Welcome to UCLA Undergraduate Research Week 2025!

Thank you for visiting the 2025 Undergraduate Research and Creativity Showcase. This Showcase features student research and creative projects across all disciplines. As a university campus, free expression is encouraged, and some content may not be appropriate for all ages. Visitors under the age of 18 are encouraged to explore these presentations with a parent or guardian. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect UCLA or any policy or position of UCLA. As a visitor, you agree not to record, copy, or reproduce any of the material featured here. By clicking on the "Agree" button below, you understand and agree to these terms.

Anthropology and Gender Studies: Session B: 2-3:30pm - Panel 1

Tuesday, May 20 2:00PM – 3:20PM

Location: Online - Live

The Zoom link will be available here 1 hour before the event.

Presenter 2
AIDA GHORBANI
Anti-Homeless Digital Architecture: Affect and Propaganda in Situating an Anti-Homeless City
As Los Angeles faces unprecedented numbers of unhoused individuals, homelessness has been escalated to a state of emergency. Responses to this emergency have been shaped by calls for an increase in housing production which in turn has prompted an overwhelming opposition to these proposals. Social media has served as the prime nexus for these discussions. Despite the democracy and access provided by social media, the digital space has mostly served as a mobilization staging ground for those with significant political and financial means. In reviewing anti-homeless propaganda, this paper reveals a unique anti-humanitarian humanitarianism in such things as ‘clean up efforts’. Through studying social media, political messaging in Los Angeles politics, and City ordinances like LAMC 41.18, which designate use of the public right of way, this paper will investigate the confluence of forces that promote the prevailing anti-humanitarian attitudes towards the growing, yet consistently erased, homeless population. This research studies the use and subversion of affect in anti-homeless propaganda in efforts to push political agendas and erase the homeless figure in making an anti-homeless city.
Presenter 3
VICTORIA GUTIERREZ
Civic Engagement and Community Organizing in Slab City and Bombay Beach
Located in inland southern California, the Salton Sea is a man-made landlocked lake best known for its high salinity and extreme pollution, owing to decades of agricultural runoff. I focus on residents in two unincorporated communities on the north Salton Sea: Slab City and Bombay Beach. Here, residents often turn to atypical forms of government and political structures to fulfill basic needs, as well as establish a sense of community; they do this out of a sense of belonging that they cannot find or foster anywhere else. This study is an interdisciplinary inquiry on political engagement, environmental justice, poverty, and community. This research was primarily conducted through participant observation and interviews in these areas during the spring and summer of 2024. I highlight how residents deal with ecological ruin, poverty, and poor health conditions, which are exacerbated by the perceived lack of government support and intervention. Ultimately, they cope with their struggles through community-based organizing, nonprofits, and other nontraditional means of problem-solving. These tactics, however, frequently fail because of the region's poverty and lack of infrastructure. Despite this, residents keep going because they believe in the possibility of a better world. This study adds to the dialogue around the Salton Sea by highlighting how residents in these communities exercise their agency in counteracting the obstacles they face, albeit within limited means.
Presenter 4
CATHERINE HAMILTON
Understanding Changes in Spatial Relationships After Political Action on a College Campus
Spatiality refers to the qualities of a space/place that shape how it is experienced and the social interactions that emerge from it. This paper investigates how one’s relationship to a space changes following a political action that resulted in a traumatic experience. It specifically focuses on the nights of April 30 and May 1, 2024, at the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment, and research includes published articles and interviews with students involved in the encampment. The final analysis will explore the divergences in experiences based on individual participant’s identities, with the expectation that intersecting marginalized identities concretely affects how one’s relationship to space changes following a political trauma.
Presenter 5
DANIEL NAVA
“I wasn't expecting to build a mommy village”: Single Mothers in Los Angeles Transitional Housing
Research has shown that women in transitional housing programs (THPs) demonstrate remarkable strength and resilience in their transitions from homeless to permanent housing. Previous research has highlighted these women's circumstances and social support networks; however, little is known of their phenomenology, and ethnographic research into their resilience is scarce. Furthermore, there is little available data on women within THPs in Los Angeles. This research study seeks to illuminate a few narratives of women within Los Angeles THPs and highlight their resilience and tenacity while they navigate homelessness with kids. Central to the study is a community of mothers in a self-described “mommy village” who support one another through the sharing of material and social resources. Many of the women in the study lack traditional support systems, so they have to create their own or become reliant on unconventional supports. These women’s stories highlight the importance of social capital for resilience in populations with limited social and material resources. Their narratives not only contribute to academic understandings of female homelessness but also offer insights into the fostering of marginalized communities and resilience in the midst of adversity.