I’m so excited to be a contributor on 500 Queer Scientists, a campaign promoting LGBTQ+ visibility, connection, and role-modeling in the STEM and the surrounding STEM community.

You can check out my full profile on 500Qs here: https://500queerscientists.com/lauren-m-pearce/

NYSCADV is participating in a national project called "Restoryation", that will use storytelling as a way to understand the collective experience of domestic violence service providers of the past few years. The covid-19 pandemic affected advocates across the state in a myriad of ways; New York State has a valuable story to add to this national project that will analyze and advocate for how covid-19 has affected domestic violence advocacy.

Along with uplifting New York State’s unique pandemic experience and needs, this needs assessment workshop focuses on addressing key concerns that have emerged from the pandemic: sustainability, retention, and organizational care. The Restoryation curriculum combines oral and visual storytelling to provide a restorative space for processing trauma, healing collectively, and building connection.

Each workshop takes place in a carefully selected, nourishing environment to sustain a healing-centered, holistic and invigorating practice, including: a Zen Garden and meditation hall, a historic NYC sanctuary, a National Geographic award-winning lodge, a 95-acre Catskill haven, and a lake-side culinary gallery. Breakfast and lunch are provided at each workshop.

Story circles are day-long workshops encompassing grounding practices, visual storytelling, oral storytelling, expressive journaling, and both large and small group discussion. We are holding seven workshops across the state in May and June, with two specifically for BIPOC advocates and one specifically for domestic violence program directors.

The workshop will include a series of short surveys from which data will be anonymized, compiled, and analyzed by an evaluation team led by Dr. Cris Sullivan, who you may know from her work on the DV Housing First demonstration and research project. NYSCADV will then distribute these aggregate findings back to member organizations in New York and will use the findings to help guide our collective work as we move through pandemic recovery.  

We invite you to step into the circle with us, foster a sense of belonging, and nourish and strengthen ourselves for a sustainable advocacy community.

Visit the NYSCADV Restoryation page here: https://www.nyscadv.org/news-events/restoryation.html

Smaller Narratives for a Larger World, hosted by Gillian Kenah (English), Lauren Pearce (Anthropology), and Alan Palacios (Comparative Literature), is a new, interdisciplinary iteration of the radio show project Broadcasting World Literature. The show features a variety of guests from academics and activists to creatives and practitioners. The podcast, which will run in its current form through the end of May 2021, shares and discusses stories beyond what is conservatively categorized as “literature”, to recognize their significance on both an individual and community level. This project is co-sponsored by the Departments of Comparative Literature and Anthropology at Binghamton University and the faculty in charge include Giovanna Montenegro (Comparative Literature), Jeroen Gerrits (Comparative Literature), Joshua Reno (Anthropology), and Lubna Omar (Anthropology). The show’s website curator is Nihan Soyoz (Comparative Literature).

Visit the SNLW website here: https://orb.binghamton.edu/smaller_narratives_larger_world/

Workplace sexual harassment is pervasive internationally, and particularly within the United States. Archaeological fieldwork holds a particular set of characteristics which make female and non-binary workers especially prone to experiencing sexual harassment. Narratives are increasingly used as mode of community development and activism, and this trend holds true for recent events in the field of archaeology as well. This study utilizes qualitative interviews to analyze the narratives of sexual harassment from non-binary and female workers within archaeological fieldwork. The narratives gathered were previously shared by participants with archaeological colleagues for three main purposes: (1) seeking validation, (2) building safety scaffolding for self and others, and (3) establishing connection and community support. Prevalent themes include safety during harassment as keeping silent, needing to keep the peace during the work period, and bifurcating ideas of workplace sexual harassment from poor archaeological work.

 This critical discourse analysis of a representative World Bank land acquisition research document analyzes the development themes, assumptions, and values present in the discursive event, evaluating the document as both indicative of and influential on greater land development discourse. It seeks to understand how the World Bank utilizes and then positions itself within the greater development discussion. The conceptions and representations of land, labor, and peoples found in the discursive event reflect development beliefs that render invisible non-industry-oriented values and uses. Additional aspects of the World Bank’s discourse (re)produce racialized narratives that both negatively construe and negatively impact people of color. Contradictions were present, with select statements condemning development assumptions present elsewhere in the document. Evaluative, production-oriented development assumptions are found to be applied to both land user and external investor. Discursive elements found in the document serve to obfuscate the subaltern knowledges, non-production and capital-based land uses, and non-binary relationships between the Global North and the Global South, as well as the ability of non-white and non-Western peoples to be subject matter experts. These are elements already present in development discussion are further solidified through the influence of the World Bank.

Increasing awareness of campus sexual violence has led to a number of laws and policies around prevention, response, and reporting. Concurrent literature on rape culture and social drivers of sexual violence seems to exist separately from law, policy, and higher education decision-making. Higher education institutions increasingly market themselves as producing personal and moral growth, though this concept is not new in educational philosophy, by capitalizing on the students’ key period of socioemotional development and using community learning structures to induce extra-academic learning. However, higher education also has a well-documented trend of gender inequality and sexual violence within its own structure. This paper looks at how higher education institutions may be (re)producing sexual violence through inadvertently teaching gender inequality and rape culture to their students, during this influential period in the students’ moral and social growth. Limitations are discussed and suggested actions for institutions and for research are offered.

More info here coming soon.