Kikut and Maddocks Named Provost’s Graduate Academic Engagement Fellows
During the two year fellowship, Kikut and Maddocks will both study aspects of adolescence.
Photo Credit: Scott Spitzer / University of Pennsylvania
Annenberg School doctoral students Ava Kikut and Sophie Maddocks have been named 2020-22 Provost’s Graduate Academic Engagement Fellows at the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center.
Launched in 2019, the two-year fellowship includes support to attend and present at conferences, the opportunity to design and teach an academically based community service (ABCS) course, and a $5,000 research fund in the first year. The second year offers a full fellowship to research or write.
In their research and teaching endeavors as part of the fellowship, Kikut and Maddocks will focus on different aspects of adolescence.
Advised by Professor Robert C. Hornik, Kikut plans to explore whether youth involvement in countermarketing message design can generate a sense of ownership and belonging around healthy decision-making. She will collaborate with middle school, high school, and Penn students to design and evaluate a health campaign, and assess the effects of both participation in campaign development and exposure to messages designed by peers on youth health and empowerment.
Maddocks, who will be advised by Professor Julia Ticona, aims to address the social and emotional challenges that students face across both physical classrooms and digital platforms. She will intervene in the field of digital abuse scholarship through participatory research that investigates with students their lived experiences of digital abuse precarity, their reception of existing e-safety guidance, and their construction of critical digital rights resources.
Abigail Dym, a joint Ph.D. student in political science and education policy, will also receive the 2020-22 fellowship. Her project will be advised by Professor Michael X. Delli Carpini.
