Student Research

 

Virginia Weir is an ISF and psychology double major in her final semester year at Cal. Her ISF degree draws on research from various disciplines including sociological interpretations of gender and industry, controlling processes, linguistics and social psychology as an organizing process. The interactions of these various fields are brought together in a larger discipline of organizational ecology.

Virginia is currently writing her honors thesis on the structure of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and the intersection of the medical model of psychiatric illness, especially depression. The thesis is titled “The Pursuit of Happiness: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Antidepressant Culture” and frames the rising use of antidepressants within larger social movements such as the growth of the pharmaceutical sector, the desire for progress within American mentality and motivations of medical psychiatry to further its discipline.

Problematic direct-to-consumer advertising created by the pharmaceutical industry has had repercussions into the framing of antidepressants as the solution to the problem of depression. Issues of identity as stemming from the self versus stemming from use of antidepressants result in tensions surrounding identity. The self as situated within larger mental illness epistemes is paralleled with the self as situated within the spread of antidepressant use across America.

 

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Nadir Shams is a 4th year Development Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF) double major and Anthropology Minor. In ISF he is concentrating on the dynamics of International Health Care Economics and Policy with a specific look at addressing accessibility barriers for marginalized populations. His general research interests are focused on the socio-economic, political, and public health factors of development in South Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Nadir is currently writing his honors thesis in ISF on the health care system in Northern India and Pakistan. The aim is to provide interdisciplinary solutions to the paradox of high geographic proximity to health centers but low accessibility. This phenomenon manifests itself through high real number deaths seen through basic public health barometers such as infant and maternal mortality and infectious diseases. Titled “Medical Habeas Corpus: Legal Mechanisms for Universalizing Health Care in South Asia,” Nadir’s analysis focuses on legal mechanisms because the legislative process is seen to encompass a weighing of major social and economic factors. Consequently, the policy recommendations he puts forth are expanded to address health, social, economic, political, and religious variables. They are meant to build on each other in a holistic way in order to increase access to the point of breaking the poverty–poor health cycle which hinders economic and political stability and growth.

In his time at UC Berkeley, Nadir has participated in many student and community organizations to advocate for the Muslim community, people of color, and highlight issues concerning development in the Global South. He was a Senator in the Associated Students of the University of California and a Campus Public Defender in the Students Advocates Office. He also has worked as a Public Health intern for the Carter Center dealing with Guinea Worm disease and is a research assistant at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics.