Studying Race and Place

Institution: Duke University
Graduate Program: Ph.D., Sociology
Education: B.A., Sociology, Bowdoin College; M.A., Sociology, Duke University
Mentor: Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University; Dr. Jessica Walker, University of Michigan; Dr. Theo Greene, Bowdoin College; Dr. Nancy Riley, Bowdoin College

Making the transition from inner city public schools to a private, elite liberal arts college for an Afro-Latina, first generation college student might present major challenges for some. But Pamela Zabala has used her experiences as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to inform her research and scholarship as she pursues her Ph.D. in sociology at Duke University.

“Ultimately, I think my own experiences — feeling like I didn’t belong or fit in different spaces, as well as questions that I always had about race and identity, having been exposed to it from two different perspectives (the American and the Dominican) — all contributed to my choices in research topic and my pursuit of sociology as a field of study,” she says.

“The question of belonging and the question of identity are two things I have always paid attention to. I used my own campus as a kind of case study.”

During her four years at Bowdoin, several “racial bias incidents” occurred on campus in addition to police brutality incidents around the country. She says she wanted to explore why these occurrences kept happening time and time again.

With a bit of prodding, she points out that her senior research project at Bowdoin is now being used by some of her former professors. “Certain classes have put my work into the curriculum and I have a section in the college archives for my research papers,” Zabala says.