My name is Marissa Ifeoma Abara and I come from the small town Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I was born and raised. I come from a Nigerian American background and am proud of the worldview I have been given.
My education has been my saving grace and has allowed me to explore far and wide. During my undergraduate, at the University of St. Thomas, I was able to study abroad three times, earned leadership skills through many job positions and club roles, and conducted research.
I ambitiously pursued a degree in Communication and Journalism (now under Media Studies), with an emphasis in Creative multimedia, in addition to earning two minors in Graphic Design and American Culture and Difference (culture studies). My research, done through the Excel Scholars Research program, explored the visual communication within American history textbooks and their impact on students with multiracial identities. My paper was accepted for the 2020 Undergraduate Communication Research Conference and for the Troubling Waters, an interdisciplinary discussion series.
Recently, I have completed the Digital Studies of Language, Culture and History Mater’s program at the University of Chicago in August 2021. My research project entailed using NLP techniques to take a "distant" reading approach to looking at the language and common threads of the 2020 Black Lives Matter events.
As for work, I held a student position on campus, working with the Visual Resource Center as an Assistant Metadata Researcher. The work has been interesting and thought provoking and I hope one day to work within a museum or library digital collections. With this experience, I have been pondering about the learning potential these collections hold and try to think of how they can be more available to a larger audience.
Outside of academia, I have other interests. I enjoy spending my free time biking, swimming, and looking to explore new areas around town. I’m happy you took the time to stop by and that you made it this far! Cheers!
Until next,
Ifeoma Abara
