Undergraduate Research Symposium

Student name: Ally Carey & Kate Seneshen

Title: Investigating Social Determinants of Adolescent Pregnancy in the Cusco Region, Peru

Abstract: Adolescent pregnancy remains a major public health concern globally and in Perú, where approximately 50,000 girls under the age of 19 experience motherhood each year (UNFPA Perú). This case-control study examined the social determinants associated with adolescent pregnancy in the rural Cusco region of Perú, with the goal of adding to the limited existing knowledge and informing feasible, community-based interventions. Conducted in collaboration with the Urubamba-based health center and non-profit, VIDAWASI, the study recruited 60 adolescents aged 12–19: including a case group of participants who had experienced pregnancy (n = 30) and a control group who had not (n = 30). Participants completed a mixed-methods survey assessing both quantitative factors (sociodemographic education, family environment, contraceptive use, healthcare access) and qualitative factors (attitudes toward sexual and reproductive health, pregnancy experience) through written interviews.

Results identified significant gaps in access to healthcare, limited knowledge of sexual and reproductive health practices, pervasive sex stigma, and barriers to resource access as key factors associated with adolescent pregnancy. These findings highlight structural and cultural barriers contributing to elevated pregnancy risk in rural Cusco communities. Final study results will be shared with local health leaders to support targeted, culturally responsive interventions aimed at reducing adolescent pregnancy and improving reproductive health equity in the region.

Bios:                   

Ally Carey is a senior undergraduate at Duke studying psychology and global health. She's interested in furthering health equity, especially for women and children, through community-based research and sustainable interventions. She's spent the past two summers co-designing and carrying out a study on the social determinants of adolescent pregnancy in rural Cusco, Peru, in collaboration with local organizations and health centers. On campus, Ally helps runs safer sex and STI programming at the Student Wellness Center and is the president of Duke's Outdoors Club. She also co-founded the Duke Global Health Journal and co-created Duke’s Global Health Student Research Training Program in Peru. After graduating, Ally hopes to go to medical school to continue work in preventative and community health.

Kate Seneshen is a senior undergraduate at Duke studying global health, public policy, and biology. Her research examines how social and behavioral factors shape adolescent and women’s health across diverse settings. She has developed a passion for community-based research through her rural North Carolina work in chronic disease management and an internship with Mendoza, Argentina's Ministry of Health. Most recently, Kate has spent two summers in Peru’s Cusco region collaborating with schools and health organizations to study the social determinants of teenage pregnancy and the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV) and related cancers. On campus she co-founded the Duke Global Health Journal and co-created Duke’s Global Health Student Research Training Program in Peru. She currently serves on the executive boards of Partners in Health Engage, Global Health Student Union, and Duke Club Field Hockey. She aspires to become a social epidemiologist, advancing evidence-based, equity-driven approaches to global women’s health.

Student name: Ellie Armstrong

Title: Belonging as Resistance: Pilares of Equitable Early Childcare in Buenos Aires

Abstract: Argentina has long projected a self-image of a nation of immigrants with a long-standing commitment to children’s rights and education. Yet contemporary discrimination against Latin American migrants and persistent inequality in early childhood education reveal a gap between national ideals and lived realities. This project examines how early childhood education functions as a political and spatial site where belonging is either undermined or actively constructed for immigrant families in Buenos Aires. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two community-based Centros de Primera Infancia (CPIs) in the barrios of Nueva Pompeya and Flores, the study analyzes how educators, families, and children navigate a fragmented early childhood education system shaped by poverty, migration, and State policy. I argue that CPIs enact belonging as a form of resistance to the city’s spatial stratification and the State education project’s emphasis on social cohesion and assimilation. Through the reworking of space, relational practices, and collective action, these centers foster mutual recognition within classrooms, barrios, and the city at large and negotiate tensions as State-funded nonprofits operating within neoliberal governance structures. By foregrounding belonging, early childhood education can be a critical site for challenging exclusion and reimagining immigrant families’ place in Argentine society.

Bio: Ellie Armstrong is a senior majoring in International Comparative Studies and Psychology with a certificate in Child Policy Research. At Duke, she has volunteered and worked as a classroom assistant in Title I Durham Public Schools preschool classrooms and dual-language childcare centers. As a research assistant at the Sanford Center for Child and Family Policy, Ellie worked on projects focused on trauma-informed care in early childhood and resilience-based approaches to discipline. Her academic concentration in Latin America and the Caribbean, combined with her interest in social justice, led her to volunteer with Fundación Pilares while studying abroad in Buenos Aires and to return in the summer of 2025 to conduct interviews for her honors thesis.

Student name: Barbara Marinescu

Title: 19th and 20th century intertwined: Charles Baudelaire’s Modern Poetry in Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave Cinema

Abstract:  Various intertextual landscapes, philosophical and allegorical among them, shape the filmography of Jean-Luc Godard, particularly through the poetic influence of the Romantic poet and precursor of modernism, Charles Baudelaire, on the director’s work. Through close comparisons between selected films and Baudelairean texts, I explore how Godard emerges as a committed artist rendering modernity’s metamorphoses and the Parisian landscape. From the theme of everyday modernity, present in a striking number of his films, to modes of montage and direct quotation, Godard draws upon the work of Charles Baudelaire as a source of recomposed inspiration.

These acts of admiration reveal not merely influence, but a deeper aesthetic and philosophical alignment. Just as Baudelaire finds beauty within the mundane and poetry within the fragmented experience of modern life, Godard approaches life as art and renders the uniqueness of the world through cinematic form. By paying homage to the poet’s aesthetics and poetics, Godard gives shape to his own modern universe and to his theories of cinematic practice. I therefore argue that Baudelaire is not merely an inspirational spark for Jean-Luc Godard, but a foundational source in the development of an epistemological and aesthetic framework within the films of the Franco-Swiss filmmaker.

Bio:  Barbara Marinescu is a sophomore majoring in Biology, with a minor in French Studies and a certificate in Markets and Management. She is originally from Bucharest, Romania, where her passion for French literature and cinematography first took root through a sense of cultural familiarity. This interest was shaped in particular by the deep historical and literary ties between France and Romania, especially evident in Romanian literary works that draw upon Charles Baudelaire as a source of inspiration.

In addition, Barbara has developed expertise in human rights within the geopolitical sphere, an interest that resonates strongly with the cinematography of Jean-Luc Godard. The political and ethical dimensions of his films played a significant role in motivating her to explore his innovative approach to filmmaking more deeply.

Student name: Karina Lu

Title: The Sociological Interview Form in Godard’s Cinema

Abstract:  This essay examines Jean-Luc Godard’s transformation of the sociological interview form across four films from 1966-1972: Masculin Féminin, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, La Chinoise, and Tout va bien. During a period when postwar French sociology increasingly relied on interviews and empirical surveys to understand modern society, Godard appropriated these methods for cinematic purposes, creating hybrid works between documentary and fiction. However, rather than simply adopting sociological techniques to extract truth from his subjects, Godard progressively destabilizes and adapts the interview form itself, revealing how social categories like “youth,” “woman,” “worker,” and “revolutionary” are constructed through discourse.

In Masculin Féminin, quasi-sociological youth surveys promise empirical insight while exposing clichéd language. Deux ou trois choses transforms the interview into phenomenological monologue, staging conflicts between lived experience and interpretive frameworks. La Chinoise presents interviews as ideological oral exams, foregrounding theatrical performance over confession. Finally, Tout va bien disperses interviews across competing class voices, refusing synthesis and dramatizing a post-‘68 crisis of representation. Across these films, Godard’s “cine-sociology” functions less as knowledge extraction than as an audio-visual archive documenting how people in 1960s France spoke about themselves through available discourses—advertising slogans, Maoist doctrine, union rhetoric, and media clichés.

Bio: Karina Lu is a senior from Seattle, Washington studying History with a concentration in Law and Governance and minoring in French Studies. She completed the Duke in Paris and Duke in Provence programs with the Mac Anderson Foreign Language Scholarship. Her senior thesis studies gendered grassroots history of Sent-Down Youth in Maoist China, and she hopes to attend graduate school.

 Student name: Erik Novak

Title: Cervantes fictions and the manufactured realities of AI and consumer capitalism

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Student name: Michelle Giffoni-Albor

Title: Rosalia’s Spiritual Revelation Through LUX

Abstract: Through the exploration of human desires and affects, the cyclical nature of time emerges through individuals’ longing for a higher power. Recurring themes of dissatisfaction with the present, disgust toward the other, and fear of internalizing everyday realities highlight society’s loss of sense of self and sense of community. This study evaluates how religious aesthetics are recuperated and recontextualized through modern applications in order to help restore individual’s sociopolitical autonomy. By analyzing Rosalia’s spiritual revelation through her new album LUX, the utilization of American mainstream platforms as vehicles of resistance reveals a renewed engagement with the religious. As this highly circulated aesthetic works subtly through amplified networks, the return to religious becomes an access point through which the individual may reclaim political agency. Overall, this study argues that contemporary biblical expressions rely on cyclical patterns that reposition past practices at the center of present social structures.

Bio: Michelle Giffoni-Albor is a second-year student at Duke University, studying Mathematics and Romance Studies. Through her involvement with Baldwin Scholars and Bass Connections, she works closely with faculty to explore the intersection of geometric abstractions and the analysis of language as an art form, developing creative projects such as the recreation of multivariable functions through the medium of clay. In the future, she hopes to continue investigating recurring shapes and structures to uncover new landscapes in the sciences while reemphasizing the relevance of the art scene within scientific spaces.

Student name: Catherine Pyne

Title: The Construction of French National Identity under Louis-Philippe I

Abstract:  Louis-Philippe, the “King of the French,” remains one of the most fascinating figures in the history of France. Born a royal but influenced by the enlightenment ideals of his time, he fought with the French Revolution, traveled across the Western world, and maintained friendly relations with England: all traits that make him a rather unique king in the French monarchical tradition.

His vision for France is perhaps best illustrated by the renovations he made at the Palace of Versailles. Rather than simply preserving the palace’s role as a symbol of Bourbon power, Louis-Philippe transformed the building into a museum dedicated to “all the glories of France.” This project received broad public acclaim, even earning generous praise from Victor Hugo. For the museum, Louis-Philippe commissioned the creation of chambers such as the “Gallery of Battles,” the Crusades rooms, the Africa rooms, and the Consulate and Empire rooms. Throughout the palace, he featured art representing almost every celebrated figure in French history since King Clovis. He also reopened the Royal Opera House in Versailles for the inauguration of the galleries, featuring a performance of Molière's classic "le Misanthrope".

This presentation examines the life of Louis-Philippe, the context of the Bourbon Restoration, the symbolic parallels between his political vision and the renovations undertaken at Versailles, and how he created a national narrative to stabilize French identity.

Bio: Catherine is a fourth-year student at Duke University, originally from New York City. She is majoring in Biology with a minor in French studies and Chemistry. As an undergraduate research assistant in the Kiehart Lab, she studies the mechanisms underlying dorsal closure in fruit fly embryos. She has studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, and is a recipient of the Mac Anderson Foreign Language Scholarship. Outside of academics, she volunteers at the Durham Ronald McDonald House and the Duke Cancer Boutique. 

Student name: Angelli Garibaldi-Arias

Title: Global Inequalities: Ethics, Poverty, and Empires

Abstract: My research explores the continuity of dehumanization and systemic inequality from the Spanish conquest of the Americas to contemporary U.S. immigration practices, emphasizing the ethical consequences of labeling, exploitation, and social hierarchies. Historical documents, including Columbus’s letter, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de Las Casas, and colonial labor systems such as the encomienda and repartimiento, reveal how racialized hierarchies justified the dispossession and forced labor of Indigenous peoples, illustrating how language and law functioned to normalize oppression and restrict human dignity.

Connecting this history to modern migration, I analyze Jose Vargas’s Dear America and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends to show how immigrants face legal exclusion and systemic vulnerability. The experiences of children navigating dangerous migration routes, as well as personal family and friend narratives, reveal how labeling and structural violence continue to shape human identity, autonomy, and well-being.

Drawing on Levinas’s philosophy, I argue that recognizing the humanity of the Other through empathy is essential for moral reflection and action. By examining historical exploitation, contemporary immigrant experiences, and literature such as Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy, this research highlights the persistence of systemic oppression and the ethical imperative to confront injustice, cultivate ethical governance, inspire empathy and social accountability.

Bio: I am an undocumented, first-generation Peruvian undergraduate at Duke University on a full-ride scholarship awarded by Puentes Scholarship. A current senior and double majoring in Romance Studies and English with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I am also a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, focusing on the ethical responsibility we owe to the “Other,” drawing on Emmanuel Levinas to read face-to-face encounters in literature, Spanish/Italian colonial texts, and migration memoirs.

That same ethical commitment shapes what I do outside the classroom. I founded and now lead The English Table to create access and community for non-native English speakers, serve on the Puentes Program Community Committee “Kaleidoscope” supporting first-generation immigrant students, and volunteer as a Spanish-language catechist at Immaculate Conception Church teaching Latinx high schoolers. I am also Vice-President and choreographer of Synergy Dance Company, writer of creative fiction and nonfiction, and I am trilingual in Spanish, English, and Italian.

Student name: Elle Christensen

Title: Language, Culture, and AI Training: The French Case

Abstract: Artificial intelligence is frequently described as a culturally neutral technology. Yet large language models are shaped by the linguistic and textual corpora on which they are trained. This project examines AI training through a focused case study of French-language data, asking how culturally situated corpora influence model behavior, patterns of bias, and conditions of cybersecurity risk. Rather than treating culture as national identity, the project approaches French culture analytically: as a historically sedimented archive of linguistic structures, canonical texts, institutional discourse, and conceptual norms embedded within training data.

France serves as a methodologically coherent case for examining how traditions that have explicitly theorized language, mediation, and reason become encoded in algorithmic systems. The first part of the project analyzes how French philosophical, literary, administrative, and contemporary texts inform the epistemic framing of language models, shaping what appears intelligible, authoritative, or reasonable within computational outputs. The second part considers French cybersecurity implications, assessing how culturally trained models generate both vulnerabilities, such as linguistic attack surfaces and data manipulation, and potential advantages in contextual awareness and localized threat detection. The project argues that cultural specificity is not peripheral to AI development but central to understanding risk and responsibility in technologically mediated environments.

Bio: Elle Christensen is an undergraduate student studying Computer Science, French, and Philosophy. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of language, culture, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on how training data shapes model behavior and ethical risk. Her work draws on French philosophical and literary traditions as well as contemporary scholarship in AI ethics and cybersecurity. She is currently developing an independent study project examining culturally specific AI training practices and their implications for language models and security in France.