The Shorenstein Center welcomes Marya T. Mtshali as a new post-doctoral fellow on the Technology and Social Change research project team. Dr. Mtshali is a sociologist and Lecturer in Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, where she teaches a course on interracial relationships. Her areas of expertise include intersectionality, interracial relationships, and inequality. She is currently working on her book Gray Matter: Racialized Heteronormativies in the World of Black-White Interracial Couples, which investigates what she calls “racialized heteronormative paradigms” — mental frameworks that are constituted of race, gender, and heterosexual logics that shape the language, relational boundaries, and management strategies these couples use to maintain an intimate relationship across race. Dr. Mtshali received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston College under the tutelage of Dr. Zine Magubane.
With the Technology and Social Change Research Project, she will be researching the motivations of African-Americans’ interactions with internet political conspiracies and medical misinformation. Additionally, she will be investigating how gender correlates with these motivators and discussions around engagement in the democratic political process.
Recent op-eds & features:
Cosmopolitan, “White People in Interracial Relationships Better Understand Racism, Sure, But at What Cost to Black Partners?”
The Harvard Gazette, Taking a scholarly look at race and romance
Vox, How medical bias against black people is shaping Covid-19 treatment and care
Follow her on Twitter.
