More About Me

I was the first in my immediate family to travel abroad, the first to get a college degree, and the first to become a doctor (not medical but for cognitive and cultural research). Multiple of my family's surnames mean variations of "servant" and my last name is spelled the way it is because my ancestors were illiterate. One side of my family is from very rural areas of Appalachia (northern and central area primarily) and on the other side we are German-American (very rural area of the South, some consider it midwestern). 

I often think about the fact that I can never truly understand the lives of my own family members and community members at the most basic level of human experience — what and how they see, touch, hear, and remember may be fundamentally different than me. We may not even be aware of it within ourselves (awareness, sense of and ability to control). This informs my research and the questions that I ask. 

My family

To further contextualize, my immediate family has a long history of working in labor-intensive jobs, particularly within rural, impoverished regions of America where industry left or laid them off. This is the type of industry often detailed as being extractive and harmful to communities/environments. In fact, my ex-father-in-law is an environmental lawyer that helps advocate for workers' rights. My family didn't own companies, but they do take pride in their work. They were/are underground coal miners, steel mill workers, farmers, maids, factory line workers, printing press workers, welders, mechanics, construction workers, and lunch ladies. Many of them have experienced physical and cognitive health effects as a result of these jobs. Some of these are life-threatening and some are currently dying from them still (e.g., a form of cancer caused by ink, chronic lung issues due to poor ventilation). Although the coal mine my German great-grandfather worked in didn't explode, the one in the town over did. Many of my family members were also members of the U.S. military.

As a diesel mechanic, my dad took on two to three times the amount work (number of semi-trucks, or fleet size) compared to his co-workers, almost always worked nights and often double-shifts, took on extra days, and would work nearly every holiday except Christmas. His schedule was not completely up to him, so I rarely saw him, but he would wake up and quickly eat dinner with me before going to work for the night with a long commute. I have listened to hours of stories about how engines and trucks are composed and how they work, and the difficulties of his job in terms of health, safety, and logistics. My dad called his grandma every day on his long drive to work and updated me on her life. I have fond memories of my great grandma taking care of me and spending time with her in her trailer out in the woods of Appalachia. A few things I can remember about her are: 1) She took in whatever animals she could — more than she really could (birds, fish, dogs, cats, a goat all at once). My sense of smell is likely dulled by tobacco exposure throughout my childhood, but I still remember the smell fondly (kind of like how I like the smell of gasoline and oil — I was used to it young). 2) She made me old-style hot chocolate, although to many it is not. My dad and grandma described to me her life, and my dad his upbringing, being taken care of by her and running wild in the woods behind her trailer often. Some things I remember them telling me about her are: 1) She was afraid of other people her entire life, so much so that she'd walk for hours home from work instead of taking the bus, but she loved nature. 2) She lost her hearing during a thunder storm because the telephone line got hit by lightning. My dad dramatically changed her life by buying her a home as she started to get older. This separated her from nature, brought her closer to people she feared (neighbors), but also protected her as she started to deteriorate and could not care for herself alone in her trailer. She never had a hearing aid. 

My mom used to curl her hair just to tie it up to go weld, but didn't wear her mask. She was laid off when I was child, and then worked as a beloved lunch lady. As a lunch lady, she was exposed to pressure cooker explosions, leaving scars up and down her arms, and inhaled smoke. When you cook at home, you may experience something similar when you fry (the oil is too hot — you may not recognize that it's burning) and so did she. She constantly touched her eyes and often struggled, sometimes for minutes at a time, with being able to breath. She frequently had bronchitis. This was likely because of a mix of ventilation issues at both jobs and the fact that she didn't wear her protective mask. When she speaks and others speak, her inability to breath constantly interrupts, and everyone gets frustrated with her, including me. We were used to it and didn't understand — neither did she. Everyone told her to go to the doctor, except for my dad and I — she frequently went but they only treated the symptoms. It could be easily blamed on everyday exposure or other positions held. My family takes pride in their careers and workplaces, and they don't get asked to be involved in large suits against the companies that caused it. For my mom, it was a way to support her daughter. Her mother who she called almost every day (talking for about an hour each time) had a series of mini strokes that were ignored, was given "memory pills", and then died from a larger stroke. They both have an autoimmune disease that is genetic that I will likely inherit. It affects your joints, making labor-intensive positions even more difficult to hold. Her dad is currently dying of cancer due to chemical exposure via the ink he worked with as a printing press worker, including for the local newspaper. He himself loved the job, took pride in it, and blamed it on the twigs he picked up in the yard recently. When I told someone with intimate knowledge of environmental law and more resources that he was diagnosed and why, they told me it was the most treatable form of cancer. He will be going to chemo until the day he dies.

In addition to their work as members of the military and civilians in working-class positions, a great deal of my extended family works/volunteers within churches preaching and doing charitable work across the Eastern United States (South & Appalachia), which many relocate for. This means providing food, clothing, and temporary housing to anyone who seeks it in the communities they are within. I call myself agnostic now, but believe I have the rest of my life to understand spirituality for myself. When I was young, I was interested in learning meditation and my mom begged me to not become a Buddhist. My family has also taken me to see a Hare Krishna temple in their area of Appalachia and joked that I might join. I tell people that some of my family are my model for "good Christians" on both sides — one Catholic and the other Protestant. Some of them frequently adopt within the United States and some have from Haiti. 

My family throughout my life has often asked if I'm embarrassed of them, and my friends have been surprised to learn how "country" they are from photos. I've been asked if I was raised in a barn and told it was strange that I knew how to twirl my pasta. I was embarrassed of my teeth as a kid and forced myself to not smile when I could remember not to, but had the chance to fix them — others didn't and still don't smile most of the time. My own family has referred to themselves as "rednecks", but they don't use the term "kin", and some have called them "white trash". Some enjoyed reading Hillbilly Elegy. 

On my German American side, I grew up hearing stories of taking care of animals on the farm, pig hooves and tails floating in soup, and lots of jokes about how smelly sauerkraut is (my grandma and I liked it but my mom doesn't — it was from a can). The Fourth of July means bratwursts for me and hotdogs/hamburgers for some of them. Before my grandmother died, I heard her tell me stories of putting coal dust on her face to dress as her German coal-miner father for Halloween alongside her sisters and getting the last of the bath water and hating it. I watched her cry after she tried to teach me how to make cabbage rolls like her mom. She couldn't get the taste right because her mother's recipes were lost. My grandfather still struggles to understand his adoption from a German family to a German-American family within the United States. I tried to help him and my grandmother figure it out during my early adulthood, but couldn't understand the records. Part of the struggle is knowing that his family didn't want him, both for him and me as his grandchild. 

My grandmother worked at the closest grocery store until she retired, but lived in what was essentially a food desert. She was kept from unionizing by the company and suspected they attempted prevent her retirement by suddenly offering a promotion. The only place to get food nearby was a gas station. There were few restaurants locally and those that were there were not always the best, with multiple having flies in their restaurant/buffet. It was much further out to get to somewhere else, but my family went went where they could. This was true for medical care too. 

The knowledge, values, and skills my family has held across generations has often been ignored and devalued. My family is incredibly smart and talented and their interests would surprise many people. In some cases, they hid their own intelligence from others throughout their own lives. Many of them have been socially mobile (ability to geographically relocate and to move from a laborious position working with your hands to one where you no longer do). My dad is a diesel mechanic, but he has always been really good with coding and computer hardware — sort of the same for his dad who worked in a steel mill and was in the army (now 99% disabled from chemical exposure). My mom was a welder and a lunch lady, but she loves "[eye]-talian" opera (she would wake me up singing it — I hated it), 'authentic' Chinese food recipes from Chinese people online, Spanish-language soap operas, and British costume dramas. Her dad was raised on a farm and worked for a printing press, but he's incredibly talented at drawing and extremely good a puzzles. That's just to name a few. 

According to some definitions, I and my family are Southern, Appalachian, German, and/or immigrant(s). 

According to my mom in Kindergarten, "what do you mean, we're American." 

My Childhood & Adolescence

The Southern town that I grew up in started rural and became more urban, and it was one of the fastest growing cities in America while also being an extremely affordable, low-income, medically-underserved area (and near a large metropolitan city). I was born on a military base, grew up in a military town, and many of my family members and friends were/are members of the U.S. military. It was also very racially diverse compared to most of America (likely because of the military influence that some community members resisted initially). As a child, my family members and their church friends across the sides of my family took care of me when my parents were away — some of this being a necessity due to the military. However, I did not as a traditional family unit relocate. I was also taken care of at the closest daycare, sometimes sleeping there with my best friend at the time. I still have a set of faded scars on my cheek from my time there — it has since closed down due to issues adjacent to neglect.

While living in this area with inadequate medical care, I experienced health issues that felt out of my own and my family's control. For example, my mom told me that I had my ear drum popped out or scratched as a child  by a doctor without an actual medical degree (I still remember running to the car with blood gushing out and holding my ear against my radio to hear the music). She said she found out in the newspaper. Hearing tests were given at my school when I was much older, but I never felt it interfered with my education. I sometimes would mistakenly raise the wrong hand or switch back and forth until I got it right during them. I was also never taken to the eye doctor. I struggled with issues of fainting and potential neurological/heart issues throughout my life, but was never able to get a diagnosis. In some cases, test results were read wrong to my mother, and she sobbed to me thinking I would die young because of the misdiagnosis. Others in my community were also misdiagnosed and dealt with inappropriate care. 

I myself am a survivor of domestic violence and abuse, and both abuse and addiction run in my family. According to research I was exposed to in undergraduate and graduate school, this is more common for those in communities similar to my own. I was exposed to this and was friends with others in my community who dealt with similar issues from a young age. I had to learn that this wasn't normal when I got to college. I remember the police being called to my house when I was very young, and many other repeated traumatic events I will not describe here. While I was reading, drawing, and doing school work, I was usually listening to yelling. I was never removed from my home, but friends of mine were. I remember losing some friends as they were adopted from the foster care system and being sad I wouldn't see them again. I am now diagnosed with PTSD. What I experienced as a kid and what my family experienced as kids is normalized among my family and is often accepted culturally, with the abuse I experienced compared to 'worse' experiences.

I had a very strong accent as a young kid. I was given phonics to change the way I spoke. This started in kindergarten alongside a Mexican-American student. It is possible they may even have thought we were both delayed and/or non-English speakers, but they did not tell us. I may not have been taught to count and was only taught the alphabet by my family. I often pretended to sleep during nap time, and may have learned how to count by listening to another student count to 100 and copying the pattern of 1-10 myself afterwards (when I went up to count it was a mix of by memory and pattern-recognition). More structured, computerized phonics ended for me in fifth grade. I would check out 15-30 books a week from the public library, sometimes maxing out both my library card and my mom's. As an adolescent I read classics aloud and laughed when I switched back to my place-based accents, and further adjusted my accent in college. Even as an adult, I think about the way I say the word "the" frequently as I speak to people in my personal life and work life — even when I am alone (think about how often you say it). Some amalgamation of my old accent(s) still slips out and I often still slow down my speech too much for Northerners (including supervisors who sometimes grow frustrated during meetings). 

I took an IQ test at age 10 and it was thrown away because I got every question right. I thought this was normal and was taught to be humble — I now realize that it is part of who I am. Thinking back, I was likely initially given the IQ test because all of the girls in my class sat around me in a circle while I completed the math problems and taught them how to get there. I was also informally individually tutoring a friend of mine with an undiagnosed learning disability in the class, and drawing highly realistic portraits of animals that were displayed in our class's "portable", meaning trailer. I took advanced classes from then on and continued formally and informally tutoring others, some with learning disabilities. For example, teaching reading to kindergarteners as a fifth grader for the school and teaching algebra to a sixth grader as an older middle schooler. I still get angry that I have to specify that their intelligence is not the same as their disability, but some of them had literally been called stupid by teachers until identifying what their disability was (in one case, they were allowed to take AP courses after diagnosis). 

I was the only one in my neighborhood that ran around barefoot, but at a younger age there was still a corn and a wheat field to play in (others stole it to eat) and cows down the street. Neighbors moved in and out pretty constantly and some were in and out of jail. I had the opportunity to learn from and befriend people who had lived in Japan, Korea, Germany, and many areas within the contiguous and non-contiguous United States (Hawaiian and Samoan natives and non-natives, and non-native Alaskan), and many people whose families were also immigrants at different generational stages (e.g., German, Indian, Mexican) or who were international adoptees. There were also several exchange students from Western and Eastern Europe (e.g., Germany, Montenegro, and Russia). 

I was raised alongside two other families that were like "kin" — one even called each others' parents "auntie" and "uncle". I wasn't comfortable doing so because I was afraid of adults, but I often referred to close friends as being like sisters and brothers to me. I was an only child. One of these families was also German-American (relatively recent German immigrants generationally) and the mother worked at a local German bakery, so she brought their bread to our Thanksgivings. They were my first introduction to Nutella and German chocolate. At the other family's house, we watched WWE and anime, and ate 'bad ramen'. The sister I was closest to became a Japanese translator. I remember thinking she was too obsessed with Japan and watching my parents make fun of her for it. At the same time, I looked up to her as she excelled in language learning and showed me. I was kind of the same with Western European culture, and I now think that most people are across the globe with at least one place. For some reason, we all separate ourselves, try to demonstrate how much more we know, and ridicule each other for even trying to understand differences and commonalities. For Americans, this is a particularly difficult thing to navigate among each other and in comparison to other nations — we are too far in distance and many of us cannot afford to "holiday" somewhere abroad. 

I was extremely different from every member of my family, and my parents asked me why I couldn't just be normal. I was intensely interested in science, art, literature, and understanding human beings. When I forgot my clothes in gym class, I read Freud; another teacher nicknamed me Renoir because I read his biography in that class. I was obsessed with what represented being 'cultured', or rather what the lower class and upper class knew of Western Europe and rich Americans in major metropolitan cities that drove fashion, visual art, literature, and so on. In my spare time, I badly translated the lyrics of obscure French rap artists' songs into English. I also watched university course lectures posted online for fun. I drew constantly. A commissioned artwork I did for a school administrator was displayed in the school for veterans day and another piece I did won a local award and was shown locally. I constantly journaled, wrestling with the fact that engaging with cultural products and making them was seen as markers of being smarter and better than others in some way. 

Our appearance is often obsessed over across the world and used to extract some form of information about who we are. I have always been taller than other women around me and thin compared to people within my communities (partly because I taught myself to eat healthy as a high schooler). Once I got to high school, my family and acquaintances started telling me I should be a movie star or a model. They had only seen them on TV and in magazines, like I had, but at the time America's Next Top Model was extremely popular. I grew angry at beauty standards, I read a great deal about them and related mythology/folk tales that shared commonalities across the globe, and I made visual art about it constantly. In rural areas, fame seems to come to someone based on their appearance — it is a way out and form of social mobility (even if you don't want to admit you want it). I would sometimes walk the hallways wearing high heels while reading scientific non-fiction or classic literature. 

I also was/am bisexual in the South. I was the second woman in my school to buy a ticket to prom with another woman, and I helped her pick out her suit — she was my friend and out at the time. We first met in class when she expressed interest in dating me. I wasn't interested, and we were best friends afterwards without issue. Knowing she was gay, she was not allowed to spend the night at my house, but I was allowed to spend the night at hers. Throughout childhood, and before I met this friend, my mom repeatedly asked if I was gay and my dad tried to keep my away from LTBQ+ media. When I came out to my parents, my mom sobbed and was worried I'd be going to hell. My bisexuality is not an important part of my identity, but I am perceived differently depending on what I look like, how I speak, and who I am interacting with. 

My community and my family were politically diverse. Within my own family, I often attempted and in some cases succeeded in getting my parents to not use certain slur words. I attempted to organize an event for trans rights in high school, but was prevented from doing so by my family threatening to take away social media. An acquaintance of mine continued it and let me know. When Colin Kaepernick took the knee during an NFL game to make a statement about racial inequality and police brutality, my class and teacher ridiculed him and criticized it. The next day, I sat during the pledge of allegiance, and another student screamed in my face "do you hate America?". No one laughed. Most of our family members were veterans, including me. There were no issues between us afterwards. JROTC was popular in my school, and my friend and I had laughed in shock previously at another student in a leadership position screaming "you're not special" in a younger student's face. I was later voted most likely to become president alongside a male student.

My family and I rarely attended reunions on the side that could hold them. They were not recent immigrants and could more easily trace their history and my parents were far away and rarely took a day off. When we did attend, we were the only ones who did not sing along with the hymns (my mom and I didn't know the words). I have received several bibles and many prayer beads from older family members. I was friends with people who were Wiccan and had identified as Satanists as an adolescent (it is not what it sounds like from the name and thus was not worth mentioning to my family). The "occult" was blocked on my technology as a child. My cousin from whom I grew further apart with age texted me "God is not dead" when I was a teenager. Not knowing it was her, I replied "Neitzche would argue otherwise" and laughed because I was reading him at the time. She replied it was her, explained it was a film, and I then watched the film she was referring to. I wondered about whether it was propaganda at the time; I liked it some but did not tell her I had watched it. When my aunt took my senior photos, she complimented me on my ability to dress fashionably while being modest. I incorporated many of the values within the bible into myself, including some sense of modesty. However, I don't think about it as something I was forced into and there is an internal conflict there still. And I'm sure to some, I am not meeting what their standards are for many of the values that come from the text, practice, and varied cultural expectations. To others not guided by a religious text, I may also not be meeting theirs. Every once in a while I go to a church, sometimes when friends/acquaintances invite me, sometimes alone.

Our town was near Nashville and I loved country and rock music since I was very young. In middle school, my best friend at the time and I were the only two to raise our hands in the auditorium when asked if any of us like country music (context: this was after showing us "Red Solo Cup"'s music video to get us to not drink alcohol). I still like Christian rock (a lot of it I didn't know was Christian until told by my pastor uncle). I prefer punk music and started listening to it in elementary school. At our final choir performance before heading to high school, I was initially given a Joan Jett solo but instead was the lead "evil cowgirl" in the ending performance. I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a child. My prom was in the Opryland Hotel. When I later got to college, I laughed along with a girl who put on an accent to make extra tips in Nashville. Even now, I still have a lot more to learn about what it means to share one's culture with the world, including when tourism is important to your area in order for it to thrive.  Before I left the South to go to graduate school in the North, my parents took me to Dollywood and Gatlinburg to say goodbye. I cried at Dollywood when I learned about her life, and my love for country was somewhat renewed. 

I knew that none of the people I knew were normal to each other. To me, my parents don't have accents, but I saw everyone else's reactions to them. But I did imitate my dad in correcting my mom's use of the word "wa(r)sher" as a kid. In college, I learned more about how certain forms of speaking/writing are prioritized and elevated above others, and I wrote about it with a focus on cross-cultural communication (between countries) while working for the writing center. I also wrote about intercultural contact between countries for the yearbook there. I will never again have an accent or set of behaviors that fit with a single place. I now better understand the way I write personally based on what I wrote as an undergraduate and the research I learned about in terms of cognition as a graduate student and faculty member.

I and others in my high school benefited from a governmental grant to support AP courses — it paid you back for taking them and passing and put you in the running to win a car locally. I took and passed nine. I got a full ride to a regional state university based on my score on the ACT. I had no guidance from counselors (there weren't enough for our school) in applying and didn't understand how to find scholarships or what I qualified for.

My Academic Life

In college, I encountered a psychological literature that felt like it didn't explain me, my family, our communities, or those of my friends new and old at all. At times, I grew angry because of it (privately), but mostly I was excited to discuss science and the humanities and their intersection. I was assumed to be the same as other people taking honors courses and knew no one who was similar to me. This is likely because of the social mobility I and my family had, and because I changed how I behaved further. However, I found LGBT+ community, most of us being from Appalachia and/or the South, and I found further community with international students and other honors students on campus. Throughout undergraduate and graduate school I worked many jobs (sometimes three at once while a full-time student) within and outside of the university, including retail and food service. 

I volunteered and participated in many extracurricular activities. For example, a couple times I helped lead refugees in going to health appointments at an all-day event in the community, I helped disseminate information about the campus office that guided students in applying for national scholarships and what kinds they could apply for as an ambassador, I volunteered at a health information event for the local community, I volunteered for a gifted students program (STEM focus) and girls in science day for young children, and I volunteered a couple times as an instructor for community members about archaeology (a sub-field of anthropology in which I took several courses). During these events I noticed things like the inability of a refugee resettlement site (city) to access enough translators to assist refugees, including but not limited to Tibet; instead, phone service translation was used. I also saw the impact educational events could have on community members, including entire families. Generally, I did not lead events, but instead volunteered my time, but I did hold leadership positions within and attend other extracurriculars. At the time, I considered nonprofit work as a future path, but found education was what I was most passionate about. 

During this period of my life, I benefited greatly from local cultural events and university courses. There was a large Bosnian population in the area and many refugees. I was able to eat food at a local Bosnian restaurant, attend Bosnian events at local museums (learning about their traditional and current music), and learned some standardized Arabic from a beloved teacher from Morocco. I regret not having more time for language learning throughout my life, but I enjoyed the opportunity for cultural exchange, sometimes finding it places I did not expect. For example, I met and became varying levels of close to international students from India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as I engaged with international student-focused programs. For example, I participated in "coffee talk" for students who were international and non-international to have conversations with one another. We talked in English and shared commonalities (e.g., animation from our childhoods). I tutored ESL, but found the writing center was more commonly used. I worked nights tutoring writing where many international students would come. One fellow student from China who often came to my hours shared with me some of her culture (including food and history) and would later tell me that I seemed very Chinese based on my own upbringing and emphasis on education. We would later reconnect after she was within her own career and I was within mine. At the same time, I eventually stopped tutoring because of sexual harassment from another student. 

Most of my time was focused on research, mostly unpaid, but eventually paid. In college, I flourished, and I had incredible research mentors. I first expressed interest in doing research after meeting with my advisor on my first day on campus, so I joined his lab after reviewing the others as a freshman. As part of a vision and haptics lab, I helped with projects that focused on sensory perception of different kinds of materials and natural objects with aging. I also had the chance to learn about and discuss sense of smell. I gained exposure to neuropsychological testing, data collection, hypothesis and design, data cleaning, and writing and editing as an undergraduate in the lab. I fell in love with research. I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity involved in the research process, including in the very design of stimuli and setups for testing, and interacting with older adult participants. I was a co-author on several publications as part of this experience, reading and providing feedback on the papers to the degree represented by authorship order. I will forever remember my time in this lab and my first research mentor fondly; the study of aging, and of perception and cognition as a whole still inspires me today. 

At the same time, I was passionate about studying culture, which was primarily focused on as part of my Anthropology major. I began meeting with an Anthropologist every other week as a freshman, defining a research project (idea, methods, and design) that tied to social and cultural interest of mine that time felt disconnected from cognition as of yet. I started gaining training in ethnographic methods as part of a course, contributing to a National Parks Service project, conducting archival research and semi-structured interviewing under guidance. I learned about the balance between wonder around ecological phenomena (i.e., the longest cave system in the world), the damage that can be done to the ecological phenomena themselves due to local cultural events, eco-tourism, and history, and the desire to support, maintain, and spread one's love for them. This was within the Southern United States, with participants sharing and preserving their culture in many ways, including through historical vehicles and discussions of tobacco farming. I also learned to ensure I was careful in my portrayal of the participants, communities, and cultural groups I worked with, avoiding application of other perspectives in defining them (including my own). While doing this, I applied to multiple grants and scholarships that I eventually received to support my study abroad and research project. I was asked to continue working on the project with the National Parks Service for pay, but instead worked retail in my hometown, not understanding that it was a possibility for me. This allowed me to save money for the study abroad program as well.

Several internal grants and scholarships then supported my study abroad as a sophomore, which was for completion of an independent research project focused on perceptions of Muslims within the United States and United Kingdom among dominant White-identifying populations (generally Christian and secular). I started with the UK. This was during the initial election of Donald Trump and proposal of the US "Muslim Ban", and was just after the UK's exit from the EU ("Brexit"). I then followed up in the US after things had settled a bit more. I watched the US presidential election from the UK and encountered a protest and discussions around Brexit and immigration in the UK. I also missed my cousin's wedding back home. I had a host family within the UK. In combination with them, recruitment flyers, and snowball sampling, I was able to speak with participants across a range of careers, levels of experience, and degrees of knowledge with regards to Muslim populations. At the highest, a woman who had worked in Saudi Arabia for years spoke of her time living there, and at the lowest, people spoke about seeing Muslim people wearing headwear (primarily the hijab and burka), sometimes in person and sometimes in media. In both locations, most Muslims were immigrants, and in both locations there were broader and regional political movements that intersected with the topic (sometimes raised outside of interviews). This included resistance to and support of regional mosques. They're generally rare and far in distance, especially within non-metropolitan areas like I focused upon. Some participants were exposed to American military influence, but did not raise topics of extremists or war. Generally, there was more knowledge of Christian cultural icons as compared to Muslim. During interviews, most participants referenced their lack of knowledge as being why they were afraid to interact. Some of this was a fear of offending the other person and not knowing what to say. They also spoke of an expected inability to communicate due to Muslim headwear (e.g., "it's like being on the telephone"). For example, as part of card sorting, participants were also exposed to images of the niqab, which they had seen before but generally categorized in a similar way to the burka. One way in which they sorted image sets of varying races and varying religious headwear was in terms of how American/British they were. Focus was generally on wanting to speak to female Muslims across conversations; fear of physical harm and terrorism was rare but raised. However, in popular media I analyzed separately (only in the UK as part of my study abroad program), this was frequently raised. This was my first independent ethnographic project and I experienced a conflict between living my normal life, attending classes, and traveling for the first time in my life, while also completing it — even crying at this. Generally, no one was aware I was conducting the study who was outside of it, and participants may have felt more free to express themselves to me as a White researcher who shared their identity, though they did not know my own family's immigrant history. Immigration itself was not usually a conversation during interviews, but was widespread in popular thought and the idea of what was American and British was who was more White and non-Muslim based on other methods. Perceptions appeared to be shared between religious and non-religious contexts and individual participants. 

While running analysis for this ethnographic project, I was taking statistics in psychology and sought help during the office hours of the instructor to ensure I understood the statistical tests at their most basic level and conducted the analyses properly. This instructor became another research mentor of mine, wanting to continue the project with me as we discussed prior results and ideas. As part of his visual and emotion lab, we then examined to what degree religious headwear impacted emotion perception, meaning I started tying ethnographic findings to cognition psychologically. Alongside him, we refined the methods; he was again innovative in his design of experimental tasks, reminding me of my prior mentor. While in the lab, I finally gained exposure to neuroscientific methods that I had been hoping to learn but hadn't been able to gain access to. In particular, I learned capping procedures, application of saline solution to an EEG headset, and watched monitoring of EEG data. I learned about the application of a new set of neurospychological tests, created stimuli and helped a graduate student in doing so, ran participants, and cleaned data for my own and other projects. I applied for and received a second internal research grant to run my second research study. He and another research mentor added on the project wanted to start by focusing on male stimuli and female participants only. Muslim headwear varies globally somewhat due to its existence across nations and cultures, like Christianity. The kufi and shmegh are two symbols associated with Muslim culture. At the time, these symbols were generally unassociated with aspects of war, politics, and exact national identity for participants in the region of study (Southern America) as compared to later political developments and the American zeitgeist. Symbols of terrorists and ideas of terrorists' headwear were different as imagined in the American mind according to the recent American media (i.e., a turban). The kufi and shmegh were compared to neutral head/facial coverings (doctor's cap/mask; this was before the COVID pandemic) on faces of varying races and emotional expressions. Participants were primed with these images before evaluating Chinese pictographs in terms of positivity and negativity. Pictographs are symbols for words seen as images for this study (exclusion of Chinese speakers) and generally by most native English speakers). Regardless, responses correlated with measures of anti-Muslim bias, suggesting it is not head or facial covering itself causing issues with implicit emotional perception (e.g., negative emotional priming). When presenting this work, I encountered some Muslim men from Saudi Arabia who were happy about the project and noticed at least one Muslim women who appeared frustrated. I later learned that another researcher on the project had a family member who was a victim of terrorism while we presented the work; others in attendance mentioned they thought it was the same as other forms of bias (i.e., racism) during the presentation. This other researcher then wanted to continue this work with female images as I continued with other projects in graduate school, but I am unsure what became of it. 

At the same time, I was offered a paid research position in the same Anthropology lab I was wrapping up my honors thesis within. As part of that, I contributed to my mentor's research, creating a database of agricultural journals and worduse associated with butchery, transcribing interviews with Dutch interviewees (sometimes they switched into Dutch and I had to sound it out best I could — I was unfamiliar with the phonetic alphabet) primarily concerning fermentation, community farming, and veganism. This was as part of an overall focus of my mentor on veganism and halal during a time when the partij voor de deiran (party for the animals) existed in the Netherlands and was proposing the ban of halal butcheries. This intersected with my previous work and with aspects of immigration and environmentalism. By the end of my time in college, this mentor trained me in multiple methods within cognitive and linguistic anthropology, leaving me with additional methodological and theoretical texts to take with me as I moved on to graduate school. 

I was passionate about neuroscience and cognition in connection to culture. Culture and cross-cultural interaction was generally only examined with regards to social factors and in terms of social cognition. I was reading a great deal of Neuroanthropology and cultural/cognitive psychology literature and was inspired by it. I wanted to understand the acquisition of culture itself cognitively and the effects culture has on cognition. I considered a mix of neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology programs. For example, I wanted to understand LTP (long-term potentiation), but it was too difficult to connect with higher-level brain processes due to the invasiveness of methods of its investigation. I started to get excited about studying memory because of class but was still fascinated by sensory perception. I wanted to understand how we acquire culture itself through natural acculturative change using cognitive methods. I was a semi-finalist for the Fulbright to the UK with the goal of working towards this using object arrays in coordination with a perception researcher. I did not recieve upon first submission and then was later a semi-finalist for a graduate fellowship to examine acculturation cognitively upon resubmission with a third researcher within memory. I interviewed for PhD and Masters programs at this niche intersection of disciplines and topics. All at the same time, I was beginning to reflect more personally and be taught by family members about our own immigrant history and ancestry.

Some of my research mentors knew I was the first in my family to go to college and some didn't. I told them all from when I first arrived at college that I wanted to be a professor. As I applied to graduate schools, I received various advice. From some mentors, I got implicit advice to play it up (use your accent more, but don't come on too strong at first) and explicit advice to blend in but stand out (dress nicer, or more professionally, than everyone else). As I left, a mentor of mine said "you've been a big fish in a little pond and I'm interested to see what happens when you're a big fish in a big pond". 

I started working towards the goal of understanding cultural flexibility and malleability in cognition in my Masters thesis and PhD dissertation with a focus on acculturation and memory at Brandeis University (A Jewish university in the Northern United States). This started with focusing upon moving beyond typical Eastern versus Western comparisons that were generally limited to static comparisons of the US versus China/Japan based on geographic location. I criticized this in classes, using existing literature in reflecting upon my own family and friends of mine. However, I didn't make clear to anyone what my background was. Although Brandeis was a Jewish University, it had a large number of Chinese students. Interestingly, my undergraduate institution had a Confucius Institute with a large number of students going to study in China, though I did not mention this. I was trained within the theory and methods of a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientific memory researcher. I learned about the foundation of the field of cross-cultural cognition and helped with organizing its preconference that was primarily for cognitive researchers. Conversations evolved during this time within the lab and the field itself, extending to anthropologists to a greater degree. I often raised points regarding the study of culture and refined my own thinking around it, including lecturing in the lab and providing guidance to another student as she did as well. Using internal grants, I was the first to show that long-term acculturative change was associated with change in cognitive strategy-usage. I continued to show this neurally. This was all focused upon Chinese international students within the United States (immigrants as seen by most). Many others have since become interested in the topics I study. I wrote two other grant proposals during this time, one focused on rurality/urbanicity and aspects of cognition, including spatial navigation, among the Tsimane (non-industrialized group) and Americans, and another grant proposal focused on cognitive training leading to memory patterns that are culturally-influenced. Neither were funded, but I continued to pilot the cognitive training.

In graduate school, I knew no one who had experienced anything similar to my own experiences. I had received the only merit scholarship for the MA program (there was no room in the PhD program; faculty could only take so many students as a department due to funding). I had done more research than all of the other graduate students, and when I began to list them in our research methods course, the professor repeatedly attempted to move on. I was a co-author on multiple publications, had applied for and gotten two internal research grants, and had completed two independent research projects across two disciplines (and across two nations), but this does not even capture it all and there wasn't enough time for me to even explain it in a quick list format. However, the other students had worked at prestigious institutions after their undergraduate programs, running participants and cleaning data primarily. Most of the students had never been outside of their own states or the greater northeastern area, but constantly said it was the best place to live. I listened to people highlight good private schools in the northeastern US that they came from and each other's accomplishments. I became disconnected from my cohort when I first arrived as I worked during the week and all weekend at jobs outside of the program. Immediately, someone from an Ivy took a strong dislike towards me while introducing others to her extensive network in the area. I encountered someone from an Ivy who struggled to interact with me professionally. We eventually reconciled as I learned many people at institutions like Ivies are forced to compete with others in a socially acceptable way. Some of this took the form of what might be called microaggressions. I eventually made friends with most of the people in the program, some of us being quite close. They were a mix of international and domestic students, but I stood the risk of being seen as 'collecting people'. I also stood the risk of being seen as too negative or unproductive (lazy or incompetent) because I dealt with constant health issues (i.e., fainting) of my own in combination with my family's intense health issues. At one point, I went home to take care of my mother after she had surgery. It was the only time I was able to visit her during the six years of graduate school. I often responded with some level of honesty about what was happening in my life when people asked how I was — it was not positive or fun, but I would often laugh off my own struggles. These experiences made completing work difficult, but I continued to overwork myself. 

During my one-year MA program and the beginning of my PhD, COVID hit the United States. I got sick early on in the pandemic but at the time they weren't running tests for COVID yet. We as a nation were a mix of afraid of it hitting the US and not believing it could. I was tested for mono because I was experiencing extreme fatigue and I was told that a student in a class I TA'd for that sat across the room had tested positive for it. When I was tested, they held the test up to me and asked if I thought it was positive. I was used to poor medical care and accepted it. I worked and took courses as a graduate student from my bed, continuing to TA and work my non-academic jobs answering phones and working in a beergarden for as long as I could. I lived in a studio with my then fiance, making it incredibly difficult to maintain the professionalism needed as I worked as a reservationist for a resort company. In addition, I experienced constant mental fog as I attempted to complete the multiple jobs I worked and my coursework. I still managed to complete my thesis work, running participants online (some located in the United States and some located in China). I was unable to take a research manager position for a project focused on Mongolian cognition, because the pandemic hit and made immigration/visa restrictions feel impossible to navigate between the US and Canada. I continued in the PhD program at Brandeis, eventually completing a large multi-state study involving international and cross-disciplinary collaborators concerning cultural values (tightness-looseness) and effects of the COVID threat in relationship with COVID-related behaviors and and attitudes towards outgroups (older adults and Asians). 

I was trained in graduate school where it was necessitated that I study Chinese international students in particular, but my focus was on acculturation. Many Americans teach English abroad in China or Japan (I've been friends with many who have done so and helped orient some to national scholarships in order to do so as an undergraduate) and some are generationally Chinese-American (I knew some previously). I encountered people who assumed that I was not aware of this and demonstrated their knowledge to me in academic spaces. I also was placed in a place of tension between political conversations regarding identity and country among people from Western Europe, America, and East Asia; and became intimately familiar with its unique dynamics within the institution I was at. And I was forced to be part of a conversation regarding identity in research while not revealing my own. Meanwhile, there were already Chinese researchers doing similar research within China, but not focused on the construct I studied — acculturation. Their effects were different than those focused on Americans from American researchers and the literatures were not integrated between nations. I didn't know any Mandarin, but rather than going based on prior translations, had several native speakers within the lab ensure it was appropriate. Words have a lot of nuance within and across languages and that can change dramatically with little time between; I myself am not situated within a Chinese context and cannot account for this even if I know the language from my own past. Having multiple translators coming to a single consensus (and back-translating) was also helpful to account for variation in language agreement even within the same country. 

As I finished out my PhD, I mentored closely multiple Chinese students, an American student, and a student from Belarus who was older than me. One of them was my first thesis student. I met his family at his final presentation. They did not speak English. He gave me a set of pearls from his family to thank me. I do not know traditions and current standards around gift giving and politeness. The only other pearls I owned were passed down to me in my own family from my ancestor who was a maid from the family she served (I don't know that family's surname; I did not tell him this). I treasure this and do not expect it and cannot accept it from anyone else. I also learned a great deal from the Belarusian student I worked with, including the some of the dynamics of the politics and languages of her country. Before I graduated, we attended a reading in Russian by authors of nations once and currently part of Russia who write in Russian (she had invited me). I learned a lot. Throughout my entire life, I have deeply cherished the opportunity for cultural exchange.  

I first started proposing projects that were related to my family's cultural experience as an undergraduate (i.e., ethnographic study about people who live in trailers; see above, my great-grandmother lived in one and I was educated in one). I first proposed to examine one form of Appalachian cognition as a Masters student (i.e. breaking down empathy in a population demonized within the broader literature). During graduate school, I struggled with watching the cognitive and physical health of family members deteriorate due to lack of good medical care and lack of taking care of themselves. I even wrote about this in one of my graduate courses, running data analysis and interviewing my grandmother before she entered a diabetic coma and nearly died. I was told to publish it in the New York Times, but it felt outside of my reach and I was worried about what family members would feel in reaction to it. As I entered the PhD program, I again proposed studying Appalachian cognition for my potential dissertation work. I wrote a formal grant application to study and characterize Appalachian cognition near the end of my PhD, but it was not funded, and for the first time, I received no reviews/feedback. I am continuing this work as a faculty member at Appalachian State University in collaboration with a memory/emotion researcher at Appalachian State University and a social/cultural researcher at Duke University (who was previously on the grant). The goal is to understand the natural variation in cognitive strategies that exist within the United States, and in particular those that are important for Appalachian cultural group members. I am also continuing work on the malleability of cognitive strategies using training (what are the mechanisms for acculturation?). 

At 27, I first moved back to the Southern United States and to Appalachia and to a rural area. I still live and work there. I get to focus on a population of interest like I was trained to do in Anthropology. I get to study and better understand the experiences (that arise from cognitive processes) that made me and others I know who we are. I also get to understand how we are fundamentally different from one another at the level of what we see (visual information) and remember (details in our memory). And now I am working to see if it's possible for us to also change that, or accrue more strategies with the goal of possibly alleviating cognitive decline. 

Simultaneously, I returned to the type of institution I received my bachelor's degree from — a regional state university — as a tenure-track faculty member. These are often not held in high esteem, especially in areas outside of what are seen as research hubs. This does not need to be and shouldn't be the case. I am still learning to tell people what my background is, to brag about myself, and to deal with the shame and guilt others might place upon me. 

In Appalachia, rural areas, and among those with low socioeconomic status (this is not limited to just income), there are often issues with cognitive decline and educational outcomes. This includes reports of issues with memory. I am aware of this and have been deeply passionate about it in connection with my own life and family throughout my life. As a new faculty member, my grandmother on the German-American side had a series of mini strokes that were ignored, was given "memory pills", then had a larger stroke, and struggled in recovery before dying. Our family will never know if her progression and eventual death was a result of inadequate health care due to being in a rural area. I continue to think about the ways in which my own family considers their own health and cognition (memory is the focus of most) and how it fits within our national culture. 

*It should be noted that cognitive strategy usage and processing preferences/habits are different from intelligence and we should be wary of stereotypes of any nation and cultural group. I, my family, greater 'kin', and friends understand the impact change in ourselves can have anecdotally (e.g., see previous sections above). Cultural change and cognitive change can have both benefits and costs. In some cases, we might assume that they do. I have studied throughout my entire academic career both culture and cognition. I encountered people who didn't understand the importance of one and others who didn't understand the importance of the other. I also encountered people who assumed my own ignorance because cultural variables were included at all. Regardless of one's background and level of knowledge, this can happen. When we interact with one another, we run the risk of harm.

06.14.2026

Dr. Ashley N. Gilliam

(According to AI, early career faculty run the risk of having their research agendas stolen, including but not limited to use of AI in any form with reference to related ideas by the person searching/chatting. I do not and never have given my research ideas to anyone I communicate them or aspects of who I am to. These are just a few pieces of who I am and my experiences that relate to my own work.)