Current Bell Fellows

Rocio Calvo, PhD
Rocio Calvo is interested in addressing policy-relevant research questions on the impact of the welfare state on the incorporation of foreign-born individuals and their descendants into recipient societies. Rocio recently completed her doctoral degree in Social Work at Boston College. Her thesis examined the role of different welfare systems on the economic and social incorporation of foreign-born individuals as compared to the native population. As a Bell fellow, Rocio aims to continue focusing on the relationship between social policy and immigrant incorporation. She plans to investigate the role of different welfare systems on the social capital accumulation of the children of immigrants as compared to their parents and to the native-born population. Additionally, she intends to explore whether two characteristics of the welfare state, size and scope, are related to social cohesion indicators on diverse societies. Rocio also holds a bachelor's degree in Psychopedagogy from the University of Salamanca and a European Master's in International Humanitarian Action from Deusto University.

Santosh Kumar, PhD
Santosh Kumar is a development economist with an interest in understanding the causes of special problems, like poor health and low standard of living, faced by the developing countries. His research mostly focuses on India. He has vast experience evaluating various anti-poverty projects while working at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), Delhi, where he worked from 2002-2004. Currently, he is involved in evaluating the impacts of a child vaccination program "Universal Immunization Program (UIP)" and "Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) - a rural road infrastructure project" in India. Besides these projects, he is also exploring the role of international trade on intergenerational mobility in India. Santosh holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Houston. In his dissertation, he examined the long-term effects of child vaccination program on mortality and education of children. He also holds an M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a B.A. in Economics from Delhi University. During his Bell Fellowship at the Harvard Pop Center, Santosh wants to continue conducting policy-relevant research related to poverty, health, and education and make policy recommendation so that achieving the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing poverty and disparities by 2015 becomes a reality. 

Mauricio Avendano Pabon, PhD
Mauricio Avendano Pabon is a research fellow at the Department of Public Health of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD at the same University. His thesis examined the impact of socioeconomic status on stroke risk across different world regions and explored possible explanations. He also holds an MSc in Public Health from the Netherlands School of Public Health, and an MSc in Epidemiology from the Erasmus University. His research focuses on understanding how social processes influence health and disentangling the biological mechanisms behind these effects. He has been closely involved in the design and analysis of the EU-funded project SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), a comparative study in 15 countries to study the interaction between health and the social and economic dimensions of life in the European region. He also coordinates the health module of the SHARELIFE project, an extension of SHARE that aims to understand ageing from a life-course perspective. He is currently involved in the study MESS (Measurement and Experimentation in the Social Sciences), an Internet panel in the Netherlands, where he is responsible for planning the collection and analysis of data on biomarkers. He is also part of the coordinating team of the project HOPE (Health and Obesity prevention across Europe), an international research collaboration to understand the social determinants of the obesity epidemic in Europe. In the course of 2007, he received a VENI grant from the Netherlands Scientific Organization to explore how social and economic aspects of life relate to health outcomes, and how these processes occur differently across various societies. In the same year, he was awarded a EUR-fellowship to examine the biological pathways through which socioeconomic status influence health in different countries.

Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Ph.D.  
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan is Senior Programme Manager of Academic Programmes with the Public Health Foundation of India ( PHFI), a Public Private Partnership of the Government of India and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other private stakeholders. The PHFI aims to promote multi pronged capacity building in public health education, standards, research and advocacy in India. She completed her undergraduate education at St Stephens College, Delhi University and at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She studied at Trinity College on a Nehru Cambridge Fellowship & was the recipient of an Oxford & Cambridge Society endowment. She was trained in Modern History and Political thought at Cambridge and subsequently pursued an M.Phil and Ph.D. at the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was awarded a Doctoral Research Fellowship at the apex national centre for social science research- the Teen Murti Centre for Contemporary Studies in Society and was also awarded the Chevening Fellowship to consult health and medical archives and reports in the UK. She has received a Balzan Fellowship (2008) to be held at University College, London for research in social epidemiology and to advance setting up of research networks in the area of society and health. She has published several peer reviewed publications in national and international journals and has recently authored a monograph titled "Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous Medicine in Colonial Punjab," published in the Wellcome Trust and Orient Longman Series on "New Perspectives on the History of Medicine and Environment in South Asia", May 2006. The book was favourably reviewed in the London Times Literary Supplement and various other academic journals, such as The Journal of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Social History of Medicine, and the American Historical Review.