Motherscholar.org, a part of The Motherscholar Project*, is a visual representation of mothers in academia. It highlights the presence of those who identify as mothers and as scholars from around the globe.
As mothers, we have a choice whether to identify ourselves as such, whether to claim this role and let others know about it. We could choose to remain hidden, and compartmentalize our lives into work versus family.
However, the concept of the “motherscholar” offers another choice. One that allows mothers to identify as both a legitimate worker, scholar, and also recognize the role of mothering. The motherscholar is then intrinsically standing up for herself and for others, in demonstrating that mothers can and do succeed throughout all ranks of academia, with children of all ages, with all self-identified ethnic backgrounds, from all parts of the world.
We have organized lectures, presentations, consultations, workshops, roundtables, discussion groups, and mini-writing retreats, to name a few. We are always looking for continued and new ways to support our growing community across six continents. If you have an idea or suggestion, please feel free to reach out to us at motherscholar@gmail.com, or better yet, feel free to come and join us!
Together we can empower one another, build community, and advocate for resources to ensure all motherscholars can succeed.
Founder and Director: Anna CohenMiller, PhD
I would love to hear from you! Feel free to connect here or on LinkedIn (link) 🙂
*Thank you to Cheryl Matias for the integral term “motherscholar” (Matias, 2011) as a way to “coalesce” the identities of academic and mother, and for joining us in the Project.
**If you’re interested in seeing other ways to use visual methods to highlight experiences of motherscholars, here is one of our projects conducted during the pandemic. We adapted the arts-based participatory community research method, photovoice, to understand and show about motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic. See related articles highlighted by Springer Nature here and a methodological article about asynchronous online photovoice here, and the living website here (https://www.photovoicemotherscholars.wordpress.org/)