Hello!

My name is Sakina and I am now in my second year as a Doctoral student in the Urban Education program. I was initially interested in this certificate program/area of study because of an academic background in media studies and teaching experience in online education and education technology. It has taken me some time to articulate and think about where all this might be going, so I am not entirely sure what might be most suitable for me as a project. I am only now in the process of defining a dissertation topic, which is still in it’s most embryonic phase. I would ideally like the work I do in this class to dovetail with my thinking and research in my dissertation area. I’ve always been painfully-interdisciplinary in the least productive way possible, and I am now trying to be more cautious and strategic in the decisions I make about what to pursue and how that speaks to future academic/professional aspirations (and what those are!). In the interim, I am enjoying being exposed to more tools and ideas in this program, and hope to be able to refine something out of these opportunities moving forward.

My interests lie (broadly) at the intersection of education (especially higher education), pedagogy, media and information technologies, cultural studies, marxist and feminist frameworks of analysis, and post-colonial discourse. I hope that this will be a productive semester in figuring out where these things can speak to one another in a project in ITP and beyond.