About this speaker
Dr. Ashley Garrin is the Director of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, a federal TRIO program that prepares underrepresented undergraduate students for graduate study at Iowa State University. Ashley is the faculty mentor for the Womxn of Colour Network, an undergraduate student organization that creates community and safe spaces for women of color on the Iowa State Campus. At the staff level, Ashley helped to create a similar organization that established a community for faculty and staff women of color at Iowa State that allowed space for networking, feeling seen and heard in predominately White spaces, and sisterhood.
Dr. Garrin’s research focuses on social, cultural, and historic elements of dress, which combine her passion for aspects of social justice and its influence on dress. Her doctoral research, “The Impact of Hair on African American Women’s Collective Identity Formation”, has been featured in the peer-reviewed Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, and contributed to a chapter in Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair: Crown of Glory and Shame
Throughout her career, Ashley has pushed for women and girls, specifically those who hold multiple marginalized identities, to overcome societal inequities in both the education and health sectors.
