Sarah Garver

Sarah Garver obtained her PhD in Sociology from The Ohio State University in 2017 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the TLT project at the University of Chicago. Her research is anchored in two areas: reproductive health and the (re)production of economic and social vulnerabilities. Over the course of her graduate studies, Sarah spent more than 15 months in Malawi taking part in all aspects of implementing an international research program, called UTHA , including working with in-country partners, designing and supervising longitudinal survey data collection, and conducting focus-groups and in-depth interviews with women and men. Her mixed methods analysis of the relationship between livelihood uncertainty and fertility preferences makes an important intervention to the literature on vulnerability by distinguishing between livelihood uncertainty and economic hardship. Further linking this distinction to its consequences for fertility (preferences and behavior), Sarah’s work finds that while uncertainty causes people to alter their preferences, a distinctive pattern of limiting is evident only among those who are both highly uncertain about their livelihood prospects and severely disadvantaged. As a postdoctoral fellow with TLT, Sarah is using these data to write about family processes, household structure, and relationship dynamics and is spearheading efforts to make these complex data both available and sensible to a wider community of scholars.

 

Nell Campernolle

Nell Compernolle is a Post doctoral research scholar at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the associations between migration, social change, gender, and family-related behaviors, particularly marriage and fertility. Her existing work examines these phenomena in Nepal, Michigan, and Lesotho, drawing on highly detailed longitudinal data and mixed methods data collected in multiple countries.

She is thrilled to be a part of the TLT team at Chicago, where she plans to connect her doctoral work and explore related questions in Malawi. She is particularly interested in relationship quality, fertility preferences, and contraceptive trajectories (Nepal and Malawi); pregnancy ambivalence (US and Malawi); and the (potential) disjuncture between expected and realized relationship quality, and how this relates to young women’s well-being.

Johanna Oh

Johanna is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Chicago. Her research interests broadly lie in social demography in sub-Saharan Africa. She is especially interested in the burden of disease – the effect of HIV/AIDS epidemics and other latent health issues on labor market outcome, family composition, and other aspects of people’s everyday life. Through TLT, she seeks to understand young people’s strategies to cope with demographic changes marked by diseases and disadvantages. Prior to joining TLT, she has worked as a field researcher in Ethiopia, conducting research in public health, nutrition, and labor economics. 

Claudia Mastrogiaccomo

Claudia is recent graduate from the University of Chicago. She completed her BS in statistics in March 2018. She has been with TLT since March 2017. She hopes to pursue a career in global health research.

Stephanie Chamberlin

Stephanie Chamberlin is a PhD student in Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver.  Her research focuses on the intersection of education and family health, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Stephanie’s current work explores: a. strategies that families in low resource settings use to manage their health care; and b. how literacy, numeracy, and years of education differentially influence health. Her background and interests in HIV and reproductive health naturally align with the Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) project. In addition to her work with TLT, she has worked on HIV and maternal health programs with Partners in Hope in Malawi, the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Lesotho, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation-Western Hemisphere Region. Stephanie received Master of International Affairs and Master of Public Health degrees from Columbia University.