Tran, Nellie: February 2013 Archives
The Community Social Psychology program at UML is proud to employ a number of
talented, nationally regarded faculty members who tackle issues of social
justice both in their work and in their every day lives. Professor Jana
Sladkova is no exception to this rule. Dr. Sladkova came to UMass Lowell
in 2008 and has taught in the CSP program since her arrival. Originally
hailing from the Czech Republic, Dr. Sladkova received her PhD from the CUNY
Graduate Center in New York City in 2006. Though her main interests are
immigration and deportation issues, Dr. Sladkova has recently been working on a
project with fellow psychology professor Dr. Alyssa McCabe on the lived
experiences of children with immigrant parents. Working from a small grant,
the project has morphed from children’s experiences with deportation to
studying the children’s narrative development as bilingual in a country that
mostly values English speakers. CSP student Isabel Cano serves as a
research assistant on this project, helping with specific tasks such as
recruitment. The project is currently being written up for the journal
Latino Studies.
Dr. Sladkova also continues to work on her PhD dissertation that looked at the
experiences of Honduran migrants. When I asked why she focuses on the
experiences of Latino people, she described that she feels a special connection
to Latino culture and finds the power differentials involved in the experiences
of different immigrants to be interesting. The manuscript for her
dissertation will be published in the Psychological Interventions journal, and
because it is published in both English and Spanish, she is excited that she
will finally be able to share her work with the community she studied in
Honduras.
Perhaps one of the most important points that Dr. Sladkova elaborated on was
that she is “excited that the government is finally talking seriously about
immigration reform.” Though it may not be the direct result of research
on immigration, she believes it has “helped to push in that direction.” This
belief that socially responsible research may lead to real world policy change
is one of the common threads that binds CSP faculty members. Stay tuned
for other profiles of faculty work!
