Visiting Scholars

Our 2024-2025 Visiting Scholars

As a Visiting Scholar, Dr. Choi will be submitting articles for her study about gender-based discrimination in Korean surgery and her study about sexual harassment and burnout in surgery. This research was funded and supported by the Korean Surgical Society. In these studies, she is focusing on the socio-cultural contexts in which professional women are faced with unreasonable situations. She will also be working on articles based on the data she collected about survivors of sexual assaults, who often face victim blaming, shaped largely by the sociocultural context. She is exploring factors that shape the culture of victim blaming and rape myths, and the resilience of sexual assault survivors.

As a Visiting Scholar, Caronia will continue work on her current book project, “Permeable Boundaries: Intimacy and Activism in the Work of Women Writers of Italian Descent,” which draws from her archival research in the US, UK, and Italy and focuses on the neglected fiction, non-fiction, and plays women writers of Italian descent from Australia, Italy, the UK, and the US. Additionally, Nancy is a founding member of the Italian Diaspora Archive Research Map Project (IDARM), which is the first archival project of its kind in the fields of Italian American and Italian Diaspora studies. The project focuses on creating collections network of Italian American and Italian Diaspora studies. The project focuses on creating a collections network of Italian and Italian American material culture and other ephemera of western PA, OH, and West Virginia tristate region. IDARM was awarded an NEH Foundations Humanities Collections and Resources grant. In the fall, Nancy will be part of IDARM’s continued work to identify institutions, to create collaborative and on-going networks, and to assist institutions as they catalog and digitalize resources.

As a Visiting Scholar, Dr. Testa will be co-editing a volume titled Iconic: Drag Celebrity & Queer Community, exploring drag as a critical performance practice and looking at the ways in which queer resistance and community organizing are embedded in local drag scenes and notions of celebrity. He is also working on an article based on oral interviews for the Dallas Way project, entitled, “Lord, Help the Mister: Queer Spiritual Activism, Community Archiving, and the DFW Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” and another article about the short novel Grief, by Andrew Holleran, complicating narratives of AIDS often dominated by white gay men.  

Past Scholars

She is an advocate for inclusivity within creative teams and furthering representation of BIPOC and queer voices in the arts. Her understanding of space and how and where we feel 'at-home' is shaped heavily by her immigrant parents and her mixed Chinese & Ashkenazi Jewish family. Sasha received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama. At Chatham, Sasha will be expanding her research on theater design working on productions for a number of local theater companies. As a woman in majority white, male spaces that predominate in the theater industry, she will be using her time with the Women’s Institute to advance women’s leadership with a focus on BIPOC stories and queer theater

This project argues that foodways are an important mode of analysis because they reveal gender, racial, classed, and religious aspects of Muslim women’s community groups. By taking one iconic dish such as biryani, this project develops an intersectional and transnational analysis of how Muslim Indian women in the United States maintain ethno-religious identity. She demonstrates how Muslim women carry on these traditions not only by cooking but also through provisioning and passing on recipes from one generation to the next. Cooking together, eating together, and passing on these dishes constitute an important part of resistance work for women of color and have an important history for racialized women in the United States. Dr. Ternikar is also working on a co-edited volume with Stephanie Y. Evans, “Transnational Culinarian,” which brings together over a dozen female scholars of color who work on food.

Dr. David Blackmore (2022-2023) is Professor of English and Founding Co-Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at New Jersey City University (NJCU).  Located in Jersey City, NJCU is a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution with an exceptionally diverse, predominantly first-generation student body.

Dr. Blackmore was born in Pittsburgh and spent the first half of his childhood in the Pittsburgh area before moving north to rural Kane, Pennsylvania.  He received his AB in English from Harvard University and his MA and PhD in English from the University of California, Los Angeles.  He began working in queer studies at UCLA, where his dissertation examined masculinity anxiety and contemporary discourses of sexuality in early 20th-century U.S. fiction.

As a Visiting Scholar, Dr. Blackmore will continue to pursue his two current long-term research projects, one on queer literature during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) and the other on innovative pedagogies at urban Hispanic-Serving Institutions.  Dr. Blackmore’s most recent publications in these fields include the article “Wild Times Ending Badly:  Gasparino Damata’s Os solteirões and the Censorship of Queer Fiction under the Brazilian Military Regime” in Chasqui:  Revista de literatura latinoamericana and the chapter “Global Approaches to the HEL Course:  An International Perspective” in the Modern Language Association volume Teaching the History of the English Language.

At Chatham, Dr. Blackmore will also work on his memoir-in-progress Chemical Works Road, about his queer childhood in Western Pennsylvania and his return to the region as a queer adult.  Concurrently with his Visiting Scholar appointment at Chatham, Dr. Blackmore will be a visiting Center Associate at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Sharon Higginbothan (2020-2023) is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Bethlehem Haven, a women’s shelter, which works to take women experiencing homelessness to housing and also supports their ability to become self-sufficient.

Dr. Higginbothan earned her PhD in Health Care Ethics/Bioethics from Duquesne University where she did her dissertation on female genital cutting and the ethics of women’s choice and control over bodies as part of cultural practices.

As a Visiting Scholar, she will work to turn this research into a book manuscript. At Duquesne she also facilitated Community-Engaged Teaching and Research workshops. She has worked throughout Pittsburgh with other organizations and universities, with a focus on cultural change, equity, inclusion, Respect for Cultural Diversity and Care.

Dr. Higginbothan also has a Master of Divinity form Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a Master of Library and Information Science. She has taught courses and presented and facilitated at many conferences. Dr. Higginbothan received the 2019 New Pittsburgh Courier Woman of Excellence Award as well as the Mentor of the Year Award in 2014 from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health. Most recently, Dr. Higginbothan was appointed to the Mayor’s Gender Equity Commission.  

Dr. Cheryl Hall-Russell (2020-2023) is President and Chief Cultural Consultant for the consulting firm BW3 (Black Women, Wise Women LLC) where she applies her research on African-American women and intersectional leadership engaging in social justice work as well as DEI planning with nonprofits and corporations.

She earned her doctorate in Leadership and Administration focusing on how Black women executive leaders navigate oppressive systems. Her dissertation examined women of color who had already experienced great career success, analyzing their coping mechanisms and how they built protective resilience patterns that allowed them to flourish.

As a Visiting Scholar, Dr. Hall-Russell will continue to study coping and resilience for her book manuscript in progress entitled, “Downshifting: Black Women on the Road to Authentic Leadership.” This research is aimed at emerging Black female leaders who need to enter leadership not as women shifting into majority standards to be accepted, but as women who come in well-educated and capable, comfortable bringing their cultural lenses to the table.

Dr. Hall-Russell also has a Masters in Public Affairs and an MA in Philanthropic Studies. Before launching her company, Dr. Hall-Russell was the CEO of several Pittsburgh and Indianapolis based nonprofits. She has published books and journal articles on ethnic philanthropy, and presented widely at conferences.  She is also a podcaster and produces and moderates of an online public affairs program.

Dr. Erin Tunney (2019-2020) has a Ph.D. from Emory University in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and an MA from American University in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. She has published research on violence against women in post-conflict Northern Ireland and post-Apartheid South Africa as well as efforts to transform militarized masculinity in youth work in Northern Ireland. She has taught Women’s Studies, Sociology and International Peace and Conflict Resolution courses for Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Emory University in Atlanta, and North-West University in South Africa.

She recently returned to her hometown of Pittsburgh after working as a Researcher for the Institute for Conflict Research in Northern Ireland. There, she led research on gaps within peacebuilding training of European Union personnel, advocated for greater sensitivity toward gender and culture within trainings, and wrote reports for the EU on best practices in peacebuilding training.

A long-time advocate for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, she has supported women who have experienced such violence at Women’s Aid Armagh-Down, conducted trainings and workshops to educate the public on these issues through the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, and served as Vice-Chair on the Board of Belfast-Lisburn Women’s Aid. Additionally, she has published research on efforts to combat dating violence through bystander awareness education on college campuses.

Dr. Nicole M. Elias (2019-2020) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and Co-Director of Women in the Public Sector at John Jay College. Dr. Elias earned her MPA and Ph.D. in Public Administration and Affairs from the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech.

While at Virginia Tech, she also received the Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Certificate and served as managing editor of Administration & Society for three years. Her research focuses on social equity in public administration and policy, with an emphasis on the ethics of administration, management of human resources in public organizations, and public policy impacts on different populations. She regularly collaborates with practitioners in government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

She is a Research Fellow with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) and Research Partner with the New York City Commission on Gender Equity. Dr. Elias held a Research Fellowship at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office and served as the Lead Faculty Advisor to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on the 2016 Government-wide Inclusive Diversity Strategic Plan. She is the winner of the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Social Justice and co-recipient of the 2018-19 Inaugural Presidential Student-Faculty Research Collaboration Award for her work examining gender equity in municipalities.

Dr. Elias is the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, government reports, and practitioner training modules on sexual orientation, gender identity, and means of fostering greater representation and inclusion in public service. Her recent work appears in Administrative Theory & Praxis and Teaching Public Administration. Dr. Elias is the co-editor of a special issue symposium on the future of women in public administration appearing in Administration & Society. Her current research projects include two co-edited books: Ethics for Contemporary Bureaucrats: Navigating Constitutional Crossroads, to be published in 2020 and Handbook of Gender and Public Administration, to be published in 2021.