Scholar Story: Michael Spencer
May 14, 2019
“Nonbinary Identities and Individuals in Research, Community, and the Academy”
June 30, 2019
NCID To Welcome Three Scholars-in-Residence
The National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) will be welcoming its first cohort of NCID scholars-in-residence this fall. These three diversity scholars will be coming from different institutions to spend the academic year at the University of Michigan, focusing on their research and engaging in conversation with colleagues at the NCID and within U-M academic departments:
W. Carson Byrd is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Louisville and a 2019 NCID scholar-in-residence. He was previously the research associate in the Center for Race and Social Policy Research at Virginia Tech. In 2011, he completed his doctorate in sociology at Virginia Tech. His research examines race and educational inequality, inter- and intraracial interactions and their influence on identities and ideologies, and the connections among race, science, and knowledge production. These three areas intertwine under a broader research umbrella examining how educational institutions, particularly colleges and universities, can simultaneously operate as centers for social mobility and engines of inequality. He recently published Poison In The Ivy: Race Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite College Campuses (Rutgers UP).
Collaboration is a cornerstone of his work, and he looks forward to forming new relationships with many constituents across the University of Michigan. Outside of his departmental home of sociology and its associated workshops, Dr. Byrd would enjoy connecting with people in other units around campus such as the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, affiliates with Afroamerican and African Studies and the other ethnic studies programs around the university, Organizational Studies, Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Institute for Social Research and its associated centers to discuss how various aspects of diversity and inclusion are embedded within everyday organizational schemas and routines, specifically among colleges and universities. Dr. Byrd would appreciate any opportunities to explore issues of diversity, inclusion, and marginalization on campus with students at the university who are part of different student groups, connected with centers such as the Trotter Multicultural Center, or who are drawn to activities (co-)sponsored with the NCID to hear more about their experiences and needs, and lend his skills however possible to support their education. Lastly, Dr. Byrd is also interested in building discussions with faculty, staff, students, and administrators engaged in community outreach and university-sponsored community initiatives to explore the issues and solutions that can enlighten how universities can improve these relationships with communities, particularly as they relate to possible social justice issues off-campus in the surrounding community.
Urmitapa Dutta is an associate professor in psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a 2019 NCID scholar-in-residence. At UMass Lowell, she is also involved with several interdisciplinary programs: Gender Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Global Studies. Dr. Dutta's scholarship focuses on everyday violence, i.e. forms of direct, structural, and symbolic violence that are normalized in society. A major current project examines how those disenfranchised by particular citizenship regimes (i.e., the National Register of Citizens in Northeast India) understand citizenship/belonging and organize their own struggles, in an effort to illuminate gendered, socio-political, and cultural dimensions of lived citizenship. Documentation of people’s suffering as well as their resistance is critical in contexts of state repression. Other current projects include studying women’s everyday activism and resistance in contexts of armed conflict and use of participatory visual methods to document youth counternarratives.
During her time at the University of Michigan, Dr. Dutta is interested in collaborating around the following areas: building communities of resistance (in academia and beyond); women's everyday activism; and decolonizing research and practice in the areas of violence and violence prevention, citizenship and community-based research and action.
Stephanie L. Kerschbaum is an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware and a 2019 NCID scholar-in-residence. During her time at the University of Michigan, she would love to connect with faculty working in disability studies, narrative and story-based research, Deaf studies/sign language studies, as well as with those who work on projects related to faculty mentoring, supporting minority and underrepresented faculty, and issues around academic culture and institutional transformation.
Dr. Kerschbaum has developed the concept of "signs of disability," which asks that we attend to the signs of disability all around us and collectively build new ways of noticing and engaging disability in our everyday lives.
During her time at the University of Michigan, she would love to connect with faculty working in disability studies, narrative and story-based research, Deaf studies/sign language studies, as well as with those who work on projects related to faculty mentoring, supporting minority and underrepresented faculty, and issues around academic culture and institutional transformation.
For more information about the NCID Scholars-in-Residence program, contact Ching-Yune Sylvester ([email protected]).
