We did research in various offices, from Clapp Laboratory to Kathmandu, Nepal. While we differed in geographic location, we were all immersed in varied independent research, navigating academia as undergraduate scholars. We tested new survey sampling techniques, analyzed governance conflict trends, investigated cultural differences in social attention, and developed novel research projects. Kate worked with the MHC Math/Stat departments to research the power of respondent-driven sampling. Working at the Harvard Business School, Kalki planned the launch of a new project to understand the impact of AI on community college students’ performance on knowledge-intensive tasks. Anusha worked with a peacebuilding nonprofit to analyze trends in governance conflict areas including political, natural resource, development, and ethnocultural occurrences in the context of Nepal. At Stanford’s social psychology SPARQ lab, Setareh cleaned survey data, generated stimuli, developed coding schemes, and ran live participant experiments to gain a deeper understanding of cultural models.

Moderator: Ayca Zayim, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Exploring Civilians Roles in Governance Conflicts: A Statistical Approach with Governance monitoring Center Dataset
Anusha Lamsal ’25 Data Science & Psychology major

Bridging Social Science and Technology through Generative AI Research
Kalki Srinivasan ’25 Psychology & Computer Science double major

Statistics Research at MHC - Causal Inference for Respondent-Driven Samples
Kate Koenig ’26 Statistics major

Integrating Social Science and Technology
Setareh Greenwood ’25, Sociology & Religion double major

Speaker name: Kate Koenig
Title: Statistics Research at MHC - Causal Inference for Respondent-Driven Samples
“Kate spent her summer staying on Mount Holyoke’s campus as she did research with members of the mathematics and statistics department. Working in the field of statistics related to sampling methods, Kate investigated the use of respondent-driven sampling (RDS). RDS is a recently created sampling technique that aims to allow researchers to sample from hard-to-reach populations. This summer research was driven by an experiment concerned with political campaigning targeted at Venezuelan immigrants living and voting in Chile. Kate spent several weeks developing a complex simulation using R software to test RDS samples collected from varied populations. She explored the effects of changes to sample size, sample starting location, and relationships between members of the target population. Working with a Mount Holyoke professor and other student researchers, Kate learned to code, gained an understanding of new concepts in statistics, and practiced presenting research.”

Speaker name: Kalki Srinivasan
Title: Bridging Social Science and Technology through Generative AI Research
My research at the Harvard Business School explores how generative AI impacts community college students’ performance on knowledge-intensive tasks. This research aims to address a social and ethical problem through scientific work. Working in a collaborative research environment, I gained valuable experience navigating professional research settings and contributing to the planning and designing of a new research project. I learned the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, adaptability, and a learning-oriented mindset. This work has shaped my understanding of what it takes to be a successful researcher, particularly at the intersection of technology and social science. In my presentation, I will discuss my research journey and share my story of pursuing research as a Mount Holyoke student. My talk will focus on the importance of curiosity, perseverance, resourcefulness, and finding mentorship to advance in a research career, as well as how to navigate and thrive in research as an undergraduate researcher.

Speaker name: Anusha Lamsal
Title: Exploring Civilians Roles in Governance Conflicts: A Statistical Approach with Governance monitoring Center Dataset
Anusha worked as a research intern at the Center for Social Change (CSC) Nepal, a non-profit organization dedicated to peace building and conflict resolution, with an emphasis on governance conflict. Anusha’s independent research focused on analyzing data from the Governance Monitoring Center (GMC) project, which uses media monitoring to document governance conflict events across Nepal. After conducting a thorough review of relevant literature and reports, Anusha developed innovative approaches to explore the dataset for research purposes. They utilized quantitative methods in RStudio with thematic analysis skills to investigate the roles of various actors, particularly civilian actors roles in governance conflicts. This analysis culminated in a comprehensive report and delivery of presentation with highlighting key issues and recommendations for improving quantitative dataset entry. Anusha’s work greatly benefited the organization’s attempts to better understand the actor dynamics inside governance conflicts and how to record data that is standardized for quantitative data analysis.

Speaker name: Integrating Social Science and Technology
Title: Social Psychology
“As a sociology major, I found SPARQ to provide a new, social psychology lens into systemic questions. I completed coding, analysis, and stimuli-developing tasks for several postdocs and their projects. My daily responsibilities included qualitative coding of raw data, developing and using qualitative coding schemes with newspaper articles, editing videos to fit stimuli requirements, and guiding live participants through experiments on Zoom. These projects were within the social psychology discipline, while several also involved elements of sociology and digital ethnography. Connecting these projects back to my work at MHC was essential to stay connected. For me, meaningful work involves clear connection and reference to values and goals throughout, collaboration and communication, and some community orientation. Meaningful work should give back to society in some way, and should be consistent with its stated values. By the end of my time at SPARQ, I’d begun to feel that my work was meaningful.”