Congratulations to Marielle Marcaida, who successfully passed her written and oral exams and is off to the Philippines to continue her doctoral research.
During their exams, students create connections between 100+ books that they’ve read and their own proposed doctoral research. In hers, Marielle brilliantly elaborated upon her dissertation project, "Salvaging Maria: Urban Poor Mothers’ Resistance against the Philippine Drug War.” Through primarily ethnographic research in Manila, Marielle is examining how urban poor mothers translate the language of international human rights—and other recognized social, political, and legal forms—into their own vernacular expressions in order to create accountability against state-sanctioned murders of their children and kin. Marielle’s dissertation explores the innovative forms of collectivity, power, and new subjectivity that mothers’ loss-based organizing produces in Manila and beyond.
The entire GWSS department commends Marielle for her critical work and wish her well as she returns to the Philippines for her fieldwork!