video file on your computer.
Here, Emmy Howe, M.Ed., of the National SEED Project, explains the systems of dominance and oppression that each of us face, and how to be a change agent in these spaces.
Does social media activism decrease in-person activism? Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., discusses this in relation to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
During the March 2018 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, WCW hosted a parallel event during which panelists discussed how gender-focused research can support rural women and girls in Africa.
Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D., explains the cultural shift in mental health conversations within communities.
In this March 2018 lunchtime seminar, focused on women in NCAA basketball, a team of researchers explored the social discrimination, policy, and bureaucratic issues that impede women's recognition and success within the organization.
Director of Open Circle Kamilah Drummond-Forrester, explains the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) for students.
LaShawnda Lindsay-Dennis, Ph.D., discusses her research, which examined the population of Black women in STEM fields.
Wellesley College students share what they've gained from working with a WCW research scientist mentor.
Linda M. Williams, Ph.D., discusses how one of her major findings changed how we understand memory loss and childhood trauma.
Georgia Hall, Ph.D., explains the importance of healthy eating and physical activity for kids.
Research Scientist LaShawnda Lindsay-Dennis, Ph.D., explains why we need more diverse dolls that show different skin tones, eye shapes, and hair textures.
Sari Kerr, Ph.D., economist and senior research scientist at WCW, explains how marriage affects the gender wage gap.
In this recording of a November 2017 lunchtime seminar, Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., and her research team discuss results of a survey related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Linda M. Williams, Ph.D., research scientist and co-founder of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative at the Wellelsey Centers for Women offers a brief message on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Amy Hoffman, M.F.A., a Massachusetts-based author and editor-in-chief of the Women’s Review of Books, read excerpts from her new novel, The Off Season during this November 2017 presentation at Wellesley College.
How can parents help teens make healthy decisions about dating, sex, and relationships? Jennifer Grossman, Ph.D., offers some advice.
Byllye Y. Avery, Founder of the Black Women’s Health Imperative
Throughout her life, Byllye Y. Avery has combined activism and social responsibility to develop a national forum for the exploration of the health issues of Black women.
Renowned scholar Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., discussed her final paper in the “Feeling Like a Fraud” series during this October 2017 presentation.
With assistance from Wendy Wagner Robeson, Ed.D., of WCW, a group of Wellesley College students came together to develop SeedKit, an affordable lab-in-a-box that can be used to teach hands-on science experiments in communities with few resources. The students -- Caleb Bercu '16, Isabella Narvaez '17, Mebatsion Gebre '18, and Mehak Sarang '18 -- along with Robeson, shared the story of how SeedKit came to be during this October 2017 presentation.
Watch highlights and full panel discussions recorded at our June 2017 research forum, From Persistence to Power: Facts, Truth, & Equity for Women.
The Wellesley Centers for Women and the Wellesley College Class of 1967 joined together to celebrate 25 years of partnership.
A mother daughter duo share how a bat mitzvah project transformed into a five year journey in research and action combatting obstetric fistula and its mental health implications in Ethiopia.
From Malala to the girls of Chibok in Nigeria, in many parts of the world, there is a war being waged against girls’ education. Women’s human rights scholar and practitioner Rangita de Silva de Alwis, S.J.D. led a discussion on this issue during the presentation, Attacks Against Girls’ Education as a Tactic of Terror.
Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., joined by Wellesley College student researchers, offered an overview of recent and emerging findings from the Media & Identity Project -- a series of ongoing online survey studies from 2013 through 2017, which to date have collected data from almost 5,000 individuals living in the U.S. and over 26 countries, ranging from 12 to more than 80 years old.
In April of 1979, a sixteen year-old boy, was tried as an adult and convicted of killing a professor in New Orleans, LA. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and sent to Angola, the bloodiest prison in the country, to live out his days. Twelve years later his conviction was overturned due to prosecution misconduct. In this recording of the April 6, 2017 lunchtime seminar, “Fighting Time: Exploring the Social Impact of Wrongful Conviction,” Amy Banks, M.D. discusses her personal connection to this case.
In this recording from the March 23, 2017 Grace K. Baruch Memorial Lecture, Catia C. Confortini, Ph.D. discusses the lessons she has learned from breast cancer advocates in Nigeria and how their work can inform global health and peace.
In a recent study, WCW scholars Sumru Erkut, Ph.D. and Ineke Ceder discovered that women and people of color face bias from selection committees on the pathway to leadership in non-profit theaters. In this video, Ceder offers an overview of their findings as well as some suggestions Erkut and Ceder have for theaters that are looking to change.
Over the past five years, the world has witnessed, in real time through social media, deaths of many Black youth and adults, often by the actions of police officers.
Physicians face complex and often subjective treatment decisions, and they are expected to make decisions in their patients’ best interest.
Studies show that the early years are important for children's growth and development, school readiness, and later life.
Charmaraman considers four areas around adolescent development as it relates to media literacy and media consumption in her presentation.
Ceder discusses research on women's leadership in nonprofit theaters and how other trends in women's leadership in elected office and on corporate boards, reflect the need for more female representation and participation.
There has been a long history of disconnection between the art of psychodynamic therapy work and the information being discovered in neuroscience research labs all around the world.
Williams discusses her research on intimate partner violence, sex trafficking, and gender-based violence, sharing insights and perspectives federal policymakers could consider more in the coming years.
Robeson discusses the value and need for quality early care and education, noting the significant wage discrepancies for educators in this field compared to other educators and other professions, and sharing recommendations for ensuring a well-compensated, skilled workforce to prepare children for lifelong learning.
Hoffman shares some of the titles and authors that were recommended by invited contributors to the Women's Review of Books, to be on the reading list of the next U.S. President.
Gladstone shares data on the alarming rates of depression in children and adolescents, providing insight and recommendations on ways practitioners and educators, with the help of policymakers, can help identify and prevent depression in more young people.
Gannett recommends ways policymakers and private industry can work together to create a stronger and more well-prepared workforce to meet the increased demands being placed on the out-of-school time field in order to contribute to both social/emotional and academic success of children and youth.
We are more alike than we are unalike – or so says the often quoted poem by Maya Angelou. Yet a substantial part of our cultural heritage is a racialized narrative that not only emphasizes our differences, but also ranks them as indicators of human worth.
For both teens and parents, talking about sex can be uncomfortable, but often teens and parents disagree about whether or not they have talked about sex at all.
In her April 21, 2016 lunchtime seminar, Amy Hoffman, M.F.A. read selections from her novel in progress Dot and Ralfie, which centers on a lesbian couple in their late sixties, who are facing some of the dilemmas of aging.
“Mind the Gap” is a well-known cautionary phrase from the London Underground, but it also offers an excellent picture of our child welfare system.
To say that health care is a community benefit and not simply an individual or national benefit, is to acknowledge that communities are critical moral actors in determining just and fair health care, argues Charlene Galarneau, Ph.D., in her forthcoming book
“Mindfulness” has become an increasingly popular term, especially when it comes to education.
In this video, Dr. Linda Charmaraman discusses where the Media and Identity Study is headed, and what issues she is hoping to understand through the study's results.
In this video, Wellesley College student Huiying Bernice Chan discusses how the Media & Identity Study evolved over the 3 years she was involved with it, and what the project findings mean to her.
In this video, Budnampet Ramanudom (Class of 2018) discusses her role on the Media and Identity Study team and the project’s next steps.
In this video, Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., principal investigator of the Media & Identity Study, reviews the findings related to cyber harassment, which focused on cyber rumor spreading and being mean or rude to others online, and the implications for those findings.
In this video, Wellesley College student Huiying Bernice Chan, who has been a student research intern with the Media and Identity Study for three years, reviews the Study's social media findings related to young women of color and the implications of those findings.
In this video, Dr. Linda Charmaraman is joined by Wellesley College student research interns Huiying Bernice Chan and Budnampet Ramanudom to discuss why social science research with a focus on diverse groups is needed, and why the Media & Identity Project matters.
In this video, Dr. Linda Charmaraman gives an overview of the ongoing Media & Identity Project.
In this seminar, Dr. Kates presented two types of data focused on mothers admitted to substance abuse services by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The research team presented overviews of recent and emerging findings from the Media & Identity Project, a mixed-method online survey study of over 2,300 young people aged 12-25 in 47 states with 34 follow-up interviews.
April Pattavina, Ph.D. and Linda Williams, Ph.D. work with police, prosecutors, victim advocates, agencies, and victims themselves to research sexual assault case processing. In this video, they explain why their collaborative research style is needed to understand the complexities of justice systems and gender based violence.
In this seminar, Pattavina and Williams discussed their recent research for a multi-site federally funded study on police and prosecutor decision-making in cases of sexual assault, which revealed a pattern of “exceptional clearances”, rather than arrest, being used as a reason to close cases.
Laura Golakeh, M.A., shared personal reflections about how education enabled her to break the shackles of fear, pain and trauma in Liberia and gave her a new energy to give back to a "crying society.”
Talking with family about sex can protect teens from risky sexual behavior. Parents play a critical role in family sexuality communication, but today’s adolescents often rely on nontraditional communities for support, including extended family and “fictive kin,” who can serve as core parts of the family unit, particularly among African American and Latino families.
In this presentation, Kate Price, M.A. and Janelle Nanos, M.A. talked about their amazing journey together while investigating Price's history as a child sex trafficking survivor.
In this presentation Michelle Porche, Ed.D. and Myra Rosen-Reynoso, Ph.D. discussed findings from the 2012 National Survey of Children’s Health, which they used to investigate prevalence of co-occurring chronic physical and mental health care needs that put youth at increased risk for obesity, and for poor academic performance in school.
In this presentation Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D. and Amanda Richer, M.A. discussed the latest findings from the Media & Identity study and examined how the consumption of televised media and the use of social media affects young people.
In this presentation Layli Maparyan, Ph.D. discussed the Wellesley Centers for Women roadmap for the next decade to amplify WCW’s social-change impact, reinforce the Centers’ sustainability, and refine the organization's unique contributions to women’s leadership, Wellesley College, and the world.
One of the more insidious myths of post-racialism is that conversations about race and racism have no legitimacy in the cultural narrative of 21st century.
In this lunchtime seminar, Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D. presented on the CATCH-IT program, a primary care technology-based depression prevention program targeting adolescents who are at risk for depressive illness. In this lunchtime seminar, Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D. presented on the CATCH-IT program, a primary care technology-based depression prevention program targeting adolescents who are at risk for depressive illness.
Mike Brady from Brady Bunch? or Phil Dunfy from Modern Family? Who do you think of when you think of fathers today? Mike Brady from Brady Bunch? or Phil Dunfy from Modern Family? Who do you think of when you think of fathers today?
In this presentation Erika Kates, Ph.D. argued that to reduce the number of women in prison we must address the issue of the large number of women held in jail pending trial.
By 2030, estimates predict that 83.7 million people in the United States will be over the age of 60, at least 6 million of whom will identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE), 2014; U.S. Census, 2010).
In this video, Amy Banks, M.D., talks about how to form healthy and thriving social connections.
In this video, Amy Banks, M.D., talks about social pain and how people respond to it in the same way as they do physical pain.
In this video, Amy Banks, M.D., talks about the theory that humans are hardwired to connect.
35th Anniversary Symposium: Reflections, Conversations, New Directions Carolyn Elliott, Ph.D., Rangita de Silva-de Alwis, S.J.D., Haleh Esfandiari, Ph.D. Moderator: Susan McGee Bailey, Ph.D.
Research on the achievement gap suggests that the average student loses the equivalent of one month of instruction over the summer, and that the amount of loss differs for subsets of students.
In this lunchtime seminar, Sari Pekkala Kerr, Ph.D., discussed the effects of State and Federal family leave legislation on parental leave coverage and usage, with a specific focus on low-income households and other disadvantaged families.
Beatrice Achieng Nas, B.A.: Women in Africa: Where is the Wasted Potential?
Lunchtime Seminar October 17, 2013 (31:18 min.)
Beatrice Achieng Nas works with the program IREX, a Community Solutions Program, which works to help individuals and institutions build up vibrant societies – focusing on education, media, and strong communities. Beatrice has been working with communities focusing on education and empowerment for girls. In this lunchtime seminar, Beatrice talked about women in Africa and her own personal life story. Women in Africa are the untapped resources for development. They have potential, but it is often buried by traditions passed on by or from their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Education is the only tool that is able to tap into the potential African women have and to boost development in Africa. An accompanying video about Beatrice's work can be found here. View her presentation slides.
Amy Hoffman, M.F.A.: A Reading from a chapter of Hoffman's Novel-in-progress, The Off Season
Lunchtime Seminar October 10, 2013 (20:31 min.)
In this presentation, Amy Hoffman, editor-in-chief of Women's Review of Books, read an excerpt from her forthcoming novel, The Off Season. The novel is set in the lesbian community in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It's about relationships coming together and falling apart, art, environmentalism, and mid-life crises.
Layli Maparyan, Ph.D.: Womanism, Feminism, and the Business of Moving Social/Ecological Change Forward
Lunchtime Seminar April 25, 2013 (58:52 min.)
Womanism and feminism each offer distinctive social change models. When we examine what each contributes to the process of increasing justice and wellbeing in the world for women and girls, their families and communities, and even the natural environment, we recognize that each is essential to a comprehensive approach. Furthermore, when they work in tandem, they amplify the power of our efforts. In this seminar, Layli Maparyan leads a discussion about our own research and action at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) alongside captivating national and international case studies of others who have made a difference, and we imagined a dynamic, synergistic model of feminist/womanist praxis for WCW.
Amy Banks, M.D.: Mapping Your Relational Web
Lunchtime Seminar April 11, 2013 (46:27 min.)
In order to change relationships and the brain pathways that guide them, you must have an in-depth, nuanced understanding of your relationships. In this seminar, Banks taught participants how to map their relational webs, a process of identifying the quality and quantity of the relationships that are shaping their brains. From the assessment, participants identified relational and controlling images that may be interfering with current relationships and identified relationships with low risk where they may be more successful at increasing intimacy or closeness.
Wellesley College President H. Kim Bottomly announced the appointment of Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., as the new Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Executive Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), effective July 1, 2012. Layli Maparyan shared some of her thoughts during a brief interview.
Nancy MacKay, B.S., Pamela Seigle, M.S., Michelle Porche, Ed.D.: Teaching Presence: Bringing Mindfulness and Reflective Practices into K-5 Classrooms
Lunchtime Seminar April 4, 2013 (41:23 min.)
In this seminar, Nancy MacKay, B.S., Pamela Seigle, M.S., and Michelle Porche, Ed.D. shared practices, insights and findings from a pilot program funded by the Center for Courage & Renewal titled “Weaving Strong Connections of Learning, Reflection and Mindfulness.” The program explored how training in reflective and mindfulness practices affects elementary school teachers’ self-awareness, self-management, stress management, teaching practice, and job satisfaction. Twenty-six teachers with prior training and experience implementing the Open Circle Curriculum for social and emotional learning participated in the pilot. The program, which included four days of training between January through September 2012, also explored mindfulness and reflective practice lessons and activities for elementary school students that teachers can easily incorporate into their existing Open Circle practice.
Georgia Hall, Ph.D., senior research scientist at the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST), discusses the After School Gets Moving Program in this video series. After School Gets Moving is a randomized control trial study of the impacts of a professional development resource for out-of-school time program staff on children’s pedometer step counts in a national sample of out-of-school time programs. In this series, Hall gives details about the program, its goals, conclusions found at this point in the study, and future goals for the project.
Nan D. Stein, Ed.D.: The Shift from Teen Dating Violence to Healthy Relationship Promotion: Losing the Gender Perspective
Lunchtime Seminar November 1, 2012 (31:08 min.)
In this presentation, Nan Stein, Ph.D., talked about the shift that the terms used to teach about interpersonal violence among youth in K-12 schools have undergone in the last few decades. The vocabulary previously utilized, such as "teen dating violence" or "rape prevention education" has morphed into "healthy relationship promotion," silencing the salience of both gender and violence. The preponderance of male violence in interpersonal relationships as confirmed by a variety of surveys and crime reports has been transformed into explanations that present relationship violence is one that is mutually created, sustained and experienced equivalently by males and females. Whether prevention education on teen dating violence to students in middle and secondary schools is implemented by staff from sexual assault and domestic violence agencies or is conducted by school district personnel through health education classes, a requirement that unfortunately is in decline in public education, gender neutrality seems to prevail.
Jennifer Grossman, Ph.D.: "The Talk": How Teen Parents Talk About Sex with the Next Generation
Lunchtime Seminar October 25, 2012 (37:09 min.)
This presentation looked at the qualitative interviews from 32 parents/guardians whose 7th grade children were part of the “Get Real” evaluation program, a three-year comprehensive sex education program for grades 6, 7, and 8. The interviews covered parents' experiences of sexual communication in their families of origin, and how sexual education and experiences shaped how parents approached sexual communication with their own teen children. Jennifer Grossman, Ph.D., shared findings from this study, and compared how teen parents and older parents in the sample talked about these issues.
Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Rosa Lau, A.L.M.: Educational Equity for Girls of Color: A Multi-level Media Strategy
Lunchtime Seminar October 18, 2012 (39:59 min.)
Partnering with Boston-based Teen Voices to produce a short video series, this year-long collaborative multi-media project, funded by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, was designed to understand and reveal key issues related to the educational equity of girls of color. In the video series, teens were featured as the experts and agents of their own learning experiences; they offerred examples of effective strategies and solutions for decreasing the achievement gap. The series also highlighted different perspectives across educators, afterschool mentors, administrators, and policymakers.
The hope for the project was to offer community-based and social media opportunities for dialogue about dispelling stereotypes and dismantling barriers to success for young women of color. In this presentation, Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., and Rosa Lau, A.L.M., discussed their journey during the project and show video clips from the series. Wellesley College student and WCW Class of '67 intern Temple Price also joined them to discuss dissemination strategies to reach a wide audience.
Amy Hoffman, MFA: Reclaiming LGBT History for the LGBT Movement
Lunchtime Seminar October 11, 2012 (38:42 min.)
Reclaiming and reframing history has been even more important for the LGBT movement than it has been for other identity-based movements--because our history and culture is not passed down to us by our families, communities, or the larger culture. In this talk, Amy Hoffman, MFA, examined the recovery, content, and use of LGBT history by LGBT activists and scholars. A writer and community activist, Hoffman has been an editor at Gay Community News (GCN), South End Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World magazine. She has served on the boards of GCN, Sojourner, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), and the Boston Lesbian and Gay History Project and as a judge of the Lambda Literary Awards.
Hoffman’s memoir, Hospital Time, about taking care of friends with AIDS, was published by Duke University Press in 1997. It was short-listed for the American Library Association Gay Book Award and the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and was a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection. Her memoir An Army of Ex-Lovers, about Boston's Gay Community News and the lesbian and gay movement of the late 1970s, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Her memoir, Lies about My Family, is forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press in spring 2013.
Michelle Porche, Ed.D., Lisa Fortuna, M.D., MPH, M.Div.: Double Standards and Differentiated Gateways: Adolescent Girls and Boys at Risk for Substance Abuse
Lunchtime Seminar September 27, 2012 (49:42 min.)
In this seminar, Michelle Porche, Ed.D., and Lisa Fortuna, M.D., MPH, M.Div., presented results from a mixed-methods study of adolescents in a detox and stabilization residential treatment center. Chart reviews, in-depth qualitative interviews, and brief clinical measures were collected to examine trajectories of substance abuse, narratives describing factors leading to substance abuse, socio-emotional and academic outcomes, and how patterns differed for girls and boys.
Sarah Trantina, kindergarten teacher at the Edward Everett Elementary School in Boston, MA, discusses how the Open Circle program works in the school.
Nicole Mack, former principal at the Edward Everett Elementary School in Boston, MA, discusses how the Open Circle program works in the school.
Rangita de Silva-de Alwis, S.J.D.: The Arab Spring: Challenges and Opportunities for Women
Lunchtime Seminar April 20, 2012 (52:46 min.)
The Arab Spring was a powerful reminder of the global community we live in today and the importance of transnational idea sharing. In this presentation, Rangita de Silva-de Alwis, S.J.D., director of International Human Rights Policy and the Susan McGee Baily Research Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Women in Public Service Summer Institute at Wellesley College, will discuss the coming together of transnational actors at the Rabat Roundtable that convened in May 2011. She will also discuss how the work that follows, including a future meeting of women leaders from the Arab and Muslim world, offers a critical space at a critical time to reflect on the role of women in political transformation and to identify challenges and impediments to women’s role in the vanguard of political reform in the Arab and Muslim World.
Nancy Marshall, Ed.D, senior research scientist and associate director at the Wellesley Centers for Women, gives us a glimpse into the core foundations and the work and research from the past 35 years here at the Centers in this presentation.
Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D., spoke at the Fourth Annual Jean Baker Miller Memorial Lecture on October 21, 2011. Her talk, "Fighting Like A Girl: How Girls Can and Do Make a Difference" focuses on public perceptions of girls' anger, the media's manipulation of young girls, and the response of young women today trying to combat sexism. Brown is a co-creator of the non-profit Hardy Girls, Healthy Women and author of the book Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls.
