Semester Award for Natasha Obukhova
Congratulations! Natasha Obukhova has been awarded a Semester Award for her outstanding Master’s thesis, entitled “Because I can promise you: if you’re studying people with lived experience of trauma, secondary trauma will happen”.
The Master’s thesis entitled “Because I can promise you: if you’re studying people with lived experience of trauma, secondary trauma will happen” was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elaine Huang and Nimra Ahmed. Research on people who have experienced trauma is becoming an important topic in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). But studying trauma can be hard for researchers themselves, and their well-being often gets overlooked.
In her Master’s thesis, Natasha Obukhova interviewed ten HCI practitioners and found weak support systems, scarce formal guidelines, and a heavy dependence on informal advice. Also, universities rarely provide enough counseling and training. To address these gaps, Natasha suggests better counseling, training, and ethical processes, alongside a prototype app “We are also humans”. This app is designed to support researchers in their self-care.
Natasha chose this topic because of her long-standing interest in the intersection of technology and mental health. She plans to rework this manuscript for publication at one of the upcoming conferences and move to studying grief and video games in her pursuit of a PhD.