My research agenda
How do social structures shape how people interpret, experience, and respond to violence?
Violence is not evenly distributed. Studies have shown that communities riddled with violence are poorer and hold a social stigma that portrays them as naturally violent and incorrigible.
Scholars of violence have approached the study of violence by compartmentalizing it, defining it as physical, and focusing on the material conditions that lead to violent actions. I contend that this approximation has led to two main issues. First, it has created a hierarchy of violence in which public forms of violence are considered more important than violence in the private space. Second, it has perpetuated the stigmatization of marginalized communities by reinforcing a binary explanation of violence, which links violence to a culture of poverty or explains violence as a form of resistance to oppressive structures.
To respond to these problems, I study violence from women's experiences by examining its horizontal and vertical dimensions, meaning how violence moves across private and public spaces and across the individual, community, and societal scales. My research is guided by three main questions:
1) How do we make sense of violence?
2) How do we respond, resist, and heal from violence?
3) How do class, race, and gender affect our definitions, experiences, and responses to violence?
Violence is not evenly distributed. Studies have shown that communities riddled with violence are poorer and hold a social stigma that portrays them as naturally violent and incorrigible.
Scholars of violence have approached the study of violence by compartmentalizing it, defining it as physical, and focusing on the material conditions that lead to violent actions. I contend that this approximation has led to two main issues. First, it has created a hierarchy of violence in which public forms of violence are considered more important than violence in the private space. Second, it has perpetuated the stigmatization of marginalized communities by reinforcing a binary explanation of violence, which links violence to a culture of poverty or explains violence as a form of resistance to oppressive structures.
To respond to these problems, I study violence from women's experiences by examining its horizontal and vertical dimensions, meaning how violence moves across private and public spaces and across the individual, community, and societal scales. My research is guided by three main questions:
1) How do we make sense of violence?
2) How do we respond, resist, and heal from violence?
3) How do class, race, and gender affect our definitions, experiences, and responses to violence?
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