Tamar Ballard

Research and Interests: Race and racism, culture, storytelling.

Bio: Tamar (pronounced Tammer) is a first-year first-generation PhD student from Morrow, Georgia. Her research interests, rooted in her love of music and holistic narratives, lie in the intersections between race, culture, and storytelling. While at Vassar - both as a student and post-graduate fellow - she participated in several research projects including participatory-action team research on Vassar’s first-generation/low-income student population, an exploration into bolstering health and wellness resources for Vassar’s campus community with a group of campus partners, as well as her own research for her Urban Studies thesis on the connection between hip-hop and counter-narrative relating to Chicago’s Black population.

Presentations: Presented: Research Paper for American Educational Research Association, "Struggling to Connect: First Generation Student Experiences in STEM Courses" (April 2018)

Quote: "Let us give each other the courage to see beyond the stories we were born into." (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, 2019)