Seven SOE Graduate Students Garner 2022 Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants

Earlier this year, the Anti-Racism Collaborative, administered by the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), awarded research grants to 27 U-M graduate students—seven of whom are SOE students. Co-sponsored by The Rackham Graduate School and the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, these grants aim to support engagement in research projects focused on racial inequality, racial equity, and racial justice while advancing graduate student progress toward degree.

“The Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants offer critical support to our developing scholars in several ways,” says Elizabeth R. Cole, NCID director and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies. “This funding allows them to pursue innovative, community-engaged scholarship that challenges systemic racism and oppression in our society, while providing the grantees with a supportive community of like-minded students from different disciplines across campus.”

Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer and former NCID director, said the Anti-Racism Collaborative received outstanding proposals from graduate students across the university. “The funded projects reflect the broad range of research that our graduate students are engaged in, focused on advancing anti-racist action,” Chavous remarked upon the announcement of the 2022 grant recipients.

From a digital storytelling project, to a makerspace for Black youth, to new approaches to developing DEI strategies, and more—read on to learn how these exceptional SOE graduate students are putting their Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants to use. 

An Anti-Colonial Phenomenology of Racialized Knowledge Systems, Epistemic Injustice, and Epistemic Resistance in Graduate Education

"This research creates a counter epistemic community for 4-6 graduate students from racially minoritized backgrounds who are resisting white dominant knowledge systems in their own research. We will co-create a convening to understand graduate student socialization experiences into white knowledge systems, how this affects their scholarship, scholarly identities, and sense of belonging. Using participatory action research, pláticas, and autoethnographic/ethnographic methods, the preparation of and the convening itself will serve as a site for my dissertation data. This research practically and theoretically can help reimagine graduate education as an epistemically just space that honors the multiplicity of knowledges of racially minoritized graduate students."

Manifestations of Racial Neoliberalism through Experiences of Students of Color in Anti-Racism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committees at Historically White Institutions

"This qualitative study aims to illuminate the experiences of Students of Color currently engaged in committees intended to support institutional-wide anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in historically white institutions. Given the increased emphasis on the need for student representation on DEI committees, I utilize elements of Racialized Organizations (Ray, 2019), racial neoliberalism, and critical race institutional logics (Squire, 2015) perspective as theoretical and analytical tools to examine the following research questions: (1) What are the ways DEI committees may become both sites of institutional transformation and reproductions of neoliberalism and whiteness? (2) Do students’ racialized labor become co-opted in committees?"

Blossoming Together: Imagining New Relationships between Students of Color and Institutions through Digital Storytelling

"My research uses participatory methodologies to work with racially/ethnically minoritized students as both advisors and participants in a digital storytelling project. Through multiple discussions and workshops, students create digital stories about their experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. The narratives are intended to inform the University’s next Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan and improve the campus culture for racially/ethnically minoritized students. Moreover, as an embodiment of transformational relationships between students and the institution, this project could serve as a model for wider student engagement in DEI plans and initiatives at the University of Michigan and/or at other institutions nationwide."

Towards a “Quare” Battle Fatigue: Queer and Trans Students of Color’s Experiences of and Resistance to Queer & Racial Battle Fatigue

"Higher education scholarship has failed to recognize Queer and Trans Students of Color (QTSOC) and how they negotiate their environment with various subordinate identities (Nicolazzo, 2016). In this research project, I introduce 'Quare' (Queer and Racial) Battle Fatigue to examine the psycho-social and physiological effects of navigating higher education institutions deeply embedded in multiple and various forms of oppression. This research project illuminates the margins, seeking to identify the health, wellness, and safety resources QTSOC need to not just survive, but thrive. This project will also examine how QTSOC disrupt practices of education violence with practices of Queer/Trans of Color life-making to spark joy and create a sense of home."

Black Critical Digital Literacies

"The proposed research is an after-school makerspace for Black youth that endeavors to ask: How do Black kids practice embodied critical digital literacies in an after-school third/makerspace? Data will be collected via a composite of digital ethnographic methods and traditional qualitative methods that account for the mutually constituted nature of Black kids' online and offline selves. This project is antiracist in that it takes an asset-oriented approach to Black practices; the research also grows from a genealogy of Black Cyberfeminisms invested in understanding the ways that digital technologies and discourses produce and reproduce racism—and disrupting this reproduction."

Cultivating Students’ Critical Consciousness and Ethnic-Racial Identity: Ethnic Studies and Adolescent Development

"This project assesses the efficacy of an ethnic studies curriculum for fostering critical consciousness and ethnic-racial identity and whether these two factors positively shape academic and civic outcomes for Students of Color. Ethnic studies is an educational model that centers the perspectives of marginalized ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Research suggests that ethnic studies benefits racially marginalized students, but little is known about the mediating mechanisms that connect ethnic studies to desired outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to extend our understanding of how ethnic studies—an inherently anti-racist pedagogy—supports racially marginalized students in developing critical consciousness and ethnic-racial identity, which may link ethnic studies to desired youth outcomes."