Kirwan Institute Brown Bag - June 2009
June 5, 2009 - Understanding and Preventing Urban Youth Violence: Lessons from Youth Involved in Violence
By Deanna L. Wilkinson, PhD, Associate Professor in the College of Education and Human Ecology, Department of Human Development and Family Science
(Presentation material - 2.5MB .ppt file)
The dynamics of violence among minority male youths cannot be fully understood without exploring the youths' family situations, perceptions of their environment, and experiences with mainstream institutions such as schools, community agencies, and employers. Wilkinson found that the breakdown in informal social control and fear contribute to violence in the community. The resulting isolation that youth experience away from caring adults allows violence to cycle. Exposure to violence in the community shapes the scripts youth have for resolving conflict. By examining the contexts in which conflicts unfold and the decisions youth make in situations when they are armed and angry, Professor Wilkinson was able to identify strategies for violence interruption and prevention. She will also address how her research findings can be applied in community action, developing community-police partnerships, policy making, and parenting.
Deanna L. Wilkinson is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, where she was appointed in 2006. She is also an affiliated faculty with Criminal Justice Research Center at OSU, the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, and the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Before that she held her first faculty post in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA from 1998-2005.
Wilkinson’s primary research and teaching interests are adolescent development, risk and problem behaviors, youth violence, firearm use, prevention, event perspectives, community-police partnerships, program evaluation, and urban communities.
June 19, 2009 - World Water Security Issues
By Motomu Ibaraki, Associate Professor School of Earth Sciences
(Presentation material - 14.5MB .pdf file)
The Earth is sometimes called “the water planet”; however, most of the world's water is in the oceans and only 0.8% of total water is usable fresh water. The amount of water we have on the earth has remained constant since the earth was formed. Fresh water resources, however, are already decreasing because of several factors including over usage due to human activities such as irrigation, life style changes in many developing countries, and the melting of glaciers. This talk will provide a broad introduction to the security issues relating to the world’s diminishing freshwater resources.
Dr. Ibaraki is an associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. He is conducting research on the human health and environmental/ecological problems that result from water contamination and insufficient water supplies caused by human activities. He also conducts research on scientific communication.
All sessions will be held in room 423 Mendenhall Laboratory at noon.
For more information, please contact Elsadig Elsheikh.
