After living for 10months in rural village Cote d’Ivoire in a fieldwork team aiding my partner’s Fulbright research, I developed an intersectional feminist approach to community based ethnography that foregrounds the voices and experiences of women. With a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health I conducted long term ethnographic research on the aftereffects of gender violence among diverse populations of women in the Midwest. I have utilized this ethnographic method in community-based social research studies of gender and youth violence in North Carolina (UNCG Center for the Study of Social Issues) and Bloomington. My previous work explored sexual violence, recovery and empowerment, and my current research interest is in addressing interpersonal violence both locally and globally using creative and phenomenological ethnographic methods. New holistic approaches to domestic violence policy today introduce broadly defined empowerment strategies (such as microloans) based on the contextual and cultural needs of women. I am dedicated to research that solves social problems while empowering those experiencing violence to transform their lives and identities. As an artist, writer and dancer I am particularly interested in the use of the creative artistic expression in local empowerment strategies.
