Biography

 

Marya Thembi Mtshali is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Technology and Social Change Project at the Shorenstein Center in the Harvard Kennedy School and a Lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her areas of interest include intersectional theory, racial and gender inequality, internet disinformation, and African-American political engagement. As a postdoctoral fellow, her primary research focuses on Black American TikTok creators' engagement with hegemonic and Black American political ideologies. Additionally, she is working on a second research project with co-primary investigator Martin Rooke, Ph.D. on how demographic characteristics correspond with perceptions of threats to American democracy.

Dr. Mtshali is completing her book manuscript for (In)Visible Terrains: Race, Gender, and Heterosexuality in the Lives of Interracial Couples, where she investigates what she refers to as “racialized heteronormative paradigms” -- mental frameworks that are constituted of race, gender, and heterosexual logics that shape the language, relational boundaries, and management strategies these couples use to maintain an intimate relationship across race. In this work, she utilizes an intersectional lens to interrogate and illuminate the ways in which race, gender, and racialized gender ideologies interact to shape how members of heterosexual Black/White intimate couples perceive certain social situations and their options for negotiating social norms and issues -- specifically, negative public interactions, intra-relational discussions of race, and childrearing.

Her work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Women: A Cultural Review, and she has an article forthcoming in Sociological Forum. Her public sociological writing has been featured in The NationVox, and Cosmopolitan, and her research and commentary have been featured in places such as USA TodayThe New York TimesNational Journal, and Business Insider. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, cooking, indoor gardening, music, reading, and spending time with her two cats and dog.

(Photo credit: Stephanie B. Mitchell)