I've always felt like the work that was
being done at The New School,
it wasn't being done so that it could be
sort of hidden away in an ivory tower, if you will.
But to be shared broadly,
and to impact the world around us.
My name is Kadija Ferryman.
I majored in Anthropology as an undergraduate,
but I didn't go directly to graduate school.
I actually went and did policy work for six years,
looking at housing discrimination and public housing transformation
in different cities across the country.
Being there, being close to the issue,
interviewing people,
I realized again how much I love that kind of intellectual inquiry
and so, I wanted to go to graduate school
so I could get more in-depth and rigorous training,
as well as some of the kind of theoretical framings
to go around those methods.
So, I earned my PhD in Anthropology
from The New School for Social Research.
I knew that coming to The New School,
it was a space where there would be room for multiple views,
actually, of what anthropology is,
and what anthropology today could be.
And I wanted to be at a place that was
intellectually open, challenging, and stimulating.
I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Data
and Society Research Institute in New York.
Data and Society is an independent
research organization
dedicated to looking at some of the questions
and dilemmas that are being raised by
the increasing use of data in our world.
Where I come into this, is I take a critical approach
to try to identify the potential for bias
and discriminatory outcomes in precision medicine research.
I do my fieldwork with experts, for the most part.
So, I study scientists,
and biomedical researchers, and policy people.
I do participant observation. I conduct interviews.
My theoretical toolbox,
the ideas that I use to understand the information
and the data that I'm collecting about the world,
those were really refined during my time at The New School.
I was able to really get the deep training,
as well as a really good grasp
of where the discipline is heading in the future.
I hope that my research will really change the way
that medical researchers approach their research projects.
And if I have some role in
making sure that the technologies that
are around serve us, and serve us better,
then that's great.
That was a value that I know I got from The New School.
Essentially, not being satisfied with the way ideas or theories exist.
That they're useful for us, but we can still use them,
and push beyond the ways that they're
being used today.
