"You do not have to be a fire for every mountain blocking you.
You could be a water and soft river your way to freedom too."
Nayyirah Waheed

Carina is a PhD candidate in WGSS with a concentration in Feminist Institutional Change. Her research critically engages the structures of higher education and carceral systems as possible sites for socially just change. She analyzes the ways that institutions on a systematic level are experienced by people on an individual level.

 

As a scholar in feminist studies, Carina believes in the power and necessity of grounding DEI work in her own subjectivity. As a queer woman of color, sexual assault and domestic violence survivor, Carina’s own identities are intertwined in her DEI education work, which provides her an attentiveness and care to systems of oppression and liberation. These identities allow Carina to incorporate a lived experience expertise in DEI education methods. Carina sees education as a key to addressing interlocking systems of oppression. Her dissertation, “Curandera Feminism: Tracing the Possibilities of Healing Institutional Harm”, weaves together familial knowledge, traditional healing practices, and trauma informed feminist pedagogies to integrate the impacts of institutional harm while creating pathways towards futures of accountability and healing. Her published reaches across many topics including: sexual assault education and consent work, carceral institutional critique, trauma informed pedagogies, Chicanx/Latine gender and sexuality, and student development.