Diversity and Inclusion Travel Grant Award Winners

The SARMAC Diversity and Inclusion Travel Awards were set up to promote diversity and inclusion within the SARMAC community and to help researchers from all backgrounds and geographic locations attend the SARMAC biennial meeting. Each application was blindly adjudicated by two members of a subcommittee comprised of the SARMAC Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and members of the SARMAC Board.

The four recipients of the 2023 awards stood out for the novel and important research they will be presenting in Nagoya and for their strong commitment to promoting diversity and inclusivity in psychological science.

Aya Inamori Williams - University of California, San Francisco
Project title: Emotional acculturation in Chinese American immigrant parents: Insights from bilingual parent-child affirmation discussion 

Bio: I am a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.  My research focuses on bilingualism and how to use languages as a tool to understand, manage, and communicate emotions. I am passionate about clinical applications of my research for bilingual mental health services. The present study examines how immigrant parents communicate love and care to their children, and the key role of bilingual code-switching in conversation.

Nkansah Anakwah - Birmingham City University
Project title: The effect of authority on eyewitness memory reports across cultures 

Bio: I am a Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at Birmingham City University. I completed my PhD in Legal Psychology at Maastricht University and the University of Portsmouth, under the supervision of Professor Peter van Koppen, Professor Loraine Hope, and Dr Robert Horselenberg. My research interests are eyewitness memory and investigative interviewing in cross-cultural contexts. My project focuses on cultural influences on eyewitness memory reports. Specifically, I examine the effect of authority on the eyewitness memory reports provided by witnesses with different cultural backgrounds. 

Dara Zwemer - University of Oklahoma
Project title: Differences in Eyewitness Acceptance of Contradictory and Additive Misinformation 

Bio: I am a PhD student at the University of Oklahoma in the United States. My research focuses on the strategies people use to reject misinformation in the context of both eyewitness testimony and police interrogations. The present study involved showing participants a slideshow of a theft and examining differences in participants' acceptance of contradictory and additive post-event misinformation about the theft. These differences provide insight on the strategies people can use to reject some types of misinformation. 

Lan Anh Do - Tufts University
Project title: The Cognitive and Affective Consequences of Collaborative Learning

Bio: I am a PhD student at Tufts University. My research focuses on students’ learning and well-being. I am interested in examining the impact of different study methods that can make learning more effective. Specifically, the present study seeks to investigate the benefits of collaborative problem solving. I aim to reveal how the dynamic interaction among students under different collaborative learning environments will affect students’ performance, perceived emotion, and heart-rate variability (HRV).