About GSWS Visiting Scholars

Purpose

The Visiting Scholar Program is intended for scholars interested in research relating to gender, sexuality, or women who do not have an affiliation with the University of Pittsburgh. Visiting scholars will gain a stimulating intellectual environment for pursuing their research and meeting others with similar interests. Applicants must have a terminal degree in their field. Unfortunately, we are seldom able to offer office space to Visiting Scholars.

Description

Each visiting scholar will be selected for up to a two-semester term. Preference is given to those working on topics related to research interests of our Program faculty. Two to four visiting scholars will be selected. Visiting scholars will have University library and computer privileges. Each visiting scholar will present a formal colloquium and will become involved in our activities. Visiting scholars may apply for external grant funding.

Application Procedure

Please submit the following materials:

  • A brief statement of what you would like to do within the proposed dates of position and why our program at Pitt is a good fit for your work
  • A curriculum vitae
  • Copies of recent or significant publications
  • Needs assessment (library privileges, etc.)
  • Names of at least two people who may be contacted for letters of reference
  • If relevant:  names of any Pitt faculty members with whom you hope to make contact or collaborate
  • Proposed start date 

Selection Criteria

  • Relevance of the proposed project for our program
  • Demonstrated research ability
  • Evidence that the position would be helpful for career development
  • Ph.D. or equivalent in research experience

There is no application deadline per se: we consider applications during the academic year on a rolling basis, though appointments must begin 9/1 or 1/1.

Please send applications electronically to gsws@pitt.edu.

Recent Visiting Scholars

PJ Patella-Rey, PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of Maryland (academic year 2017-2018)

Sarah Hansenhansen.sarahew@gmail.com (academic year 2017-2018)  

Karen Frost-Arnold, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Hobart & William Smith Colleges (spring 2017)

Amanda Anderson (academic year 2016-2017)

Patricia M. Ulbrich, Ph.D. (academic year 2015-2016)

Dr. Ulbrich has over 25 years of experience in teaching, research, program development and evaluation in the fields of higher education and human services. She received a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Illinois and completed an NIMH post-doctoral fellowship in social psychology at the University of Indiana. Her research has focused on gender, race, and class disparities in health and social statuses. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology, and worked to integrate issues of race, class and gender into the curriculum at the University of Miami and the University of Akron. She has published over a dozen articles in professional journals and co-edited the first electronic database of readings for women's studies courses.

As a Senior Research Associate at Adagio Health in Pittsburgh, Dr. Ulbrich designed, implemented and evaluated an innovative project to introduce routine screening for domestic violence in rural family planning clinics in southwestern Pennsylvania. She served in an advisory capacity to both the Center for Disease Control and the Office of Population Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also collaborated with a family planning agency in Philadelphia to secure NIH funding to study differential access to emergency contraception in Pennsylvania.

Working as a community volunteer, she provided the strategic leadership to envision the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania, conducted research on the status of women in the counties (eleven counties in the Pittsburgh region) as a needs assessment for the foundation and served as President of the founding Board of Directors. She received the Sociologists for Women in Society 2002 Feminist Activist Award for her work at Adagio Health and The Women and Girls Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors at Pittsburgh Action Against Rape.

While she was starting the Foundation, Dr. Ulbrich learned that Pittsburgh was home to influential leaders of the women's movement and pioneering feminist organizations during the latter part of the 1900s. Working with the Thomas Merton Center, she designed a project to document oral histories with leading feminists on digital video and created a multimedia exhibit to raise awareness about this inspiring aspect of our region's history. The project, In Sisterhood: the Women's Movement in Pittsburgh, was selected as a regional project of the Community Connections Initiative to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Pittsburgh.

Santiago Fouz Hernández, PhD and Profesor, Durham University, UK (spring 2015)

Prof. Fouz Hernandez is a researcher of Spanish film, with a focus on questions of gender, masculinity, and sexuality.

Kerrie Kauer, Ph.D. (academic year 2014-2015)

Dr. Kauer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Long Beach. She received her PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2007 in Sport and Cultural Studies. Broadly, her research has focused on gender, sexuality, and embodiment as it relates to sport, human movement, and the body. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in sport studies and women’s studies at CSULB, Smith College, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has published over a dozen articles in professional journals and invited book chapters, and has presented her work at numerous professional conferences, workshops, and trainings.

As an Associate Professor at CSULB, Dr. Kauer implemented “Service Learning for Social Justice” into the Women in Sport curriculum and was named Co-Director for the Center for Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity. She has served on the editorial board for the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, and has held leadership positions for the Western Society for the Physical Education of College Women organization, and served on several committees for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. Additionally, she has been an invited reviewer for 2 reports for the Status of Women in the Olympics for the Women’s Sport Foundation.

Dr. Kauer is also an activist with the organization, Off The Mat, Into the World, and in 2012 she raised over $10,000 through a community yoga event to bring rescue and resources to women and children who are victims of sex trafficking in India. Her activism has a reciprocal relationship with her research on embodied social justice and she is continuing to conduct research in this area. Her community engagement has extended its work in Pittsburgh where she serves as a professional leadership mentor for the non-profit organization, Strong Women, Strong Girls. She also teaches yoga and is working to establish connections for brining yoga and mindfulness techniques into underserved areas.

Ana Stevenson (academic year 2014-2015)

Ana Stevenson is in the final stages of her doctoral dissertation at The University of Queensland, Australia.  Working with Associate Professor Chris Dixon, her research focuses on the way the woman-slave analogy was mobilised within nineteenth-century social reform movements – especially the antislavery, women’s rights and dress reform movements – so as to emphasise the need to address women’s oppression.

Recently, Ana has been the recipient of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium award from the Massachusetts Historical Society, and has been a Summer Scholar at the Australian National University and The University of Queensland.  Ana has worked as a sessional lecturer and tutor in American history and global history at The University of Queensland, a communications and media studies tutor at St. John’s College and an archivist at King’s College.  During 2013, she co-edited the special edition of Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, with Dr. Alana Jayne Piper.  Ana has published on the rhetoric of nineteenth-century American social movements and media representations of Australian’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.  She has also contributed to the Queensland Historical Atlas website.  Currently, Ana is part of the Lilith Collective, which publishes the Australian Women’s History Network’s Lilith: A Feminist History Journal.

Ana earned a Bachelor of Communication (with distinction) from Central Queensland University and First Class Honours in American history from The University of Queensland.  Her honours research, which considered the popular representations of gender and race in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Gone with the Wind(1936), received the Warden’s Medal for Academic Excellence from St John’s College.  During 2014, Ana was awarded an AHA/CAL Bursary for the Australian Historical Association Conference and the Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association Postgraduate Travel Fellowship.

Her current project looks at the way sex-race analogy was mobilised within the twentieth-century feminist movement.  Ana is also interested in transnational feminisms, popular culture, media representations of female politicians and the use of the slavery analogy in transnational women’s historical writing.

Jessie B. Ramey, Ph.D. (academic year 2014-2015)

Dr. Ramey is a women’s historian, with a focus on working families and U.S. social policy. Most recently, she was an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) New Faculty Fellow in Women’s Studies and History here at the University of Pittsburgh. Her book, Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages (University of Illinois Press, 2012), won three national awards: the Lerner-Scott Prize in women’s history from the Organization of American Historians, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association, and the John Heinz Award from the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has also published journal articles on gender narratives in U.S. death penalty cases; working class fatherhood; and youth activism.

Dr. Ramey earned an MA in women’s history from Sarah Lawrence College, where she received the school’s Gerda Lerner Award, and a Ph.D. in history from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also worked in academic program development (as the Founding Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s undergraduate research program), the arts (running her own theater company), and philanthropy (as Assistant Director of the Westchester Community Foundation / New York Community Trust, where she managed the Women and Girls Fund).

Her current project examines policy debates in U.S. public education. This work builds on Dr. Ramey’s role as one of the leaders of a grassroots social justice movement for public education. She writes about public education policy on her blog “Yinzercation,” which has over 2,500 subscribers and followers on social media and serves as an on-line home for the movement. Her articles are frequently published in the national media including the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and AlterNet.org. And she is a founding member of the new coalition Great Public Schools (GPS) Pittsburgh.

Dr. Ramey regularly presents at conferences, speaks with the media, and lectures to academic groups as well as community organizations. She has twice been recognized by the White House with invitations to meet with President Obama’s senior policy advisors. In addition, she is an advisor to Pittsburgh’s new mayor on public education policy issues and a member of his transition committee. The University of Pittsburgh recognized Dr. Ramey’s scholarship and education advocacy work with the 2013 Iris Marion Young Award for Political Engagement.