Current Graduate Students

Karla Vazquez

Karla Esperanza Vazquez (she/her) is a first year Master of Social Work (MSW) student pursuing a Graduate Certificate in MWGS. She is interested in applying feminist theories to practice in social work. She plans to focus on immigration, BIPOC women’s issues, LGBTQ+ mental health, and other identities at these intersections more broadly. Informed by her lived experience as a Mexican, femme lesbian, her approach to social work is guided by Latina/Chicana, queer of color, and transnational feminisms. She questions how saviorism is reproduced in helping professions, and how positionality shapes power dynamics in social work. She is also curious about how harmful notions of resilience maintain systemic oppression and perpetuate disparities, as well as the unpaid physical and emotional labor expected of marginalized communities. Both personally and professionally, her philosophy of social justice centers on collective healing, autonomy, anti-racism, decoloniality, and an ethic of love and care. She hopes to gain experience across all levels of social work, with long term plans to pursue macro level practice. In her free time, she enjoys learning about herbalism, doodling, and long calls with loved ones.

Jeremeka Bird

Originally from Louisiana and currently residing in Dallas, Texas, Jaye Bradley-Bird is a first-year masters student in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies (MWGS) program at Texas Woman’s University. She earned her undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University and completed her Master of Arts in Women’s Studies at Texas Woman’s University in 2024. She plans to continue her academic journey at Texas Woman’s University through the completion of her PhD.

Jaye’s academic and research interests center on women in leadership, with a particular focus on the experiences, challenges, and contributions of women of color in leadership spaces. Her work is grounded in an interest in understanding how race, gender, culture, and organizational structures intersect to shape women’s pathways to leadership and their experiences once they attain leadership positions. She is particularly interested in examining the barriers that may limit leadership opportunities for women of color, as well as the strategies, resilience, and forms of advocacy women use to navigate and transform traditionally male-dominated and predominantly white leadership environments.

Through her studies in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies, Jaye seeks to contribute to scholarship that amplifies the voices and experiences of women of color and challenges traditional understandings of leadership. Her goal is to produce research that not only contributes to academic conversations surrounding gender and leadership but also has practical implications for creating more equitable, inclusive, and representative leadership environments.

Vaishnavi Nagalla

Vaishnavi Nagalla is a 1st-year MA student in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Texas Woman’s University. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a dual minor in criminal justice and multicultural women’s and gender studies from Texas Woman’s University in 2022. Her current graduate research interests are in Gender, identity, and intersectionality within psychological and social frameworks; religion and spirituality in shaping behavior, belonging, and worldview; and Hinduism and its influence on cultural identity, behavior, and community well-being. 

Vaishnavi has also completed a data analysis internship where she assisted with an independent research project; supported data entry, cleaning, and analysis using Microsoft Excel; helped prepare research visuals, figures, and posters in Adobe Illustrator for research projects; and gained hands-on experience in research workflow, organization, and academic communication outside of a traditional lab. In addition to her internship, Vaishnavi also serves as a graduate teaching assistant for an undergraduate course in Gender and Social Change.  

Upon completion of her master's studies, Vaishnavi aims to pursue her doctoral studies. Outside of her academic pursuits, she enjoys volunteering at Isha Institute of Inner Sciences, spending time with family and friends, and fiber arts.

Sameka Smith

Sameka is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University, a path inspired by her undergraduate work in racial and ethnic studies. Through her academic journey, she has become deeply invested in understanding how identity, power, and social structures shape people’s lived experiences. She hopes to use her time in the program to strengthen her academic voice and contribute meaningfully to conversations around equity and representation.

Professionally, Sameka works full time as a Billing Specialist at State Farm where she has built strong skills in communication, problem‑solving, and technical support. Outside of academics, she enjoys creative projects—painting, coloring, and hands‑on art that allow her to express reflection and self‑discovery. Her work, studies, and creative interests all reflect her commitment to growth, advocacy, and community.

Maria Adebola

Maria Adebola is a first-year doctoral student in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University. She serves as a communications officer at the Veterans Health Administration, the healthcare division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, overseeing digital strategy and social media governance for medical facilities nationwide.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and a master’s degree in organizational communications from Bowie State University. Her research examines womanism and feminism, with particular attention to how these theoretical frameworks empower African women toward self-actualization. Her additional scholarly interests include Black diasporic identity, immigrant daughterhood, motherhood, and digital storytelling, with an emphasis on the ways gender, culture, migration, and media shape women’s identities and lived experiences.

Agnes Browning

Agnieszka (Agnes) Browning (they/she) is a first year PhD student in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. Their research examines the application of Gloria E. Anzaldúa's spiritual activism and autohistoria-teroía as methods for personal healing in service of social justice and collective liberation. Namely, the interrogation and dismantling of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy through a visual culture lens that incorporates occult and folk magic practices into the production and experience of visual art. This method serves to challenge and disrupt consensus reality and conventional modes of knowledge production that challenges both the artist and viewers to interrogate systems of oppression with intention. Prior to their doctoral studies, Agnes has studied Art History and Studio Arts, and earned their MA and BA degrees in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies both from Texas Woman’s University.

Eileen Chung

Eileen Chung (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate and instructor of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies. At TWU, she has taught WS 2013: Gender and Social Change, WS 2033: Womanist Spiritual Activism, and WS 3023: U.S. Women of Colors. Eileen’s current dissertation project examines how Asian American women dynamically resist the impact of fetishization and heal from hypersexualization through Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s theory-praxis of spiritual activism. Her primary research interests include Asian American feminisms, Asian Caribbean/Latin American diasporas, model minority politics, narrative inquiry, and women of color solidarities.

As an alternative to hierarchical, compartmentalized, and hyper-individualistic modes of thinking, she promotes relational, interconnected, and holistic epistemologies. Eileen’s work has appeared in Global Anti-Asian Racism, edited by Jennifer Ho (Columbia University Press, 2024), The Routledge International Handbook of Postmodern Therapies with AnaLouise Keating, and Race and Social Problems with Zayda Sorrell-Medina and Talya Tessler. Her forthcoming article, "Ungrading the Model Minority: Post-Oppositional Grading Structures for a Liberatory Education," will appear in a special issue of Feminist Formations co-edited by Stina Soderling, Atia Sattar, and Man Kaplan. Additionally, her book chapter, "From Model Minority Myth to Revisionist Mythmaking: Asian American Feminist Reclamation through Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Autohistoria-Teoría," will be published in A Legacy of Gloria E. Anzaldúa: “May We Do Work that Matters” edited by Kimberly C. Merenda (Texas A&M University Press).

Formerly, Eileen received her BA in majors Asian American Studies and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara before pursuing her Master of Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.

Madison Hastings

Madison Hastings is a first-year student in the Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies Ph.D. program. Her transdisciplinary approach to the field is deeply rooted in a background of social psychology and feminist legal theory. Her research interests relate to theoretical developments for improving the legal system, including an investigation of legal storytelling, cultural mythmaking, and jurisprudential constructions of humanity.

Lesa Holley

Lesa Holley is a first-year student in the MWGS PhD program at Texas Womens University. She has been an educator in Texas for 25 years, and she has a Masters Degree in U.S. History from East Texas A&M University. Her work focuses on gender and race in the United States in the 20 th century, with a primary lens on power dynamics and leadership models within marginalized communities. She is an active member of The Gathering, a Womanist church in Dallas Texas that utilizes Womanist theology to engage in social justice initiatives. She considers Womanism a theory and a praxis that she seeks to implement into both her research and her daily life. She loves to read and spend time with family and friends at her home in Rowlett, Texas.

Tiffany Jackson

Tiffany Jackson Robinson is a PhD candidate in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University and a Womanist scholar whose research centers Black women’s lived experiences, faith, and knowledge production. Her scholarship positions Black women not simply as people who adapt religious traditions in response to oppression, but as theorists whose embodied reinterpretive practices produce theological and feminist knowledge.

Her research explores storytelling, testimony, ritual, performance, and sacred rereading as intellectual practices through which Black women interpret their experiences, negotiate religious traditions, affirm their sacred humanity, and generate liberatory understandings of faith. Drawing from Womanist thought, Black feminist scholarship, and intersectionality, her work centers Black women’s lived experiences as important sites of theory-making and knowledge production.

Tiffany also brings extensive experience teaching Women’s and Gender Studies, where her pedagogy emphasizes lived experience, critical inquiry, and the relationship between theory and everyday life. Her scholarly and pedagogical interests converge around a central question: what becomes possible when Black women are recognized not only as subjects of study, but as producers of knowledge?

Valerie Lambert

Valarie Ann Lambert (V) is a current doctoral candidate in Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies. Lambert is a proud Choctaw woman, and her work focuses on Indigenous modes of healing. She is in her last year of study completing her dissertation: Write the Wrongs; Heal the Wounds: An Indigenously Grounded Spiritual Activist Approach to Healing. Her research interests include Indigenous Thought, Spiritual Activism, women’s issues (including expanding what that encompasses), the effects of sexism, intersectionality and its application, gendered violence, women in leadership and politics, LGBTQ rights, activism, Oklahoma politics and history, and body image. Lambert has been an educator in higher education for 11 years; she is currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant at TWU and an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma. V is a proud mother and Pokni (grandmother in Choctaw). She loves nature, being at the lake, and is an avid runner.

Sasha Khan

Sasha A. Khan is a PhD student with an M.A. in Gender and Cultural Studies. Their current project puts decolonial and women of color feminisms in conversation with Islamic metaphysics. Sasha's research interests include decolonial, women of color, and transnational feminisms; queer and trans of color critiques; Islamic feminist and queer Muslim critiques; South Asia, Pakistan, and diasporas; and Disability Justice. Their work can be found in Disability Studies Quarterly, Feminist Formations, Feral Feminisms, Meridians, and College & Research Libraries.

Maria Mazvimavi

Maria Magdalena M. Mazvimavi is a Ph.D. Student in Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University. She holds an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of North Texas, where she graduated with a 4.0 GPA, and has an interdisciplinary background in English Literature and Education.

Maria’s research interests focus on the intersections of feminist theory, storytelling, care work, gender justice, and structural inequality. Her research examines storytelling as a feminist methodology in the care economy, exploring how lived experiences of caregiving can function as testimony, knowledge, and sites of agency and resistance. Her work draws on intersectionality, transnational feminism, narrative inquiry, and feminist approaches to lived experience, with particular interest in women and marginalized communities across the Global South and diasporic contexts.

An educator with more than a decade of experience teaching English and literature, Maria is committed to feminist pedagogy, critical literacy, student voice, and transformative education. She views teaching and scholarship as interconnected practices that create opportunities to question systems of power, center lived experience and cultivate meaningful social engagement.

Beyond the university, Maria is a community leader and founder of Hope for Her Global, through which she advances initiatives focused on women’s and girls’ empowerment, education, advocacy, leadership, and gender justice.

Across her academic, teaching, and community work, Maria is committed to amplifying marginalized voices and exploring how storytelling can become a powerful site of knowledge, agency, healing, and social transformation.

Madeline McCormack

Madeline McCormack is a first-year MA student in the department of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University. Her research interests include queer studies, literature, patriarchal violence and trauma, silence, haunting, resistance, community building, speculative fictions, and queer fiber arts. Madeline holds a BA from Texas Christian University in English and Women and Gender Studies. She currently lives in Fort Worth with her two cats, Penelope and Pandora.

Jill Melton

Jillian Melton is a first-year PhD student in the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies program at Texas Woman’s University. Her research interests center on women in the corporate workplace, with particular attention to gender roles, organizational dynamics, and the systemic and structural factors that shape women’s professional experiences and opportunities. Jill’s academic interests are informed by more than two decades of experience spanning business management and marketing, higher education, and teaching. She is currently Adjunct Faculty at the SMU Cox School of Business, teaching undergraduate, MBA, and Business Master’s students. Jill’s teaching focuses on audience-centered communication, presentation design, storytelling, and executive presence. Previously, she served in administrative and leadership roles at SMU Cox, including Assistant Dean of Working Professional MBA Programs, where she led recruiting, admissions, and program development for graduate business programs. Earlier in her career, she worked in product marketing and product management at companies including 3M, Sabre Holdings, and Honeywell. Jill is also a co-founder of Blue Thread Advisory, a leadership consulting practice focused on helping professionals understand and navigate workplace dynamics, build influence, and advance their careers.

Through her doctoral studies, Jill seeks to bring a women’s studies perspective to questions traditionally examined through the disciplines of business management and organizational behavior. Her work explores how gender, organizational structures, and workplace dynamics shape women’s experiences and career opportunities, with the goal of applying these insights to teaching and curriculum development.

Jill holds her MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and a BA in Political Science from the University of Puget Sound.

Courtney Miller

Courtney Miller is a first-year doctoral student in Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies at Texas Women's University. Her research interests include reproductive justice, Black feminist theory, intergenerational trauma, and race and gender inequalities in healthcare. Her current scholarship examines reproductive autonomy and the regulation of marginalized bodies through the frameworks of reproductive justice, biopolitics, and necropolitics.

Outside of academia, Courtney is a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, working with women of color to heal relational trauma.

Veronica Smith

Veronica Smith is a first-year doctoral student in the PhD program of Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies at Texas Woman's University, where she also earned her Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from the Dallas campus. Veronica is also a combat veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and served in the United States Army, where she learned valuable life lessons in discipline, resilience, and the importance of service.

Her research and practice focus on designing and delivering evidence-based life skills interventions for survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence, with an emphasis on trauma-informed care and culturally responsive approaches. She is passionate about helping survivors reclaim their lives, rediscover their independence, strength, and self-worth.

Beyond her academic work, Veronica is committed to community engagement and direct service. She provides pro bono occupational therapy services and support to children with special needs, recognizing the intersection between disability justice and gender-centered care. She hopes to one day open her own pro bono clinic serving vulnerable populations, especially women and children.

Veronica is a published author, and her work on rehabilitation habits and roles appears in The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy (Volume 14, Issue 1, Winter 2026). In her personal time, she enjoys junk journaling, midday naps, and reading literature.

Anna Walters

Anna Walters is a Ph.D. student of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies with a focus in creative writing. She studies systems of power, intersectional representation, and feminist/womanist resistance for cultivating creative and spiritual interventions toward social justice. Her research at TWU investigates Gloria Anzaldúa’s spiritual activism and transformational writing practices as decolonial tools for addressing intergenerational trauma.

Anna leads undergraduate level courses as a graduate teaching assistant, and serves as a research editorial assistant for the TWU Book Series. She is also the creative writing and production editor for the feminist interdisciplinary academic journal, FEMSPEC, which focuses on speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and genres pertaining to the supernatural. She earned an M.A. in English with a focus in creative writing from Sonoma State University, a second M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies where she combined creative writing with Women’s and Gender Studies (R.I.P) at Texas Tech University, and a B.A.in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Besides teaching, writing, and editing, Anna is an avid cyclist, artist, photographer, and proud cat mom to a tortie named Miss. Chloe Claws.