PhD Student Ava Ma de Sousa Awarded SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship
Ava Ma de Sousa was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Government. Ava is a first-year Social Psychology Ph.D. student at UCSB from Toronto and this fellowship will support her graduate training from 2022 to 2026. Broadly, her work focuses on intergroup relations, social identity, and emotions. Her awarded proposal examines how computational reinforcement models can be used to study the effects of dehumanizing language on biased learning and behavior in social interactions. Ava's advisor, Kyle Ratner, says, "I was delighted, but not surprised, to learn that Ava received this prestigious funding. Ava is a very deep and innovative thinker, talented researcher, and an overall great member of my lab and the UCSB community. I have no doubt that this recognition will be one of what will be many in her career.”