Fridays at Newcomb
Fridays at Newcomb is a speaker series from noon to 1 pm on Fridays in the Diboll Gallery at Newcomb Institute of Tulane University (43 Newcomb Place, New Orleans, LA 70118). The series features new insights from scholars at Tulane and beyond related to Newcomb Institute’s three main research areas: sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender-based violence, and feminist civic engagement. Each talk is free and open to the public, and lunch is provided. For more information, contact Dr. Clare Daniel, Senior Professor of Practice and Director of Research at Newcomb Institute: cdaniel5@tulane.edu.
Fall 2026 Speakers:
August 28 | Jenna Vinson, PhD
Why Representations of Vasectomies (a.k.a. “the Snip”) Matter for Reproductive Justice
Jenna Vinson is an associate professor of English at University of Massachusetts Lowell specializing in feminist rhetorical studies. Her mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research addresses issues of reproductive (in)justice and community-identified needs. Her latest book, Stop Saying Snip! The Rhetoric of Vasectomy (2026), explores why few men in the U.S. get vasectomies. Vinson's first book, Embodying the Problem: The Persuasive Power of the Teen Mother (2017), challenges the pathologizing discourses of teenage pregnancy and investigates the creative strategies some young mothering women use to resist negative representations of their lives. Vinson’s articles have appeared in journals such as Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric, the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Feminist Formations, and more. She has also published chapters in edited collections such as Inclusive Aims: Rhetoric’s Role in Reproductive Justice, Mother-Blame Game, and the 21st Century Motherhood Movement.
September 11 | Michael Cunningham, PhD
"Beyond One Story: African American Adolescents at the Intersections of Family, Gender, Race, and Place"
Michael Cunningham holds the academic rank of Professor at Tulane University; and he has a joint faculty appointment in the Departments of Psychology Africana Studies. He also serves as the Associate Provost for Graduate Studies and Research in Tulane University's Office of Academic Affairs. Dr. Cunningham is a developmental psychologist with a program of research that focuses on racial, ethnic, psychosocial, and socioeconomic processes that affect psychological well-being, adjustment to chronic stressful events, and academic achievement among African American adolescents and their families. He uses mixed methods in his research projects that includes the study of gender-specific patterns of resilience and vulnerability in urban African American participants. Dr. Cunningham has received external funding from several sources including the National Science Foundation, The National Institutes of Health, The Mellon Foundation, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and The U.S. Department of Education.
He has received Tulane's highest teaching award and been designated as a Suzanne and Stephen Weiss Presidential Fellow. He completed his doctoral work at Emory University after completing an undergraduate degree at Morehouse College. Dr. Cunningham also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. His professional service includes serving as Editor-in-chief for Research in Human Development (2018-2024). He served as a Senior Editor for the American Educational Research Journal (2018-2022). He has severed on several journal editorial boards such as the Journal of Negro Education, Child Development of which he was an Associate Editor from 2007-2019. Most recently, he was selected as the recipient for the 2025 Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Award from the Federation for Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS); and in 2025 he was elected to Fellow Status for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
September 18 | Valeria Umanets, PhD
When Silence Creates Violence: Understanding the Role of Identity-Based Dynamics in Assessing Domestic Violence
Valeria Umanets is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tulane University. Before joining Tulane, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include women and politics, non-democratic political institutions, historical political economy, and post-Communist states. She earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and my MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. Her research involves working with archival data, econometric models, elite interviews, and survey experiments.
September 25, 12 - 1pm | Jane Landers, PhD
Women's Stories from the Spanish Archives: Tales of Gender Violence and Women's Strategic Response
Jane Landers is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History and Director of the Slave Societies Digital Archive at Vanderbilt University. Her award-winning monographs include Black Society in Spanish Florida and Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions, and she is the co-author or editor of five other book, and numerous articles and book chapters on the history of Africans in the Atlantic World. Her research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. She is currently finishing revisions on a book entitled Three Centuries of African War in Española: Muslims, Maroons, Revolutionaries and Royalists, under contract with the Omohundro Institute & University of North Carolina Press.
September 25, 1 - 2pm | Jamie J. Hagen, PhD
Queers for Peace: Sites of Transnational and Coalitional Solidarity
Jamie J. Hagen is a Professor at the University of Manchester. She is a founding co-convenor of the Queer Justice, Peace and Security Community of Practice. Her research, published in numerous leading journals, is at the intersection of gender, security studies and queer theory and brings a feminist, anti-racist approach to these fields. Previously she was lead researcher on the project Queering the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: A Practice-Based toolkit developed in partnership with the leading Colombian LGBTQ+ organization Colombia Diversa. She co-edited the Queer Conflict Research, a researcher’s guide to studying sensitive topics in violent contexts (Bristol University Press, 2024). Her most recent book is Queering Women, Peace and Security: Expanding Feminist Approaches to Gender in Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2025).
October 9 | Sarah Brokenborough
Newcomb Embroidery: Women's Craft as Profession
Sarah Brokenborough is a Ph.D. student in the joint Art History and Latin American Studies program at Tulane University. Her interdisciplinary research examines decorative arts and needlework education in the United States and the Caribbean, while using gender as a lens of analysis. She has received several major fellowships and awards. These include the SHEAR DEI Fellowship by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and a Summer Institute Fellowship by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. She was also awarded two Fulbright ETA Grants to teach in Vientiane, Laos. Most recently, she received a Global South Research Grant from Tulane's Global Humanities Center to examine artistic connections between Jamaica, Barbados, and New Orleans. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Women's Studies from Spelman College, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University, and an M.A. in the History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art.
October 16 | Anneliese Singh, PhD
Health, Rights, and Choice in a Changing World: The Who, What, Where, and Why of EngenderHealth
Anneliese Singh, PhD, LPC (she/they) is a Professor at Tulane University in the School of Social Work with a joint appointment in Psychology. Anneliese's scholarship explores racial healing and racial trauma, as well as gender-affirming care with trans and nonbinary adults. Anneliese is the author of The Racial Healing Handbook and The Queer and Trans Resilience Workbook and co-author of the Affirmative Counseling and Psychological Practice with Trans and Nonbinary Clients and the Clinician's Guide to Gender-Affirming Care. Anneliese is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and American Counseling Association (ACA), Past-President of the Division of Counseling Psychology in APA, and a licensed professional counselor and psychologist.
October 23 | Traci Baird
Health, Rights, and Choice in a Changing World: The Who, What, Where, and Why of EngenderHealth
Traci L. Baird is President and CEO of EngenderHealth, a global organization advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, maternal and newborn health, and gender equality. Traci has more than 30 years of leadership across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. Known for building diverse, high-performing teams, Traci has worked across technical, operational, and executive roles in global health and rights-focused organizations.
October 30 | Jennifer Hunt, Jackie Jahn, PhD, Jocelyn Pinkerton, LCSW, Dovile Vilda, PhD, and Maeve Wallace, PhD
From red flag laws to firearm transfer: Can gun policy strategies to prevent violence against women work in a state like Louisiana?
Jennifer Hunt, M.A., C.A. has a decade of experience in crisis intervention, survivor advocacy, and violence prevention working for community and government agencies that serve survivors of torture, sexual assault, and family and intimate partner violence. Jennifer is nationally certified as a Credentialed Victim's Advocate and currently leads domestic violence-related initiatives for Orleans Parish at the New Orleans Health and Human Services Department. In her role, she acts as the Orleans Parish Domestic Violence Fatality Review Coordinator and manages the Advocate Initiative Response Program, which provides safety planning and referrals to victims of domestic violence.
Jaquelyn (Jackie) Jahn, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity. She is an epidemiologist whose research investigates the ways that structural racism and other societal structures shape maternal and child health and population health equity. Much of her work focuses on the health of individuals, families, and communities that are affected by the U.S. criminal legal system. She works in partnership with interdisciplinary research teams, advocates, and policymakers to advance community health, safety, and wellbeing. She received her PhD in Population Health Sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she also received her MPH.
Jocelyn Pinkerton, LSW-BACS, earned her MSW from Tulane University and has over fifteen years of social work experience working with diverse populations in a variety of settings. She currently serves as Grants Program Officer at Baptist Community Ministries, where she reviews grant requests, develops strategic initiatives, manages partnerships with community organizations, and evaluates the impact of Health and Public Safety funding. She previously worked with the City of New Orleans Health Department, supporting program administration, strategic planning, and policy efforts within the Office of Violence Prevention. Jocelyn's areas of professional focus include domestic violence and sexual assault, behavioral health and substance use, homelessness, global social work, crisis response, and trauma-informed practice.
Dr. Dovile Vilda is an interdisciplinary social scientist and public health researcher with advanced training and experience in mixed methods and policy research. Her current projects focus on: 1) examining the medicalization of childbirth in Louisiana through a mixed-methods approach; 2) investigating intersectional disparities in fertility care; and 3) analyzing the role of social determinants and state-level policies (e.g., abortion bans, firearm laws) in contributing to higher rates of adverse maternal and child health outcomes in the U.S. She received her PhD in Social Policy from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Social Epidemiology at the Mary Amelia Center for Women's Health Equity Research (Tulane University).
Maeve Wallace is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion Sciences at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Adjunct Associate Professor at Tulane University, and a faculty affiliate of Bringing Research and Innovation into the Debate on Guns in Society at Arizona State University. As an epidemiologist, her research seeks to understand how social contexts, societal structures, and state policies influence women's health, safety, and well-being in the US. Her goal is to generate scientific evidence that can guide policy decisions to promote health and safety before, during, and after pregnancy, for all women, their families, and their communities.
November 13 | Manisha Jain, PhD
Whose Job Is it? Implicit Gender Bias Toward Occupations in India and Uganda
Manisha Jain is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2025. Her research spans public, development, labor, and health economics, with a focus on gender. Her current work examines sexual harassment and gender-based violence, gender norms such as son preference and occupational stereotypes, the labor market effects of hiring subsidies and quotas for disadvantaged workers, and the gendered impacts of adverse weather.