I’m a PhD candidate investigating women’s sense of belonging at elite universities, focusing on first-generation students at Brazil’s Unicamp and the UK’s Cambridge University, where these historically exclusionary spaces, in different contexts, have only recently seen record numbers of state-school and BAME students. Additionally, I explore generational inequalities and the impact of a degree on disrupting—or not—patterns in occupations and belonging among mothers and daughters, incorporating the lived experiences of their mothers.
My research is grounded in the life stories of women who are first-generation in their families to obtain a university degree in the twenty-first century and their mothers. Ultimately, my goal is to understand how access to higher education might empower women’s escape from poverty and exploitative jobs, combining material access and mobility with increased dignity and happier lives. The intergenerational lens seeks to grasp how enhanced access from one generation could potentially reverberate to previous ones and influence the trajectory of the next. My focus on mothers and daughters aims to unravel how entrenched intergenerational cycles are disrupted, alongside understanding the persistence of inequalities. My interest in women first-generation university students began during my MPhil, where I interviewed women from Brazil and their mothers, who work as paid domestic workers. Building upon Hirsch’s post-memory theory, which focuses on collective memory and intergenerational trauma, I applied it to the context of extreme poverty experienced by the mothers and a generation that was denied access to formal education, leading to the development of the concept of “intertwined memories”. This concept shows how, when a degree translates into social mobility for women first-generation in Brazil, it helps both daughters and their mothers in overcoming and healing from experiences of trauma, as well as improving their material circumstances. More details of my MPhil work can be found in my book: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-0200-0
In my PhD, I continue to study women who are first-generation students, focusing on their sense of belonging during their undergraduate years at elite universities in Brazil and the UK. My objective is to understand how nurturing their “Alma mater” is as students transition from their family homes to university. The backdrop of my research is empirical data showing that, in different contexts, public, elite universities in Brazil and the UK have recently witnessed record numbers of under-represented groups among their student body, including BAME students and those from state schools. Despite efforts to enhance diversity through various public policies, increased diversity may not necessarily equate to a sense of belonging, as elite institutions, by their very definition, were originally built upon the exclusion of certain groups, including my participants. My research seeks to shift the focus from diversity to belonging, advocating that students from under-represented backgrounds should feel welcomed and accepted for who they are, rather than feeling the need to conform and fit in into these spaces. This brings about further discussions on transforming elite higher education spaces without compromising intellectual quality as well as embracing new non-hegemonic perspectives. Moreover, examining best practices from Brazil and the UK can facilitate mutual learning, where universities in one country can benefit from the successful practices of the other. Contact: amd218@cam.ac.uk
Cambridge Latin American Research in Education Collective 