I am a rising junior at Barnard College studying English and Education. I am passionate about expanding access to higher education for underrepresented communities and addressing disparities in K-12 education. This summer, I will conduct a comparative critical policy analysis of financial aid policies in New York and Georgia, examining how such policies impact students' access to higher education. As a future educator and educational researcher, this opportunity is invaluable for bridging my passion for research and education with meaningful advocacy.

Hi everyone! I'm a rising junior at Barnard College of Columbia University, where I am double majoring in Political Science and Human Rights, and minoring in French. This summer I'm researching about art reinstitution and its ethical and legal components. Some of my other interests include social work, human rights, and law. Please feel free to reach me at cd3442@barnard.edu

Hi! My name is Spencer Davimos, and I am a rising junior at Barnard College. Through the Laidlaw Scholars Program, I am conducting research on the transfer pipeline from community college to 4-year college within the City University of New York (CUNY). I am hoping to particularly center the experiences and perspectives of students of color to open up a wider conversation about increasing equity in postsecondary education access. 

Reese Taylor is a rising junior majoring in Philosophy, History, and Human Rights on a pre-law track. As a Laidlaw Scholar, she spent her first summer researching the role of labor in the economic and social uplift of Black Americans in the wake of Reconstruction. She was selected to present this research at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Pennsylvania, and the Global Laidlaw Scholars Conference. In her second summer, Reese founded The Voices in Action Initiative which is a program developed to empower and mobilize youth voices by providing them skills and practice in speech and debate. She enacted the program in Nassau, Bahamas with sponsorship from both the Laidlaw Foundation and The Kiwanis Club of Nassau.

I am a rising senior at Barnard studying history, concentrating on the history of empires and colonialism with specific interest in food history. I research how people, culture, and the environment interact through food.

Hi, I'm Eliana! I'm from Northern California and I am a protective Linguistics major at Barnard College of Columbia University.   My research project is about how educational policies in the United States can be used to contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous languages. I am particularly invested in how support for minority language speech communities can be a facet of restorative justice for Indigenous communities. Due to the legacy of colonial assimilationist policies inflicted on Indigenous groups during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (as well as failings of the modern public education system), the speakership of minority languages has severely declined during recent decades. Although language revitalization is a difficult process, revitalization projects can have incredibly positive impacts on minority language communities.  I chose this project because I want to use my technical skills in the field of linguistics to do research that can have a meaningful difference for the hundreds of Indigenous speech communities in North America.  Language rights are an often overlooked part of human rights, so I'm very grateful that I have the opportunity to study a subject that is shrouded with misconceptions. Outside of Laidlaw, I am involved with Model United Nations at Columbia, where I contribute to both running conferences and competing as a delegate at conferences across the US. I also love graphic design and digital art, and I am a Creative Director for the Barnard Bulletin, Barnard's oldest student publication! I look forward to meeting more students from the Laidlaw community!

I’m Eliora Riebling, a sociologist. As a Laidlaw Scholar I research white supremacist trajectories, specifically I am looking to identify a combination of social factors that shape women’s mindsets and prompt them to join organized white supremacy. I hope to identify impetuses for women’s participation in this extremism. As a leadership project I intend to contribute to counter messaging and deradicalization programs. I hope to use my findings to inform which messages are useful to the initiatives that weaken white supremacist organizations by preventing and sinking their membership. 

Hello! My name is Aimar Rosario Ávila and I am a third-year student at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies with a  concentration in psychology and a minor in education. I’m from Puerto Rico and my research aims to investigate how the categorization of social spaces can reflect an interplay of political, historic, and cognitive developments through an intersectional lens.

I am a rising fourth-year at Barnard College of Columbia University studying Economic & Social History with a minor in Science & Public Policy.

Avery Lambert is a student at Barnard College majoring in Medieval and Renaissance Studies with minors in Political Science and Classics. Her research focuses on political theory in 1260s England and the Second Barons' War.

My name is Hannah Ramsey (she/her), and I am a senior at Barnard College studying neuroscience and English, though my research is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing heavily from the fields of medical anthropology, sociology, and narrative medicine. Currently, I am researching how clinicians' reliance on body composition indicators (BCIs) in health assessments may contribute to the stigmatization of bodies. My intention with this work is to illuminate how moral and aesthetic biases within healthcare teams can negatively influence patient outcomes as a result of the stigmatizing effects associated with body-centric paradigms of health promotion. The goal of this research is to begin conceiving alternative approaches to promoting patients' physical health and subjective well-being that are both body-affirming and size-agnostic. Apart from this research, I also have personal and academic interests in creative writing, writing pedagogy, and advocacy as it relates to the neurodiversity movement. In my spare time, I enjoy writing poetry, playing guitar, and taking long walks outside!

Jasmine is from Santa Cruz, California and pursuing a combined major of Medical Anthropology and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Barnard College'25. Her interests in public health and reproductive justice have led her to research on the changes in US maternal morbidity rates after the Supreme Court ruling of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which took away the constitutional right to abortion.