The Department of Anthropology is proud to announce that PhD student Brian Geyer has received a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) award for his research on technology professionals in Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya. His research project, entitled “Intersectional Identity Among Kenya’s Technology Industry Professionals.”
His research will investigate how aspects of tech sector professionals’ identities, including gender but also ethnicity, religion, or socioeconomic status, affect their positions of social, political, and economic power in the sector. International development literature frequently discusses the importance of women’s empowerment as a means of lifting a population overall, especially within the most economically-productive sectors of a country’s economy. Additionally, international venture capitalist interest in the sector has increased significantly, which has in-turn boosted interest in the sector as a potential area for development. The research builds upon existing anthropological literatures that engage with the concepts science, technology, and society; identity production; and intersectionality and to critically contribute to development literature regarding women empowerment.
You can follow his project through his online open field journal: No Mud Huts. https://nomudhuts.matrix.msu.edu/