This summer we sat down virtually with Libby Mayer, a former research assistant in the Gender Based Violence Research Lab, to discuss what she has been up to since graduating in May of 2022.
Libby has been living in Providence, Rhode Island since July 2022 working as a Clinical Research Assistant at Brown University in their Prevention Lab. She is currently employed by Lifespan, a healthcare company in Providence. The lab has a 3-4 year grant for projects focused on addressing sexual awareness, empowerment, and the role of alcohol in the lives of college women. As a research assistant in this interdisciplinary lab, she works on many projects at once, sharing that her daily tasks involve conducting interviews, writing manuscripts, presenting posters, developing surveys, writing scripts, coding qualitative data, and writing grants, among other things.
When we asked Libby how she spends her free time, she said that she prioritizes keeping up with her hobbies. She joined a rowing club in Providence, and she loves to crochet, cook, and dog sit/walk in her free time.
Libby became part of the GBVRL team in 2020 before it was even a lab yet––it started out as just a project, where she worked as an RA to help develop the Empowered Consent program. Prior to joining the lab, Libby was already involved in PASA (Peers Against Sexual Assault), a student-led club that educates the Lafayette community on the culture surrounding sexual misconduct, which she continued to work with for the rest of her college career. Professor Cuomo contacted PASA when the Empowered Consent project was in its early stages, bringing on Libby, along with three other students, to help develop the project in 2020-2021. She then became a research assistant in the lab as soon as it was formally established. In the summer before her senior year, Libby’s work in the lab included training facilitators, analyzing data, and presenting the Empowered Consent research to the president’s cabinet.
When asked about how her experience at Lafayette shaped her professional work and current interests, Libby shared that she never would have taken a job in research if she hadn’t worked in the GBVRL. She explained that, before doing research in the lab, she had a narrow understanding of what research actually entailed, unfamiliar with the diverse ways in which research can be conducted. She didn’t realize that qualitative research was a professional possibility, and working in the GBVRL opened up her understanding of feminist research, helping her realize that there is valuable research to be done outside of just the hard sciences. She also credits her Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major for preparing her to succeed in her current research job, specifically mentioning WGS 285: Feminist Research Design as an influential class. Libby shared that the skills she learned in the GBVRL, such as qualitative coding, interacting with lab mates, and creating a supportive environment helped her when moving into a new research lab environment.
So what is next for Libby? She says she will be at her current lab for at least another year, and that grad school is in her future.
Lastly, Libby wanted to say “Thank you to the lab for existing because it is really opening an avenue of research that doesn’t exist at a lot of schools, and also exposes college students to a field of research that is really important but maybe not talked about in textbooks or widely known.” She looks back at her time in the lab as one of her most fruitful college experiences.
Thank you to Libby for sharing all of this with us, and we wish you nothing but the best in your future career!
Written by Meredith Forman and Abigail Zea