Digari, McAdaragh Awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for 2024-25
Sheetal Digari and Mary O'Brien McAdaragh, PhD students in programs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, were awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for 2024-25.
About the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) gives the University's most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write their dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a $25,000 stipend, academic year tuition at the general graduate rate for up to 14 credits per semester, subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan for up to one calendar year, and a $1,000 conference grant.
Sheetal Digari
Sheetal Digari
Sheetal Digari is a student in the PhD program in Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development.
Title
Racialized and Sexualized Bodies: Examining Experiences of Northeastern Students in Indian Higher Educational Institutions
Background
Recently, scholars in comparative and international development education (CIDE) have called attention to our field’s lack of focus on race as “epistemology of ignorance”, indicating complicity or apathy to understand how racial formations effect our scholarship on international development (Scott & Bajaj, 2022; Sriprakash et al., 2020). I address this concern in my dissertation by studying racial formation and its intersection with gender in India.
Within India, ‘Northeastern’ (NE) is a racialized category, based on the biological construction of race for people with Mongoloid phenotypes and racial epithets (Wouters & Subba, 2013). Over the years, the post-colonial Indian state has carried forward the colonial racial formations to oppress Northeastern communities (Baruah, 2020). Forms of oppression are most visible in public institutions like higher educational institutions (HEI) where the lives of NE students are profoundly shaped by the intersection of racial and sexual harassment (Rai, 2021). For example, during the Covid-19 outbreak, 22 cases of racially motivated violent attacks on NE students were recorded (Karmakar, 2020), parallel to anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Similarly, oriental exoticization of NE students portrays them as sexually available, thereby making them an easy target of sexual harassment (Bora, 2019). In addition to the oppression, the state’s approach to such mode of othering as “a problem without a name” trivializes and naturalizes the systemic discrimination of NE students (Bora, 2019, p.845). My dissertation investigates this epistemic ignorance by asking: How do higher educational institutions construct racialized and sexualized subjectivities? And how does this construction determine the intellectual capability and aspiration of NE students?
Impact of research
Among other contributions, my dissertation is significant in three ways. First, it theorizes racial formations in India, a state where race is viewed as a foreign issue (Weiner, 2021). Second, my dissertation adds to the ongoing debate on race within CIDE and provides an intersectional analysis. One of my findings highlights the interplay between global forces and local inequalities. For example, NE students used Korean pop culture (fashioning of body/behavior) as a strategy to assert their racial identity and resist subjectivities imposed by HEIs. Third, I also add methodologically by using a comparative approach to
examine epistemic identity in two different contexts- women and co-educational colleges.
Mary O'Brien McAdaragh
Mary McAdaragh
Mary O'Brien McAdaragh is a student in the PhD program in Evaluation Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development.
Title
Public Narrative and Its Relationship to Traumatic Stress: Applying Evaluative Thinking and Problem Definition to a Critical Social Issue
Abstract
The impact of public narratives (i.e., shared stories that reflect social or cultural values) on traumatic stress will be investigated in a comparative case study with three populations, individuals who have experienced (a) sexual assault in the U.S. Military, (b) sex trafficking, or (c) prostitution / sex trading. The research hypothesis posits that public narrative functions like social support and predicts recovery following traumatic stress. Findings will contribute to an understanding of the ways individuals and communities experience and recover from traumatic stress and offer recommendations to support the development of innovative interventions.
Areas of Impact
The findings of this study will contribute to a foundational understanding of the complex and interconnected ways individuals and communities experience traumatic stress and have important implications for research, policy, and practice in fields of counseling psychology, social work, public policy, and public law. As proposed in the study, public narrative is subject to
manipulation and, therefore, offers an important opportunity in the prevention and intervention for the harmful effects of traumatic stress. For example, public narrative surrounding intimate partner violence in the United States has changed the social acceptability of domestic violence since it was made illegal, shifting what was seen as a private matter to a public issue and violent crime, impacting individuals, social services, and society (Johnson, 2002).
This research aims to empirically demonstrate how a change in public narrative has the opportunity to influence the damaging experiences of traumatic stress and improve recovery. Building on existing literature, this study posits that a positive public narrative may function like social support, one of the most important predictors of healing and recovery from traumatic stress (Briere & Scott, 2015; Lehavot et al., 2018). In this regard, the study will uncover the important ways in which policy shapes and communicates public narrative. In practice, the findings of this research will provide an empirical basis for the inclusion of public narrative in treatment and assessment for individuals impacted by traumatic stress and in the development of new intervention and prevention efforts. The Scale of Narrative and Trauma provides a new tool to measure public narrative and explore public narrative as a form of social support. This study addresses an important gap in literature and may provide the evidence needed to develop innovative interventions, elucidating the important role of public narrative in human experience.