#  New Faculty Associates 

 



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   ![A smiling woman with dark hair wearing a patterned blue scarf and earrings, seated in front of a window with vertical blinds.](/sites/g/files/omnuum8891/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/wcfia/files/fa-elaferrara-150px.png?itok=Ddw7XRuf) 

 

## [Eliana La Ferrara](/people/eliana-la-ferrera "Eliana La Ferrara")

### *Faculty Associate; Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.*  


**Q: What inspired you to pursue your field of study?**

A: I have always been motivated by the desire to fight inequities in society and work towards improving the conditions of disadvantaged groups. The study of development economics seemed a natural setting in which to channel my efforts. Having trained in the study of the classics in high school, and having then focused on quantitative methods during college, I decided to undertake a line of research that would investigate the interplay between economic incentives and social constraints to development.  
   
**Q: Tell us about a current research project you are working on.**

A: I have a number of ongoing projects that aim to understand the roots of harmful gender norms in low income countries, and test the effectiveness of alternative policies to eradicate such norms. In one of these projects, my coauthors and I propose a model to study when an intermediate action can serve as a “stepping stone” that facilitates the elimination of a harmful norm. While the intermediate action may facilitate the first “step,” and eventually gradually help communities to transition away from the harmful norm, it may also become an “absorbing state,” i.e., a new norm in which the community gets stuck. In this project, we derive analytical conditions for stepping stones, which depend on the relative size of social penalties and intrinsic utility benefits, and we then propose an empirical test applied to originally collected data on female genital cutting in Somalia.  
   
**Q: Where are you from, and what do you like to do outside of work?**  
   
A: I am Italian. Outside of work I like to listen to music, read, and spend time with friends and family.

   ![A woman with dark hair smiling, wearing a blazer over a floral blouse, standing in front of a house with pink blossoms.](/sites/g/files/omnuum8891/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/wcfia/files/fa-goliveira-150px.png?itok=zr-5dLtm) 

 

## [*Gabrielle Oliveira*](/people/gabrielle-oliveira "Gabrielle Oliveira")

### *Faculty Associate. Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and of Brazil Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Education.*  


**Q: What inspired you to pursue your field of study?**

A: During my undergraduate studies and right after I graduated, I worked in communities surrounding the city of São Paulo in Brazil with microfinance. I became particularly interested in the gender dynamics of women who became breadwinners through the small loans and how the shifts in the household impacted their ability to pay back the money they received. I quickly observed that many women were migrants from the northeast in Brazil and I started to ask questions about mobility, migration, gender dynamics, and education. As I pursued my master’s and PhD, I focused more on how and when women migrate and the consequences for children on both sides of the border. I read a book by a sociologist named Pierrette Hondagneu Sotelo called *Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence* that really informed my interest in focusing on migrant families as well as children. The focus on education became more relevant when I started to focus on what children do once they migrate: they spend most of their days in schools and classrooms.

**Q: Tell us about a current research project you are working on.**

A: I am currently working on a project in the north of Brazil, the state of Roraima, where I am focusing on how Venezuelan migrant children and Brazilian children co-construct knowledge, belonging, and literacy practices in elementary classrooms in public schools. Since 2017, Brazil has been receiving more and more migrants from Venezuela including Indigenous Warao. We hope that with this research, teachers’ curriculum and education policy can support the learning of all students in a multicultural classroom.

**Q: Where are you from, and what do you like to do outside of work?**

A: I am from São Paulo, Brazil, and outside work I love baking sourdough goods (tortillas, bread, muffins, rolls, bagels) from scratch. Growing my own sourdough starter and baking with kids have been really therapeutic!



 



 

 See also:- [ Centerpiece: Spring 2024 ](/newsletter-issues/centerpiece-spring-2024)