Dr. Ollivia Adams is part of a research team that received a $100,000 CAD grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for a mixed methods study titled: A Multi-Method Investigation of Sexual Pain Experiences and Measurement in Black Canadian Women. Dr. Adams was also put forward as the CLAS candidate for a William T. Grant Scholars Program grant again this year.
This year, Dr. Kendal Broad carried on with research about LGBTQ+ movement activism in the US. Dr. Broad submitted an article on their extended research project with and about an interracial group of gay men who were striving to do gay anti-racism in the 1980s. Dr. Broad published an article on teaching and a book chapter on research methodology. Dr. Broad was honored to work closely with two undergraduate students, Ren Katz and Rey Arcenas, supported by a Mellon grant, as they conducted qualitative research projects and honors theses. As well, Dr. Broad served as a committee member for students in the MA program in our department and PhD students in Sociology, who all graduated. Dr. Broad taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels while also resuming the position of Graduate Coordinator.
Dr. Maddy Coy continued a project exploring “practice-based evidence” of specialist sexual and domestic violence organizations in Florida, with a team of brilliant undergraduate students, and funded by the department’s Mellon Foundation grant to promote student research. The team spent the year having fascinating in-depth conversations with experts across the state, writing up findings, and presenting the research at the Association for Women in Psychology conference. Maddy was honored to receive an International Educator of the Year Award from the UF International Center.
Dr. Jillian Hernandez published the essay “Ca$h App Connectivities: High Maintenance Feminism and Payment as Praxis” in the Duke University Press journal, liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, and gave invited presentations at Yale University, University of California-Irvine, and University of Kentucky. She was the recipient of a 2024 Fulbright Specialist Award, through which she shared best practices in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies administration and curriculum at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana in Santiago, Chile. She shared research at national and international conferences. Dr. Hernandez launched the Full Set Project, a team of UF undergraduate students and scholars from Princeton, Syracuse, and the University of Indiana who are studying the cultural impact of the nail industry and producing public-facing scholarship.
Dr. Bonnie Moradi collaborated with colleagues at UF and beyond to submit two grant proposals focused on sociocultural risk and resilience factors and mental health. She co-authored two articles presenting research findings on gender, sexuality, and well-being. She was invited to present at Arizona State University, coauthored several presentations at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, and was honored to serve as a discussant for a symposium led by UF student and faculty colleagues at the annual meeting of the Association for Women in Psychology.
Dr. Ocqua Murrell co-edited the volume Loopholes of Retreat: A Way Out of No Way, which is in press at Virginia Tech; she also co-authored one of the chapters in the book. She continued to teach core courses in the department, including Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Women’s Studies and Transnational Feminism. Dr. Murrell was honored to be nominated by her students and selected by her colleagues to receive a CLAS Teacher of the Year Award “for demonstrated excellence, innovation and effectiveness in teaching.”
Dr. Joanna Neville joined the department as a full-time faculty member in Fall 2024 after several years as an adjunct instructor. She leapt into her position by assuming the roles of Undergraduate Coordinator and Experiential Learning Coordinator, in addition to her teaching and mentoring duties. Dr. Neville supervised two undergraduate honors theses this year, as well as a host of undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants in her high-enrollment courses.
Dr. Hina Shaikh led her students in the Data Justice Lab to present their research on collecting and organizing police data in the U.S. South at the National Humanities Center. One of the graduating students in her lab, who was a part of the University Scholars Program, finished her distinguished data science thesis with high honors, utilizing the UF supercomputer, HiPerGator. Dr. Shaikh also has several articles co-written with students from the lab currently under peer review and a forthcoming article in Meridians. Dr. Shaikh has presented about the impacts of race and gender on data and AI within the Global South, both as the keynote speaker at the FAU Honors College Annual Symposium and as an invited panelist at the Society for the Social Studies of Science.
This year, Associate Professor Dr. Trysh Travis served as the principal investigator on a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant to create a Medical Humanities curriculum at UF. The grant underwrote workshops for undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty and advising staff with expertise in bioethics, narrative medicine, end-of-life care, and translational humanities research. In January, at the invitation of Barnard College’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, Dr. Travis presented a paper entitled “Why I’m Not ‘Against Recovery,’” which examines ways the Opioid Settlement Funds are prompting new approaches to substance abuse treatment. Travis’s op-ed on the history of Indirect Cost Recovery in American universities was published in Time magazine in February.
Dr. Cinnamon Williams published “The Fall of the Family: Reading Family Rejection in Frances Beal’s “Double Jeopardy”” in a special issue of Feminist Theory focused on intergenerational feminisms. She had an additional chapter accepted for publication in a forthcoming book from Duke University Press. Dr. Williams presented her scholarship at two conferences.
Dr. Alyssa Zucker transitioned out of the role of Undergraduate Coordinator after 8 years but continued to develop her leadership skills by serving as interim department chair in Fall (to cover Dr. Moradi’s sabbatical) and associate chair in Spring, as well as Parliamentarian for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She conducted research with undergraduate and MA students in the department, as well as PhD students in other units on campus. This led to a number of research presentations, including an invited symposium she organized for the Association for Women in Psychology. In Spring 2025, Dr. Zucker revamped the major assignment in WST 4704 Discrimination & Health to include hands-on experiential learning through Wiki Education, joining her students in the journey to improve public-facing knowledge on Wikipedia.