February Salon - Nicole Else-Quest
February 8, 2023
Salon Topic:
Bringing the Matrix to the Mainstream: How We Can Transform Science with Intersectionality

Salon Guests:
Nicole M. Else-Quest, PhD
Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Women’s & Gender Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Salon Description:
Intersectionality has the potential to transform the sciences, but obstacles and dilemmas continue to impede that progress. Many researchers want to do intersectional work but don’t know how to square it with their positivist training and skillsets, and reviewers and editors want to support intersectional projects but disagree on what that kind of work should look like. Nicole Else-Quest has sought to make intersectionality more accessible to scientists and to promote rigorous and earnest applications of it in research. Most recently, that work has involved federally-funded multidisciplinary collaborative projects premised on intersectionality and guest-editing a special issue of the APA journal, Stigma and Health, focused on intersectionality. Bringing intersectionality to the mainstream in these ways is, like all feminist projects, an exercise in humility, persistence, and optimism.
Guest Bio:
Nicole Else-Quest was trained as a developmental psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is now Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an interdisciplinary feminist researcher, her work aims to make the sciences more accessible, inclusive, equitable, and meaningful. Her current projects, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, are focused on broadening participation in science—particularly among women, first-generation college students, and students of color—from middle school through doctoral training, using mixed methods and multidisciplinary collaboration. Else-Quest is Associate Editor of Stigma and Health and guest editor of the forthcoming special issue on intersectionality. She is also co-author of the undergraduate textbook, The Psychology of Women and Gender: Half the Human Experience +, 10th Ed., Sage, 2021, with Janet Hyde. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association through Division 35: Society for the Psychology of Women.
Else-Quest, N. M., French, A. M., & Telfer, N. A. (2022). The intersectionality imperative: Calling in stigma and health research. Stigma and Health. Advance Online Publication. Else-Quest, N. M., & Hyde, J. S. (2016). Intersectionality in quantitative psychological research: II. Methods & techniques. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40, 319-336. Else-Quest, N. M., & Hyde, J. S. (2016). Intersectionality in quantitative psychological research: I. Theoretical and epistemological issues. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40, 155-170.