Research interests:
- Military Sociology
- Public Policy
- Security Issues
- National and International
- Intersection of Security, Technology, and Society
- Veterans’ Affairs
- Narrative Inquiry and the Impact of Storytelling
- Disability
- Rehabilitation and Recovery: Somatic Experiences and Issues
- Traumatic Wounds & Debilitating Injuries
- Embodiment and Identity
- Pain Issues
- Resilience
- Military Families and Communities
Research Presentations
- Centre for Blast Injury Studies’ Blast Injury Conference, Imperial College London, London, England, July 2021. (Online)
- Forces in Mind Trust Research Centre Conference, Church House, Westminster, London, England, October 2018. (poster)
- European International Studies Association 12th Pan-European Conference of International Relations, Prague, September 2018. (Research portal)
- Defence Research Network Collaboration Workshop, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England, February 2018. (About DNRC)
- Humanities and Social Sciences Conference, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England, October 2017.
- British Association of Prosthetists and Orthotists (BAPO) Conference, Coventry, England, March 2017. (About BAPO)
- Induction Days for Postgraduate Researchers, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Guildhall, Portsmouth, England, October 2016. (poster)
- University of Portsmouth Ageing Network, Portsmouth, England, June 2016. (poster)
Projects
Older adult needs and preferences for autonomous vehicle interiors: A focus group study (2020 – 2021)
This focus group project is being conducted in collaboration with a vehicle manufacturer and the Purdue Policy Research Institute to collect data on older adults’ (ages 65+) needs and preferences with regards to future autonomous vehicle interiors in an effort to increase comfort, safety, and convenience of older occupants. The focus groups’ goals are to include older adults in the design process by evaluating how older adults interact with a proposed design and assess their opinions towards it, other desired features, as well as how best to design an interior meant for shared use.
Breaking Through: Developing Multidisciplinary Solutions to Global Grand Challenges (2016 – 2019)
Consortium administration: budget oversight, annual reports, policy briefs, managed events, logistics, advertisements/designs, qualitative interviews for grant paper, and communications for the grant/team conferences (see below for links). The research projects were partially funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. From our grant: “This three-year program enables multidisciplinary teams to tackle grand challenges in new ways. It also embeds policy experts, publishing professionals, and libraries faculty in the scholarly research and communication process, in order to provide researchers with expert assistance in communicating results directly to the public and key stakeholders. The model is unique in two ways:
- it catalyzes collaboration between STEM researchers and scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences; and
- it integrates communication planning into projects from the start, in order to prioritize reaching communities of interest (policymakers, expert communities, not-for-profit and advocacy organizations, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders).”
Policies for Progress Symposium at Purdue University, West Lafayette Campus (May 2019)
From our website: Policies for Progress was a day-long discussion on what it looks like for multidisciplinary research teams and external stakeholders to work together to solve a problem, make new connections, and catalyze new ideas!
Multidisciplinary teams for the 2016-2019 grants were the following:
- Global to Local: A Systems Approach to Sustainable Agriculture (PI: Thomas Hertel)
- Predicting the Risk of Flood, Saving our Coastal Communities (PI: David Johnson)
- “Tipping Points” in Climate Change: Serious Games and Cognitive Challenges (PI: Manjana Milkoreit)
- “Do the Right Thing”: Big Data, Ethics, and Algorithms (PI: Chris Clifton)
Conference at The National Press Club, Washington, D.C. (September 2018)
Global to Local: A Systems Approach to Sustainable Agriculture; National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “The goal of this project is to leverage existing knowledge, models and data to understand and communicate the interplay between global change and local sustainability of US agriculture in the context of alternative national, state and local policies affecting agricultural productivity and environmental quality. In particular, the team will examine the tradeoffs between: 1) crop production, prices and food consumption, 2) nitrogen losses, and 3) groundwater depletion. Special attention will be paid to the role of current policies and institutions in governing these tradeoffs, as well as the impacts of prospective policies targeting land use, nitrogen applications and the allocation of groundwater.” (mygeohub.org)
The final event for the 2014-2016 Mellon-funded project, “Catalyzing the Involvement of Humanists and Social Scientists in Grand Challenge Initiatives,” available below:
Diversity and Inclusion in Social Movements (2013 – 2016)
Administration and Management: Handled the logistics and scheduling for five project Symposia, inclusive of diversity resources, specifically real-time captioning.
Communications: Engaged and built relationships across project members, Purdue, and externally through clear and effective dialogue; Managed ongoing communications and meetings with all Diversity team members (20+ faculty).
Project concept papers: Established and maintained a shared resource site (Sharepoint) for interdisciplinary literature.
Served as Logistics Manager for the Center for Research on Diversity and Inclusion, which focuses on the promotion of: “[R]esearch on a wide range of issues including but not limited to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, nationality, age, religion and ability; and the social, political, and cultural support for and impediments to equal treatment and inclusion.”
L. Allison Roberts, Ph.D. 