I research inequities in international education throughout the African Diaspora
Originally from Charlotte, I split my time between North Carolina and Malawi, where I use community-building and conversation curation skills to create dialogue around practices in aid and education. My passion for education is rooted in my experiences with an inequitable education system at West Charlotte High, and I remain determined to reshape unjust systems wherever they exist.
At Dartmouth College, my desire to significantly impact the ways young people experience education systems was broadened to include a global perspective through my experiences in the African & African American Studies and Theater departments. Afterward, I spent several years in community engagement and development with Northern Stage Theater Company, where I shaped dialogues around diversity, inclusion, and intentionality and helped build a new home for life-changing storytelling in the Upper Valley.
At USAID, I worked within Malawi’s education office on school construction, secondary school fee-elimination, distance learning infrastructure, and national reading initiatives. My Master’s and Ph.D. research at the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill build on my shared passion for dialogue across cultures and reshaping education systems for greater access and inclusion. Currently, I am working to establish the Moving Windmills Innovation Center, a sustainable hub for Malawi’s next generation of creative problem-solvers.
Education Research Methods
While my work is situated in activist traditions of finding solutions for policy in Malawi, good intentions alone are not enough to justify work in the aid economy or global south. My research is informed by my experiences with inequitable education systems in the American south and guided by the reflections of African-American scholars working with a critical race lens as they navigate the blurry line between personal narratives, activist desires, and research standards.
Mixed methods is founded on a sense of complementarity, and I use both first- and third-person writing in order to combine the strengths of both voices, inspire a critical response from the reader, and attempt to close the distance between myself and whoever reads my work. In opting to incorporate both the intimacy of first-person writing and the supposed objectivity of third-person writing, I ask the individuals approaching my work to understand both the personal anecdotes and the statistical presentations as equally important.
Culturally Relevant Program Evaluation
Dr. Rodney Hopson defines Culturally Responsive Evaluation as “a theoretical, conceptual, and inherently political position that includes the centrality of and attunement to culture in the theory and practice of evaluation.”
In addition to mixed-methods, case study, and Critical Geographic Information Systems (GIS), I lean heavily on my experiences living and working in Malawi.
On looking back at systems, data, and processing, and finding a better way to go about it. I offer my journey not as the single greatest solution, but as the start of what can be possible.
Historical Practices, Present Day Consequences
In researching the history of aid and education in Malawi, it became increasingly clear that policy played an overwhelming role in shaping the nation, and more often than not, the policies were drafted outside of Malawi. I explore how policy, and the cultural values inherent in their writings, have shaped outcomes in Malawi and other African nations for better and worse.
I use this research to guide practical recommendations for practitioners, researchers, and organizations implementing international education policy in Malawi and throughout Africa. My writings explore the foundations of formal schooling in Malawi from pre-colonial segregation practices to 30 years of authoritarian rule and through today. I use the nation's history to draw concrete connections between past actions and their present-day consequences.
