Trainees
Post-Doctoral Fellows
(he / him / his)
Matthew received his PhD in Sociology from The University of South Carolina and holds a primary appointment in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. Matthew’s research interests include LGBTQ health, social networks, politics, and misinformation.
Harry Barbee, PhD, MS
(he / him / his) (they / them / theirs)
Harry received their MS and PhD in Sociology from Florida State University and holds a primary appointment in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. Harry’s research uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how social locations—especially gender and sexual identities—affect people’s subjective experiences of aging as well as their health, well-being, and medical involvement.
(he / him / his)
Ben received his PhD in Economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University and holds a primary appointment in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University. Ben uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to examine how changes in public policy affect markets for sexual and mental healthcare, and especially how LGBTQ+ people navigate those markets. His current projects examine the effect of public health insurance eligibility expansions on the markets for drugs used to treat sexually transmitted illnesses and aim to detect, quantify, and describe discrimination faced by transgender and nonbinary people in access to mental healthcare.
(he / him / his)
Samuel received his MSc in Applied Economics from the University of Nottingham and his PhD in Economics from Swansea University and holds a primary appointment in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University. Sam’s research broadly explores the impact of LGBTQ+ policies on the health and labour outcomes of LGBTQ+ people. In addition, Sam works across several projects relating to public policy and health.
Graduate Students
Nathaniel M. Tran
PhD student
Department of Health Policy
Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate students develop skills while training as research assistants with LGBTQ+ Policy Lab faculty.
- Research skills include conducting literature reviews, original data collection, qualitative and/or quantitative data analysis, written dissemination, and research presentation.
- We host an LGBT Student Research Symposium each Spring providing undergraduates with an opportunity to share research findings and works-in-progress.
- Research assistants in the Policy Lab routinely submit abstracts to conferences and are accepted for poster and oral presentations.
2020 LGBT Student Research Symposium hosted virtually.
Alumni
Ellesse Akré, PhD, MA
(she / her / hers)
Ellesse-Roselee L. Akré́ is a health services researcher whose research portfolio focuses on health inequities, intersectionality, and access to health care. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and held a primary appointment in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. After completing her training, Ellesse is now an Assistant Professor of health policy and clinical practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Her program of research employs tools from health services research and population health science to demonstrate how macrolevel systems like heterosexism, sexism, and racism are determinants of health inequities. She leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and intersectionality perspective to quantitatively study how social, demographic, and policy contexts shape health and health care disparities for BIPOC and LGBT populations.