A large group of them (14,000 at that time) were being resettled in the United States at that time. One of my mentors was a prominent Somali historian and he mentioned there was this group of non- ethnic Somalis, descendants of the nineteenth century slave trade, who had been marginalized by the Somali government so very little research had been done on them. He joined me in graduate school and, as he declined, I could not take him for fieldwork in East Africa as previously planned, so I had to change my dissertation focus. When she passed away, I inherited my father, who was in the midst of cognitive decline. I took a year off to accompany my mother through her battle with pancreatic cancer, which we always knew she would lose. My graduate studies were interrupted twice by family illness. I would love to give you a super academic answer, but it was a pragmatic choice that enabled me to support my personal life. How did you end up deciding on your dissertation topic? How did you choose to study Somali refugees? I also saw a lot of people in the program who were not in the Academy-they were out in the world too doing their work. I became very interested in cultural history and the expressive culture of marginalized people, and this field seemed to offer me a way to contribute to the body of knowledge about them. My experiences in East Africa led me to Anthropology/Folklore. work? What originally drew you to anthropology? I was also reluctant to do a regional studies degree and thought a wider disciplinary lens was a better approach.Ĭould you speak a bit about your M.A. I returned to graduate school after a decade out in the world and pursued a degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Folkloristics because it gave me a way to look at the history and tradition of groups without a long, documented history. After almost three years working for this group, I returned to the United States and worked in curriculum development and corporate training for a few years, which gave me experience with the official church and, later, the private sector. It was a great way to learn about the lives of our students. She took maternity leave at the very start of her term, so I was substitute teaching for about a year in total. My job was in human and financial resource development to support these and future efforts, and it was there that I first started teaching as a substitute for months while one of our schools searched for a new school head and needed help for the class she would ordinarily teach. Then another brother started a reforestation program Malawi. They had started trade education programs with sexually exploited teenagers in a vast slum area in Nairobi (Mathare Valley and Eastleigh, if you know the city), and that expanded into co-educational efforts, a nursery, and a revolving loan fund to encourage job placement. After graduation, I took a position in the resources office of a religious community doing outreach to women in a crisis pregnancy and environmental preservation work in Eastern Africa. I am a product of sixteen years of Catholic schools: grade school and high school in Toledo, and then college at the University of Dayton and the American University in Cairo. I am from Toledo, Ohio and grew up there. I like that I can start calmly and, when it is over, I am already home.Ĭould you give us a 2-3-minute overview of your life and career to date, starting with where you grew up through to today? On the other hand, I don’t have the pressure of getting to campus, finding parking, rushing from office hours across campus to get to class on time. I miss being able to see my students while lecturing. How has teaching in the Zoom era treated you so far? The transcript of this interview, conducted by Freddy Ludtke, has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. She has formerly taught “African Security Challenges” and currently teaches “Disinformation and Security.” GSSR caught up with her to discuss her career, her background in anthropology and folklore, her love of fieldwork, and more. After several years of government service, Professor Sandra Grady joined the SSP community in fall 2018.
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