2025-26 Initiative to End Family Violence Graduate Student Fellows (clockwise from top left): Gabriel Alvarez, Frances Li, Emma Simpson and Isabel Patten.
Doctoral students will study abuse prevention and intervention across the lifespan
Four of five doctoral students named 2025-26 Initiative to End Family Violence Graduate Student Fellows hail from the School of Social Ecology.
The Initiative to End Family Violence (IEFV) unites faculty from 21 departments at UC Irvine with community partners in research, education and clinical interventions in abuse across the lifespan. “We envision a world in which all people are safe,” states the IEFV website. Fellows, their departments, their IEFV projects, how they will use the grant funding and select reactions follow:
Gabriel Alvarez, Department of Criminology, Law & Society (CLS)
(’24, MA social science; ’25 MA social ecology; intends to get a Ph.D. in CLS and a J.D. in law in 2028)
Project: “Too Early, or Right on Time? Romantic Relationships and Sexual Debut After Childhood IPV Exposure” examines how children’s exposure to domestic violence shapes the timing of adolescents’ first romantic and sexual relationships.
Funding use: The grant will support data analysis, conference travel and provide protected research time for writing and dissemination.
Reaction: “Being named an IEFV Graduate Student Fellow is incredibly meaningful to me. My work approaches family violence from a life-course perspective, examining how experiences of interpersonal violence take shape across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood and how systems respond at each stage. This support allows me to deepen that work, and I hope my research helps inform compassionate, evidence-based policy solutions that better support families across the life span.”
Frances Li, Department of Psychology
(’18, BA psychology and social behavior; intends to get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 2028)
Project: “Breaking the Cycle of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Creating a Measure Assessing How Parents Detect Child Sexual Abuse Threats” seeks to create a first-of-its-kind measurement of how childhood sexual abuse survivors are parented after the experience.
Funding use: The grant will support compensation for study participants and community advisors, as well as conference travel.
Reaction: “With the support of the IEFV fellowship, I am excited to develop a community-informed tool that helps us better understand how parents think about child safety and to inform prevention efforts for future generations.”
Isabel Patten, Department of CLS
(’23, MA CLS; seeking a Ph.D. in CLS)
Project: “Rights Consultants: How Third-Party Intermediaries Shape Title IX in U.S. Colleges and Universities” examines how Title IX training and consulting groups impact both the implementation of Title IX on college campuses and lawmakers’ understanding of federal compliance with the U.S. civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funding.
Funding use: Funds will support travel to and attendance at sessions held by the organizations at the center of the study.
Reaction: “I am incredibly grateful to receive support from the Initiative to End Family Violence. Beyond the very helpful funding provided by the initiative, it's exciting to be enmeshed with a group that does such important work.”
Emma Simpson, Department of Psychology
(’23, MA social ecology; intends to get a Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 2026)
Project: “Judging Credibility: Effects of Rapport Building on Lay Perceptions of Child Witnesses in Legal Contexts” follows up on a previous study that examined how rapport quality and child age influence judgments of credibility and defendant guilt. The new study focuses on the specific components of rapport building to understand their unique effects on perceptions, with a goal of improving outcomes for child survivors.
Funding use: The grant will support participant payments and conference travel.
Reaction: “I am extremely thankful for IEFV’s support of my research. Their mission to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families closely aligns with the goals of my work, making their support especially meaningful.”
The fifth 2025-26 IEFV Graduate Student Fellow is the Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health Department of Health, Society & Behavior’s Kalani Phillips (’16, BA public health; ’21, MA public health; seeking a Ph.D. in public health in 2026). Her project is titled “Beyond Mandates: Student Perspectives on Trust, Access, and Sexual and Reproductive Health in California Colleges and Universities.”
For more details about each project, visit: https://www.endfamilyviolence.uci.edu/projects/grad-fellows/2025-26.html.
— Matt Coker