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Staff |
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Greg Scott
- Director |
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Phone
Fax
Email |
: (773) 325-4893
: (773) 325-7150
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gscott@depaul.edu
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Greg Scott is the
director of the Social Science Research Center and an associate
professor in the department of sociology at DePaul University
where he teaches courses on substance use and abuse, underground
economies, street gangs, consciousness, urban culture,
ethnographic documentary film production, photographic/visual
sociology, and other topics. He combines
quantitative/epidemiological and qualitative/ethnographic
methods to research issues stemming from the interaction of
structural, network and micro-interactional forces in the
illicit drug economy. His specific interests include
heroin/opiate overdose morbidity and mortality, drug injection
hygiene, the social life of viral and bacterial infections among
active illicit drug users, iatrogenic effects of anti-drug law
enforcement and the development of communal systems within
outlaw communities.
Greg received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of
California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and became an assistant
professor in the department of sociology at DePaul University in
Chicago in 2000. Over the previous decade, he conducted
extensive ethnographic fieldwork on drug-dealing street gangs by
immersing himself in the heroin and cocaine commerce
underground. In 2001 he began a close examination of the “demand
and use” aspect of the drug market by living with homeless and
precariously housed injection drug users, habitual crack
smokers, sex workers, burglars, thieves and drug dealers.
Greg’s semi-traditional ethnographic and epidemiological
research has led him recently into producing and directing
independent documentary film and radio projects that concentrate
on the social, economic, cultural, political and health issues
that illicit drug users face. His filmmaking centers on 1)
training films for health professionals and laypersons who work
with injection drug users and 2) social documentaries to
acquaint the public and policy makers with the drug user
population.
In 2005 Greg established Sawbuck Productions, a non-profit
organization dedicated to create and produce multi-media
educational and political materials that concern the well-being
of illicit drug users. He has shown his documentaries at film
festivals around the world and his work has appeared on
television, including the National Geographic Network, BET
Network, MSNBC. Currently he is completing production of a
feature documentary, “The Brickyard: ‘Home of All the Junkies,’”
a film set in the encampment of some 150 mostly homeless drug
users and sex workers on Chicago’s west side. His film “Begging
for Grace,” which documents the daily life of a panhandling
homeless heroin addict named Freeway, was an official selection
of the International Documentary Challenge at the 2007 HotDocs
Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, and was recently acquired for
commercial distribution.
In 2008 Greg began working as a freelance audio documentarian
for Chicago Public Radio’s WBEZ where he produces and directs
8-12-minute stories about street life within Chicago’s
“undergrounds.” Topics have included prostitution, heroin
overdose and drug selling. His radio series “The Brickyard”
relates stories about outlaw communities of heroin addicts,
crack smokers, prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers and others
living on Chicago’s west side. |
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Jessica Bishop-Royse - Senior Research Methodologist |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-4957
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jbishopr@depaul.edu
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Jessica Bishop-Royse
is the SSRC’s Senior Research Methodologist. She joins DePaul
after recently completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the
Florida State University College of Medicine. While there, she
managed the R01 AHRQ grant “Identifying Adverse Events after
Discharge from A Community Hospital.” Her graduate work includes
fieldwork in Malawi and internships/work experience with federal
and state health agencies. She has also conducted program
evaluations of county and state health programs. She earned her
PhD in Sociology in 2010. Her dissertation examined the
individual and community level characteristics associated with
racial differences in cause-specific infant mortality. Her areas
of interest include: health disparities, infant and maternal
health, health services, GIS, methods, and statistics. She often
finds herself navigating the fields of sociology, demography,
epidemiology, medicine, public health, and policy. She prefers
to cherry-pick the best of each of these to address research
questions. Prior to graduating from Florida State University,
she was recognized for excellence in the classroom with
departmental and university teaching awards.
Jessi is well-versed in data collection, Stata, and quantitative
research methodology, as well as statistics. She has experience
with multi-level analyses, survival analyses, GIS, and
multivariate regression. She is currently in the process of
learning Bayesian modeling.
Outside of the work context, Jessi is interested in writing,
reading, cooking, crafting and just about any athletic endeavor.
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Linda Levendusky -
Projects Coordinator |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-2164
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llevendu@depaul.edu
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Linda Levendusky has
a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison with more than a decade of experience in news
reporting and editing, primarily for national and local news
wire services in Chicago. Her responsibilities at the SSRC
include the coordination of a comprehensive on-line directory of
ethnographic film archives and a compilation of media profiles
of DePaul’s behavioral and social science researchers. Off the
clock, Linda’s interest in the history of Modernism propels her
to travel whenever she can for close-up views of threatened and
rooted landmarks of Modernist architecture in the U.S. and
Europe. |
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Nandhini Gulasingam -
Senior Analyst - IT Solutions |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-4917
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mgulasin@depaul.edu
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Nandhini Gulasingam
is a Senior Analyst for IT Solutions at the Social Science
Research Center (SSRC) and an adjunct faculty member in the
Department of Geography at DePaul University where she teaches
courses on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). At the SSRC,
she manages GIS, database, web development projects and is
developing data visualization techniques for use in the social
and behavioral sciences.
She is an experienced technology professional and teacher who
has designed, developed, implemented and taught various GIS,
databases, web, mobile and client-server applications for a
variety of organizations including students, staff, faculty and
community-based audiences at DePaul ranging from high school to
graduate levels.
Nandhini, who’s currently pursuing a Master’s in Predictive
Analytics, has a Master’s in E-Commerce and GIS Certification
from DePaul, and a B.Sc. in Math, Physics, and Electronics from
Bangalore University, India. Her expertise includes GIS, web
development; analysis, design, development and implementation of
software applications; and teaching and training
technology-related programs. |
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Jessica Speer
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Research Specialist |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-4920
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jspeer3@depaul.edu
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Jessica Speer is a
researcher with an advanced degree in library and information
science, which gives her a unique set of skills to bring to
social science research. Her research interests include human
information-seeking behavior, using semantic tools and
techniques in data analysis, and data management and
preservation, as well as using new technologies and media in
research, education, and training. In her free time, she plays
music with her husband and is working on a preservation strategy
for their collection of more than 10 years of master tapes from
their DIY record label, Colonial Recordings USA. In addition to
consulting with faculty on research, conducting internal
research projects, and developing trainings, Jessica compiles
and edits the SSRC newsletter, re/search. |
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Felipe Agudelo
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Research Assistant |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-4759
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fagudelo@depaul.edu |
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Felipe Agudelo is a
Doctoral student in the College of Education. He has a Master’s
degree in Public Health from the University of Antioquia in
Colombia and is interested in developing educational public
health curricula concerning risk factor prevention among
vulnerable populations. His research interests include topics
dealing with sexual violence, sexuality education, and the
relationship between environment, health, and society.
Felipe has worked on a number of projects in his native Colombia
in the areas of children’s rights, prostitution, sexual
violence, and environmental sanitation in marginal and
vulnerable communities. |
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Julie Buchanan
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Research Assistant |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-8284
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jbuchan4@depaul.edu |
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Julie Buchanan is a
second-year graduate student in the School of Public Service.
Prior to graduate school, Julie spent more than a decade in the
non-profit sector working with people with intellectual
disabilities and people affected by poverty. She is passionate
about affecting social policy by breaking down structural
barriers to equalize opportunities. She is particularly
interested in public policy advocacy as a way for ordinary
citizens, with a vision and a story to tell, to influence and
change governmental and social institutions.
Julie’s primary research interest is social inclusion and
community integration of people with intellectual disabilities,
focusing on employment. She is working on a thesis about the
role advocates play in shaping state-level policies on
employment services for this population. She's also curious
about the personal experiences and perspectives of
self-advocates in the disability rights movement and hopes to
research this area in the future. |
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Jesse Proudfoot
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Post-doctoral Researcher |
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Phone
Email |
: (773) 325-4915
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jproudfo@depaul.edu |
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Jesse Proudfoot is a
post-doctoral researcher at DePaul University’s Department of
Geography. His research concerns drug addiction, harm reduction
drug policy, panhandling, and the urban geographies of
gentrifying neighborhoods. His Ph.D. research at Simon Fraser
University consisted of ethnographic research with drug-using
panhandlers in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada. Known as the “poorest postal code” in
Canada, The Downtown Eastside is a neighborhood with a
significant concentration of IV drug-users and, in the 1990s,
was the site of some of the highest rates of HIV transmission in
the Western world. The research examined pioneering harm
reduction initiatives such as Insite, North America’s first
supervised injection site, as well as more traditional methadone
maintenance programs, to assess the effects of these programs on
the lives of poor drug users. Here at DePaul, Jesse’s research
turns to harm reduction initiatives in Chicago to see how the
different social and political geographies of these two cities
affect drug policy, service provision, and the lived experience
of drug use. |
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