In the Spring of 2023, C and Alyna met at a series of University of Central Florida (UCF) student-led protests and university board meetings.
Overwhelmed by the stress of graduate school, the rapidly changing educational climate in Florida, and the rise of fascism nationwide, the two wondered what they could do to combat the defeat and isolation they felt.
Sharing these feelings with one another and listening to the testimonies of students at rallies speaking from their positions as academics, in addition to their own lived experiences, the two came to two conclusions: 1. Despite technically being faculty, their positions as students allowed them to retain their right to protest, and 2. though undergraduates had committed themselves to action and advocacy work, graduate students were largely unrepresented.
(Alyna's poster for UCF's Board of Trustees meeting on the removal of DEI programs, February 2023)
C and Alyna found this absence troubling. Graduate students had rights their professors did not; academic authority undergraduates were often still earning; and, in seminar lectures, frequently echoed sentiments that research meant little if academics were absent from advocacy.
They contributed this disconnect between sentiment and action to the amount of labor required of graduate students for their studies and jobs, the scarcity of communication and community between graduate students in different disciplines, the separation between academia and the local community, and the lack of training for how to use academic skills for advocacy.
Community and infrastructure were the only two solutions C and Alyna felt could help combat these issues beyond a personal level. Thus, the IGA was born to create an infrastructure capable of addressing these problems and to make it easier for others stuck in a cycle of studying and doom-scrolling to become meaningfully engaged with other academics and those already doing community advocacy.
About Us:
C (they/them) is a PhD student and bioarchaeologist studying childhood as a social construct in ancient Türkiye. Their side research is centered on the misappropriation of anthropological theory and evidence on social media. C loves being outside and seeing movies in theater.
Alyna (she/her) is an anthropology master's student with a focus on cultural and psychological anthropology. Their research focuses on exploring religion/spirituality and ritual practice in the South through ethnographic and visual methods. Outside of academia, Alyna is a potter and an artist.
