On the Importance of Spatiality and Intersectionality: Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Undergraduate Engineering Experiences Through Critical Collaborative Ethnographic Site Visits

This talk will highlight the work our research team has completed as a part of an NSF-funded study entitled: Invisible Gendered Experiences: Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Student Experiences in Engineering Education. There is a dearth of knowledge surrounding transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) student experiences in engineering, and much of the [limited] available research on TGNC STEM student lives assumes a universalized trans experience, not taking into account intersecting marginal identities that can affect a student’s performance and sense of belonging in engineering or STEM environments. Our study addresses significant research gaps in Engineering Education that have prioritized cisgender LGBTQIA+ experiences over transgender students' experiences. We used critical collaborative ethnographic site visits to center TGNC positionality and community-centered research ethics. Critical ethnographic methods put critical theories into action by rooting the participant’s experiences and study observations in larger global justice frameworks at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, culture, and disability. This framing places the researcher with the subjects to co-create results from the fieldwork, allowing students to retain power in the relationship with the researcher and exert some control over their portrayal in the research products. This talk will address some of the findings of our research and the challenges associated with conducting research that is deemed highly political in these turbulent times.