Human Security Lab Summer Camp Kicks Off With Nuclear Disarmament Project

Six undergraduate students - Nicholas McCurrah, Nhu Thieu Makara Le, Camryn Hughes, Liam Harney, Hunter Fairchild and Astrid Paz - have joined the Human Security Lab team this summer for a series of research projects on nuclear disarmament, civilian protection in Ukraine, and women’s human rights in Afghanistan. Kristina Becvar, an MS student in data analytics, leads the six-student team and manages data for the projects.

The team will train in methods of qualitative data analysis using DiscoverText, a tool for making rigorous inferences from large quantities of text data, in order to analyze thousands of open-ended survey comments by Americans on attitudes toward nuclear use, and by Ukrainians and Afghans on attitudes to the conflicts in their country. Students work remotely and join meetings by Zoom to discuss progress on the qualitative coding.

This summer’s program continues Human Security Lab’s record of mentoring and involving students in research and stakeholder engagement. In the initial phase of training, students are learning to analyze comments from Americans on perceptions of the illegality of nuclear weapons. A survey experiment examined whether these perceptions vary according to whether they receive information on the Geneva Conventions versus on the new nuclear ban treaty.

The nuclear disarmament work will feed into Human Security Lab’s humanitarian disarmament initiative and toward a working paper co-authored by Professors Charli Carpenter, Bernhard Leidner and Alexander Montgomery on the effects of the new nuclear ban treaty. The Ukraine project is part of a new initiative at Human Security Lab to examine the human security implications of Ukraine’s martial law on civilian protection in that war. The Afghanistan project builds on earlier work by Human Security Lab this Spring on women, peace and security in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The various projects are funded by the School of Behavioral Sciences at University of Massachusetts and the National Science Foundation.