I am passionate about increasing diversity in academia and creating an inclusive academic environment. To me, that requires working to eliminate or decrease power hierarchies while also building supportive spaces where people feel welcome. It also means challenging the status quo and developing new ways of doing things. I strive to do these things in the day-to-day work in my lab, my department, and on the UD campus.
When creating this website, I struggled with whether I should devote a section to my DEI work. It doesn't feel right to be listing my DEI activities publicly, as if they are accomplishments in need of recognition. On the other hand, I think it is important to show early career scholars and other colleagues that it is possible to be a successful academic (as assessed via traditional research-based metrics) while also engaging in social justice advocacy. I ultimately landed on the latter side when I created this page. I encourage everyone to engage with social justice advocacy in some form. For some people, that will mean engaging in allyship behaviors. For others, it may mean existing in spaces in which they were historically excluded. For others, it may take a different form all together. We each need to find ways to meaningfully engage with these issues, because it we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem.
I have been involved with both formal (e.g., committees) and informal (e.g., grassroots event organizing) DEI work on campus. I also try to initiate DEI discussions in spaces where I am a teacher or mentor.
Examples of Formal DEI Work
2016 - present: I am a member of the Equity and Inclusion Committee for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I am responsible for participating in committee activities to create a more inclusive department. As of Fall 2024, I am the committee chair.
2022 - 2023: I am a fellow for the UD ADVANCE Institute. I am responsible for running workshops for hiring committees across the UD campus about best practices related to faculty hiring
2022 - present: I am the Director of Professional Development and Education for DE INBRE, a multi-institutional consortium funded by NIH to increase the diversity of the biomedical workforce in DE
Examples of Informal DEI Work
2016 - present: I have attended countless protests on campus and in my local community. I have also organized multiple group trips to protests (e.g., coordinating a bus rental to the March for Science)
2017 - present: I am a co-founder and co-organizer of the Social Justice Coffee Hour, which provides space for all UD students, staff, and faculty members to collectively learn about and meaningfully engage with social issues. Each coffee hour focuses on a different topic, and features 3 speakers plus extensive discussion. Thus far, the coffee hours have focused on intersectional identities, mass incarceration, talking to kids about racism, the #metoo movement, racism in academia, allyship, and disparities during the pandemic, and mass shootings.
2021 - 2022: I was a co-facilitator for an antiracism book club with people in my department. We have read Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall and So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Examples of DEI Work in Teaching and Mentorship
2022 - present: I regularly invite UD "Social Justice Peer Educators" - undergraduate students at UD trained to facilitate social justice workhops - to present in my lab to my undergraduate research assistants each semester
2016 - present: I continually discuss DEI issues with my PhD students, particularly in terms of how to develop our studies and run the lab. For example, we read "10 principles for building an antiracist lab" and discussed how we could incorporate those principles into the lab