Lindsay Stark is an internationally recognized expert on the protection and well-being of women and children in situations of extreme adversity. She has more than a decade of experience leading applied research with operational agencies that include UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children, the International Refugee Committee and Women’s Refugee Commission.
Stark’s particular area of expertise is measuring sensitive social phenomenon and evaluating related interventions that seek to reduce violence, abuse and exploitation of women and children. She has conducted research in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
Stark is leading a mixed methods study (The Study of Adolescent Lives after Migration to America, or SALaMA) to assess the mental health and psychosocial well-being of adolescents resettled to the U.S. from Arab-majority countries. SALaMA also aims to identify sources of daily stress and identify sources of resilience in order to strengthen supports for this population.
Additionally, she is leading a series of analyses of the Centers for Disease Control’s national Violence Against Children studies to support an upcoming Lancet Series on the relationship between gender norms and health.
Among other current projects, Stark is supporting the development of an inter-agency measure to evaluate self-reliance of refugee households as they emerge from dependency on international humanitarian aid.
Little attention has been paid to women and girls in humanitarian settings, those whose safety has already been reduced due to conflict, natural disaster or displacement. For these women and girls, COVID-19 has made them particularly vulnerable to increases in gender-based violence, writes the Brown School’s Lindsay Stark.
Without protection, girls are more likely to experience sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, forced marriage, physical abuse and exploitation, with little access to resources that can promote resilience, writes the Brown School’s Lindsay Stark in The Conversation.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has displaced millions of people, most of them women and children. This mounting crisis suggests that conflict-related sexual violence, which has been reported in Ukraine, requires urgent action, say Washington University in St. Louis experts on refugees and displaced populations.
As tensions continue to run high in the Middle East, a new study from the Brown School finds that adolescents from the conflict-affected region who are residing in the United States have lower levels of resilience and a heightened risk of suicide ideation compared to their American-born peers.
To help address gaps in measurement and provide organizations with a tool to track the self-reliance of refugees and other displaced populations over time, researchers at the Brown School have developed a Self-Reliance Index.
Adolescent girls face elevated risks of gender-based violence in humanitarian settings. While some interventions exist, more needs to be done to ensure that global efforts to end gender-based violence include a focus on adolescent girls, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Early exposure to emotional violence “significantly” increases the chances that youths will contemplate suicide, according to new research from three countries conducted by the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
The standards and expectations to which men and woman generally conform impact health across life stages, health sectors and world regions, finds a new Brown School study. It’s part of a series of research being done that aims to promote gender-equitable policies and programs.
It is time to change the way we support refugees and immigrants and it is in everyone’s interest to do so. As Americans, we need to remember that our country was built by those who have come here seeking a better future for themselves and their families.
A yearlong program for adolescent girl refugees in Sub-Saharan Africa successfully promoted healthy transitions to adulthood within the evaluation period, according to the results of randomized controlled trials in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The study was led by Lindsay Stark, associate professor at the Brown School.
