The last time we caught up with Margarita “Maggie” Hernandez, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology, she was just getting the Latiné Immigration and Health Study (LIHS) off the ground—a longitudinal project exploring how social experiences like stress, support, and immigration history leave biological traces in the body. Since then, her poster on the study earned recognition at the Guarini Poster Session, her preliminary findings have begun to take shape, and the political landscape surrounding her work has shifted considerably.
In this follow-up conversation, Hernandez reflects on what those preliminary results are revealing, how she’s adapted her research to a rapidly changing environment, and what the postdoc years have taught her about resilience, mentorship, and her own capacity.
For readers meeting you for the first time: in two or three sentences, who are you, where are you from, and what’s the core question driving your research?
My name is Maggie Hernandez and I am an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth working with Dr. Zaneta Thayer. I was born and raised in Miami, FL, where I currently reside. My central research question asks: How do our social experiences become embodied?
I approach this question using a variety of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, spanning biocultural anthropology, medical anthropology, genomics, and community-engaged research practices.
Your research measures how social experiences, such as stress, support, immigration history, leave biological traces in the body. Is there a finding or pattern in your work that has surprised you?
Data collection for my current research project is ongoing. However, our preliminary results indicate that adverse mental health is negatively associated with perceived social support. In other words, when individuals feel more supported in their social environments, they have lower levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. We also found that adverse mental health is positively associated with stress of immigration, meaning that individuals who reported higher levels of immigration-related stress had higher levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
These findings are not surprising; in fact, we expected to see these patterns. However, these preliminary findings suggest that perceived social support may serve as a moderator of the association between adverse immigration-related social experiences and adverse mental health outcomes. By focusing on adversity and negative health consequences only, as is more common within my field of research, we obscure the potentially important role that robust social support plays in preventing the embodiment of negative social experiences.
Your poster, The Latiné Immigration and Health Study (LIHS): A longitudinal study exploring immigration, embodiment, and health within Latiné refugees/immigrants in the United States, recently won recognition at the Guarini School Poster Session. What was the hardest thing to communicate, visually or conceptually, and how did you solve it?
I employ both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches within my research work, ranging from saliva collection for generating genomic data to conducting in-depth interviews with community members.
At times, communicating all the methodologies I use, why I use them, and the results from each can be really challenging, especially in under three minutes! To solve this, I leaned on effective visualizations to convey the major components of my study, keep the attention of the audience I was presenting to, and help to “tell the story” of my poster in a way that felt natural and not rushed.
The LIHS is described as a longitudinal study, meaning you are tracking the same people over time. What does that mean in practice for your participants and your research?
In practice, conducting longitudinal studies means staying in touch with participants throughout the duration of the research process and, as a community-engaged research, beyond the conclusion of the project. The basis of my work lies in creating trusting, long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with the community members that choose to participate in my study. Sometimes, this contact may seem unconventional or not within the realm of how scientists “should” act with community members.
For example, I sometimes help participants navigate aspects of the healthcare system in the U.S., translate documents, and serve as a translator during appointments. Building community and being there for one another is essential to weather the current political climate. For me, this extends beyond my friends and family, and includes my community, neighbors, and individuals who choose to participate in research projects.
As a postdoc, you occupy an interesting middle position: still early in your career, yet already a mentor to others. What has that role taught you, about your research, your field, or yourself, that you didn’t anticipate?
Being a postdoc is so chaotic, in both good and bad ways. I honestly wasn’t sure what to anticipate when I started, but I don’t think it was this! The precarity of this career stage makes every passing day feel like it needs to be maximized to obtain a permanent position in the near future, regardless of the industry.
At the same time, I’ve had more access to opportunities for professional development, traveling, and networking than I ever had before. This has all been really exciting, but also very exhausting!
In a previous conversation, you described your research and community as being “under attack” by federal policy, and that you’d had to consistently pivot your work in response. How has that situation evolved, and what has it taught you about doing research in a politically charged environment?
The project has continued to grow and change alongside the tumultuous nature of the current political climate in the United States and the world. In response, my collaborators and I remain in conversation with community members about how the research is received and the immediate outcomes that can come from the work, even before the study is complete and “the paper” published. We are not operating at the pace of academia, and therefore can reciprocate meaningful contributions to the community under a time frame that can help people experiencing precarity right now.
Conducting this research in a politically charged environment brings us in contact with the devastating consequences stemming from these policies. What I’ve learned through this process is the need for research to have realistic and meaningful impacts, at the pace reflective of our rapidly changing sociopolitical environment.
What’s one thing that you’ve learned about yourself during your postdoc that you’ll carry into whatever comes next?
Being a postdoc has taught me that I am much more capable and experienced than I had given myself credit for. During my time in graduate school, I experienced severe mental health challenges, resulting in low self-esteem and self-worth. When I transitioned to my postdoc role, I had the opportunity to heal from my graduate school experiences and approach my research and job with the enthusiasm and motivation I had always wanted to, but didn’t have the mental capacity for.
Being a postdoc has also taught me that I will continue to learn for the rest of my life. It’s kind of what I signed up for! And being able to be both confident in myself and my abilities while remaining open to learning and growing is an important strength, and perhaps the best outcome of this role for me.
