Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Homicide Dynamics: The Role Of Victim-Offender Relationships And The Event Circumstances Across Demographic Groups, Avdi S. Avdija, Christian W. Gallagher, Devere D. Woods Jr., Arif Akgul

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study investigates how the victim-offender relationship relates to the circumstances under which homicides occur, with the main focus on variations within gender, race, and age categories. To achieve these research objectives, we analyzed over forty years of data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (1976-2017), reported by the U.S. Law Enforcement Agencies. The findings that emerged in this study show that offenders are more likely to kill victims of the same gender when taking into account the victim-offender relationships. Furthermore, this study shows that black offenders are more likely to kill acquaintances and intimate partners whereas white offender demonstrated …

Critical Feminist Editorial Praxis: My Tenure As The First Journal Editor Of Color Of Communication Monographs, Srivi Ramasubramanian

Media Studies - All Scholarship

In this essay I theorize about Critical Feminist Editorial Praxis, which envisions journal editing as a site for scholar-activism. I use the term activism because to counter the hegemonic whiteness and coloniality of Communication knowledge requires active efforts to go against the taken-for-granted processes and practices. Journal editing is a significant location for interventions because this is often where we learn what is considered cutting-edge scholarship within our discipline. This significance is especially clear when the journal in question is a flagship publication of a leading professional organization. As I end my tenure as the first editor of color of …

Gender-Diverse State Legislative Candidates In The United States: Identity Used Strategically On Campaign Websites, Nicholas Mossman

Honors Theses

In this honors thesis, I evaluate how transgender, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse state legislative candidates in the United States use their campaign websites to communicate messages related to gender identity to voters, and the potential effects of communication on electoral success. I used a dataset of eighty-nine candidates between 2014 and 2024, and coded fifty-four candidate websites to measure how candidates describe their personal identity and communicate about issues related to gender identity, like LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination and gender-affirming care. While existing research evaluates how voters respond to LGBTQ+ candidates, this thesis examines how candidates potentially attract voters through their campaign …

Why Do Women Pursue A Ph.D. In Computer Science?, Erika Ábrahám, Miguel Goulão, Milena Vujošević Janičić, Sarah Jane Delany, Amal Mersni, Oleksandra Yeremenko, Özge Büyükdağlı, Karima Boudaoud, Caroline Oehlhorn, Ute Schmid, Christina Büsing, Helen Bolke-Hermanns, Kaja Köhnle, Matilde Pato, Deniz Sunar Cerci, Larissa Schmid

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Context: Computer science, even now, attracts a small number of women, and the proportion of women in the field decreases through advancing career stages. Consequently, few women progress to Ph.D. studies in computer science after completing master's studies. Empowering women at this stage in their careers is essential, not just for equality reasons, but to unlock untapped potential for society, industry and academia. Objective: This paper aims to identify students’ career assumptions and information related to Ph.D. studies focused on gender-based differences. We propose a program to inform female master students about Ph.D. studies that explains the process, clarifies misconceptions, …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Gender And Race On The Stigmatization Of Borderline Personality Disorder, Joshua Samet

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Stigma surrounding mental health reduces treatment-seeking behaviors and can worsen symptoms. Research on stigma surrounding borderline personality disorder (BPD) has shown that race and gender can impact the nature of the stigma associated with the disorder; however, less is known about the interaction between the two. This study investigated if stigma varies when considering both the race and gender of the stigmatized individual simultaneously. 218 undergraduate students read one of four vignettes describing either a Black male, White male, Black female, or White female, then completed the Attribution Questionnaire-20 (AQ-20) stigma scale. The results indicate that there is a statistically …

Introduction: Intersections Of Gender And Genres In Medieval Judaism, Christianity, And Islam, Linda G. Jones

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The introductory essay describes the aims of this special volume, which are to analyze the intersections between religion and gender in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultures, as reflected in diverse pre- and early modern textual genres, and to explore the relationships between gender and genres. Toward these ends the authors interrogate how a given textual genre, as well as the gender of the author/compiler and the intended audience, might influence the representations of gender. The introductory essay summarizes the seven articles constituting the volume, highlights the points of contact and differences among them, and reflects upon their broader significance to …

Diasporic Challenges, Domestic Abuse And Patriarchal Norms Experienced By Migrant Pakistani Women In Australia, Safia Iftikhar, Shajimon Peter, Vicki Banham, Elizabeth Reid Boyd

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article examines diasporic challenges, domestic abuse and patriarchal ideologies that constitute unique diasporic lives of first-generation migrant married Pakistani women (MPW) in Australia. For this qualitative study, 21 MPW residing in Australia were recruited for semi-structured in-depth interviews. Results from the interpretative phenomenological analysis of data revealed the diasporic encounters MPW face in Australia and the influence of patriarchal ideology on their lives in navigating those encounters. MPW’s responses to patriarchal norms in their married lives fell on a spectrum, which include conformation to the norms of patriarchal familial structures on the one side and resistance and bargaining against …

Beyond Compliance: Transformative Co-Design For Gender-Based Violence Prevention In Higher Education, Narelle Lemon, Christina Gray, Jason Goopy, Lisa Holmes, Bec Ball, Melissa Perry, Elisa Fear

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This study examines how university staff and students experience transformative learning through voluntary participation in a gender-based violence (GBV) prevention programme that transcended compliance-oriented approaches. While universities increasingly rely on mandatory modules that fail to create sustainable change, this research investigates whether self-nominated participation and co-design pedagogy can foster genuine transformation and voice development among participants from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. A qualitative multi-method design examined eight university students (aged 18–24) at an Australian university through pre-post focus groups, observational field notes, and artefact analysis. Participants voluntarily engaged in workshops co-designing peer-focused social media prevention messaging. Inductive thematic analysis identified patterns …

Women In The Australian Mining Industry, Michelle Gander, Fleur Sharafizad, Aglae Hernandez Grande, Heidi Vivian, Mahan Poorhosseinzadeh, Kate Blackwood

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This report synthesises existing research on women’s participation in the Australian mining industry to identify the structural and cultural factors shaping gender inequality across the sector.

Drawing on research conducted over the past four decades, the report brings together what is currently known about how mining workplaces operate and how organisational practices, work arrangements, and site cultures shape the experiences of women across the sector. While many companies have introduced diversity and inclusion initiatives aimed at improving gender balance, the evidence suggests that challenges persist in areas such as operational roles, leadership pathways, and workplace culture.

Specifically, the report examines …

Young People’S Likelihood Of Intervention To Nonconsensual Touching In Nightlife Settings: Interactions Of Gender, Relationship To The Bystander, And The Recipient’S Reaction, Aimee Rose Wrightson-Hester, Maria M. Allan, Alfred Allan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Nonconsensual sexual behaviors that occur in nightlife settings pose unique policy challenges and encouraging bystander behavior (i.e., either to stop the actor or help the recipient; nonemotive words used to avoid priming participants) might be an effective way to prevent these behaviors. Few researchers, none Australian, have undertaken quantitative studies to identify factors that influence bystanders’ behavior in nightlife settings and the interactions between them. Australian participants (n= 332, 56% women) read eight vignettes depicting an incident where an actor grabbed the buttocks of a recipient, in which we manipulated the actor and recipient’s gender; relationship to the bystander; recipient …

Australian University Websites As Colonialities Of Gender, Emily M. Gray, Ampersand Pasley, Emma Fishwick, Mindy Blaise, Jacqueline Ullman, Maria Delaney

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper offers analysis of the first phase of a research project, Understanding and Addressing Everyday Sexisms in Australian Universities. This phase involved a critical content analysis of all 39 of Australia’s public university websites, focusing on how they represent gender, absences in relation to gender and the navigability of the websites in relation to gender equity policy. Drawing on Maria Lugones’s colonialities of gender, this paper demonstrates how university websites have the potential to reproduce or renegotiate inherited institutional everyday sexisms and broader gender inequities. Themes of reconfiguring acceptable gendering, conspicuous absences, and in-built obscurity that emerged from this …

Analysis Of Students' Problem-Solving Skills In Work And Energy Based On Gender, Miftahuljannah Muslimin

Jurnal Pendidikan Sains

This study analyzes students’ problem-solving skills on Work and Energy using a quantitative descriptive design, profiling performance across five indicators without causal claims. Participants were 85 students from SMA Negeri 1 Barru, South Sulawesi (30 males, 55 females) who answered five essay items scored on useful description, physics approach, specific application, mathematical procedure, and logical progression. Overall means were 57.73 (females) and 60.73 (males); an independent t-test showed p = .333 > .05 with Cohen’s d = 0.22 (small), indicating no meaningful overall difference. By indicator, ANOVA showed no gender differences (α > .05) except for logical progression (p = .029). …

Systematic Literatur Review: Development Effectiveness E-Module Pbl-Based Learning To Improve Problem-Solving Skills In Ecosystem Material, Liziaruti Aurani Chong, Diana Vivanti Sigit, Ratna Komala, Rusdi Rusdi, Tri Handayani

Jurnal Pendidikan Sains

This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of developing e-modules based on Problem Based Learning (PBL) in improving students' problem-solving abilities in ecosystem material. The method used is Systematic Literature Review (SLR) by reviewing articles published in the period 2018–2025. The results of the analysis show that most of the research uses the descriptive method. Research and Development (RnD) with junior high and senior high school subjects, and produced N-Gain values ranging from 0.50 to 0.83, categorized as moderate to high. These findings demonstrate that PBL-based e-modules are capable of supporting the improvement of problem-solving skills through interactive, contextual, and …

Star Wars And Gender In 1980s America, Melissa Ulmer

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This research paper examines the role of gender in the franchise Star Wars. With the first installment of the trilogy released in 1977, many expected this film would turn out like many before. However, the world that George Lucas created was an instant hit and continues to be today. This paper focuses on how the franchise was set apart from other science fiction films based on a defiance of typical gender roles that were prevalent in the late twentieth century, specifically focusing on the two leading roles, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, and employing analysis of the films, cast …

The Feminine Way Of Campaigning: How Female Politicians Navigate Gender Bias, Jordan V. Pruitt

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

Women are rapidly taking over the world of politics, holding more elected positions than ever before. With the increase of women in politics, we begin to question how gender stereotypes and bias affect female politicians. There are numerous studies examining the public's perception of female candidates and how they are framed differently from their male opponents in the media; however, the main objective of this project is to learn how gender affects women’s campaign strategies or public personas, and how this differs from their male counterparts. Through interviews with women in locally elected positions, this study examines these issues through …

Immigration And Public Support For Social Policy: Accounting For The Gender Composition Of Immigrant Populations, Achim Edelmann, Friedolin Merhout, Amie Bostic

Sociology Faculty Publications

With increasing global mobility, scholars have debated whether immigration undermines welfare states. So far, no conclusive evidence of a consistent association between immigration and social policy support has emerged. This might be due to treating immigrants as a monolithic mass. To begin addressing this, the authors account for the gender composition of immigrant populations. Drawing on research on attitudes toward immigration, immigration policy, and gendered tropes of immigrants, the authors develop two hypotheses detailing how the share of women among immigrants moderates that population’s impact on individuals’ social policy support. Testing these hypotheses on International Social Survey Programme and United …

Gender Dynamics In Quadball: Making Space On The Pitch, Emily X. Mcnally

Culture, Society, and Praxis

Quadball is a sport based on Quidditch, the fictional sport born from the book series, Harry Potter, minus the flying. The introduction of this paper provides an overview of the sport and why gender plays such a significant role in it. Twelve players were brought together for a study and were put into three focus groups to discuss and hear other player’s perspectives on gender dynamics within the sport. There was a non-binary, women’s and men’s group. Overall, it was found that players are working toward making the sport more gender inclusive, but the sport has not achieved full gender …

'Coming Here, It’S Just Weird': 'Making The Familiar Strange' Through Exploring Experiences Of Sexism And Feminisms, Emilia A I Little

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This paper explores personal experiences with gender and how these experiences changed whilst attending university as an undergraduate student. The paper uses gender and feminist theory to guide a critical and auto-ethnographic exploration of personal experiences of a young woman within a patriarchal system. The paper uses journal excerpts to recount past and current experiences through feminist lenses. Through exploring gender theory, binary and performativity, personal experiences are validated and explained. The force of patriarchal oppression and privilege were illuminated as personal conceptions of gender were disrupted. The paper argues for much-needed feminist education in schools, centring around: avoiding the …

Blindness Through The Looking Glass [Book Review], Mollie Frazier

Disability in LIS (DisLIS)

This review analyzes Gili Hammer’s Blindness Through the Looking Glass: The Performance of Blindness, Gender, and the Sensory Body. This book offers insight into the lives of blind women in Israel and challenges assumptions about beauty, femininity, and gender through interviews and years of Hammer's fieldwork as an anthropologist. She shows how blindness is not defined by what is missing, but by how women use their experiences to shape their own understandings of gender and society. The book explores gender identity, visual culture, and the sensory body, highlighting how blind women navigate a world so centered on visual beauty while …

Prostitution In Video Games: Stigma, Violence And Male Pleasure, Laura Aguilera-Ávila, Lara Escobar Hernández

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Prostitution has traditionally been framed in society as a space significantly determined by patriarchal hierarchies, in addition to being affected on many occasions by stigmatisation and violence. The representation of prostitution and of those who practice it in the media is a topic of special interest, since the discourses and messages disseminated by the media play a fundamental role in socialisation. Video games are not exempt from this debate: with millions of players worldwide and a special reach among young people, they are among the most influential media outlets today. This qualitative research analyses a series of titles, both AAA …

Confronting Settler Colonialism Through Indigenous Feminism: The Structural Roots Of Mmiw, Miah Schiavi-Munoz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) across the United States and Canada represents a manifestation of ongoing settler colonial violence. This paper examines the MMIW crisis through the frameworks of settler colonial theory and Indigenous feminist scholarship, arguing that contemporary patterns of disappearance, assault, and murder are structural outcomes of colonial law, governance, and heteropatriarchal control. Drawing on historical analysis, legal critique, and participant observation from the 2025 MMIP Training Conference in Monterey, California, this study traces how the settler colonial logic of elimination operates through jurisdictional fragmentation, bureaucratic neglect, data erasure, resource …

Looking At The Nose: Gender, Jewishness, And The Politics Of Visual Mediation, Laura Glitsos

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The nose is a multisensory organ and a powerful bodily technology that helps orient the experience of consciousness in the material world, and yet, we have come to a socio-technological context so driven by ocularcentrism, largely as a result of the visual nature of social media and new media, that the nose is often reduced to just an idealised ‘shape’. This article explores how the contemporary construction and representation of the nose, especially on social media, is seated in a very long history of gendered and racialised politics. By examining the cultural and political implications of the nose through critical …

Rewilding Gender: Toward Relational Understandings Of ‘The Wild’, Kim Ward

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

This commentary reframes gender and rewilding through a relational understanding of wildness. Moving beyond a binary lens of ‘the wild’, it examines how gendered relations shape rewilding's material, emotional, and epistemic dimensions. Centring relational wildness exposes how rewilding challenges masculine imaginaries of control and ownership while opening space for more equitable multispecies relations.

Red Thread, Unknotted: A Visual Self-Inquiry Into Becoming Artist /Educator, Jennifer Jervis

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This arts-based self-inquiry presents a counternarrative of one woman artist/educator navigating identity formation, agency, and resistance within the gendered structures of the contemporary art world. Informed by posthuman feminist theory and guided by a/r/tography, the study uses artmaking as both inquiry and data to challenge the persistent divide between artist and art educator—particularly as experienced by women. Through reflexive writing and textile-based creation, the author offers a material and embodied critique of the systemic expectations that diminish women’s artistic authority and invisibilize their creative labor. The resulting work becomes a site of resistance, reclaiming artist identity through the layered intersections …

Pauline Style And A Biblical Theology, Andrew Whitney Perkins

Masters Theses

Advances in biblical linguistics, especially in the Greek of the New Testament, have provided a means for a better understanding of the text of Scripture. Advances in Greek lexicography, syntax, verbal aspect, discourse analysis, exegetical and hermeneutical methods, and the historical background behind the gospels and letters of the New Testament have greatly increased interpreters’ ability to determine what the text meant from both the writers and to the recipients of those documents. However, Christian theology, especially Systematic Theology, has remained mostly static, unaffected by these advances, and by a more accurate understanding of the biblical text. This thesis affirms …

Shaping The Hills: Women Folklorists And Writers In The Ozarks And The Advancement Of A Romanticized Regional Identity And Heritage Tourism, Rachel Pendergraft

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examines how women folklorists and writers in the Ozarks, between 1930 and 1970, shaped a romanticized regional identity, preserved its history, and, as cultural representatives, reframed the perception of the region, thus facilitating the advancement of heritage tourism. This development is further explored within the context of a national framework. Moreover, by focusing on three women, May Kennedy McCord, Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, and Lucile Morris Upton, and using them as key analytical tools, a broader assessment of women’s contributions to Ozark cultural identity and their leadership in the development of heritage tourism is achieved. Drawing on archival material …

When Blatant Stereotype Threat Manipulations Fail: Participant Skepticism, Perceptions Of Experimenter Bias, And Anticipation Of Performance Used For Evaluation, Allison Seitchik, Emily J. Hangen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Past research has found a lack of stereotype threat effects with various explanations. Across four studies, we investigated participant skepticism toward blatant stereotype threat (vs. control) materials by measuring women’s personal beliefs and perceptions of the experimenter’s beliefs about gender differences existing on an upcoming math test. The results supported personal skepticism: participants perceived the experimenter as holding stereotyped beliefs on the task to a greater degree than the participants did themselves, regardless of stereotype threat materials. Although participants’ beliefs and their perceptions of the experimenter’s beliefs did not explain performance, anticipation of their data being used to test for …

Love, Sex, & Aging: Gendered Perspective On Relationship Desires And Satisfaction In Older Adulthood, William Henninger, Melinda Heinz, Nathan Taylor

Faculty Publications

This research explores gender differences in long- and short-term relationships and sexual satisfaction among older adults. Socioemotional Selectivity Theory posits that as people age, they prioritize immediate emotional satisfaction due to perceptions of limited time. This shift influences older adults’ romantic relationships, increasing the likelihood of seeking meaningful connections and reducing the prevalence of negative emotions. With healthy relationships linked to physical, psychological, and financial benefits, research is needed to further understand older adult romantic relationships. Older adults (n = 155) from the Seniors Together in Aging Research (STAR) completed a survey assessing relationship preferences and current and predicted sexual …

Military Manpower Policy And Women’S Labor Market Outcomes, Amy Burnett Cross

Dissertation Awards

This dissertation examines how U.S. military manpower policy, when used to alleviate recruitment shortfalls, has shaped women’s participation in the civilian labor market. Across two chapters, I study military policy changes during periods of high demand for active duty service members to evaluate their impact on women’s labor force participation and entry into male-dominated occupations.

Independent And Interdependent Self-Construal: An Examination Of Migration History And Gender In Chinese- And European-Canadians, Nicolle F. Cai, Silvain S. Dang, Paul L. Hewitt

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

Despite previous work on independent and interdependent self-construal, there is more limited research in self-construal with relation to migration history. Additionally, gender influences on self-construal and the correlation between the two self-construal dimensions remain unclear, given the mixed findings in existing literature. Current study aims to replicate and extend self-construal findings from Chinese- and Euro-Canadians in relation to migration history and gender. We hypothesized that men and individuals with earlier migration history to Canada will report higher independent and lower interdependent self-construal. Canadian university students (N = 524) completed the Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994) and reported their gender, ethnicity, and …