Research

My dissertation project, “New source code: Emerging Technocrats transforming the grid of Science and Technology” funded by the National Science Foundation, NSF Forward Institutional Grant and UC Riverside Research Grant, directly challenges the contemporary discourse of “science identity” by exploring the experiences of a uniquely positioned U.S. Higher education institution, Spelman College located in Atlanta, Georgia, and the experiences and ideologies of emerging female scientists and technologists. Utilizing a qualitative approach, this project traces discursive origins and implications of notions of what it means to be a scientist, as a product of the ideological discourse constituted both in text such as the “Science Identity Survey”(HERI, 2012) and through the use of a deficit model in discussing the experiences of people of color in sciences. Central to the project are the narratives of self-identified innovative and powered African and African American women computer scientists and technologists, or Techcrats marginalized by the contemporary discourse of “science identity”. These ethnographic narratives include exploring the ways in which individuals navigate and negotiate cultural landscapes and political economies of science and technology. My research asks, what does it mean to be a scientist and how have emergent science identities redefined science itself? (Adreotti, 2011) Have institutions traditionally serving excluded populations appropriated, transformed and/or translated federal agenda in regards to the increase in domestic student participation? (Callon, 1986)