Implications of shifting migration trends: social networks, health, and work of migrant farm workers in Florida
This project is based on personal network survey data collected among Mexican and Haitian farm workers in different Florida rural locations. The research examines personal networks, social support, and physical and mental health outcomes in Florida’s new communities of migrant farm workers. We also consider work conditions, legal status and racial discrimination as potential social determinants of health. Supported in part by the University of Florida Office of Research, this project is conducted by Gulcan Onel (PI, UF Food and Resource Economics Department), Jeanne-Marie Stacciarini (co-PI, UF College of Nursing), and Raffaele Vacca (co-PI). The project also relies on a community partnership with Antonio Tovar at the Farmworker Association of Florida.
The “migrant Roma”: from exclusionary processes to resources for social integration
This project studies migration and incorporation trajectories of Roma migrants in French metropolitan areas, with a focus on personal networks and social support. It is based on one of the first quantitative surveys of personal networks in the Roma migrant community in France, a particularly hard-to-reach population. The project aims to identify and describe sources of migration capabilities and factors that shape the exchange of informal and institutional support to Roma migrants in French cities. This research is funded in part by Sciences Po Paris and conducted in collaboration with Tommaso Vitale (PI, Sciences Po Center for European Studies).
Measuring, modeling, and tracking the contribution of academic research to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 global development goals for 2030 agreed upon by all United Nations Member States. With their 169 targets, they provide a blueprint and plan of action for development, prosperity and peace for people and the planet, including strategies to end poverty and deprivation, fuel economic growth, tackle climate change, improve health and education, and reduce inequality globally. This research project aims to (1) develop a method to measure the extent to which academic research aligns with and contributes to the SDGs and their targets; and (2) pilot a prototype tracking tool to measure and monitor SDG relevance of research in universities. The project is supported in part by the UF One Health Center of Excellence and conducted by Thomas Smith and Raffaele Vacca in collaboration with Ilaria Capua (UF One Health Center of Excellence).
The emergence of Covid-19 team science: tracking topics, networks and expertise in global Covid-19 research
The Covid-19 pandemic is having a transformative impact on science, accelerating the convergence of a highly interdisciplinary and dynamic “team science” field of coronavirus/Covid-19 research. This project analyzes a unique and constantly updated combination of “big” bibliographic data to track evolving topics, growing networks, and hidden expertise in global and local coronavirus/Covid-19 research. We use CORD-19, a growing dataset of over 63,000 coronavirus/Covid-19 scientific articles, and Dimensions, a global database of approximately 100 million publications, grants, and patents with detailed author information. We draw on theories and methods from computational social science, network science and computational linguistics to examine the growth, diversification and evolution of topics and networks in global Covid-19 research over the past decades, years, and months. Funded by the UF Informatics Institute, this project is a collaboration between Raffaele Vacca (PI), Kevin Tang (co-PI, UF Linguistics), Ilaria Capua (UF One Health), and Till Krenz and Christopher McCarty (UF BEBR).