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Author: Helana Darwin
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Protected: UX Research Portfolio
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Research Resume
UX Research Resume
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#MeToo Activism
Helana is vocal about her experiences of sexual abuse within the academy because she wasn’t able to talk about it for so long. It is a massive problem that isn’t discussed nearly enough, in large part due to NDAs and fear of retaliation from powerful academics.
Helana recently completed her second book, intended for a general reading audience, called #MeTooPhD: A Trauma Memoir. She is currently searching for a literary agent and a press for this book, which highlights the intricate layers of interpersonal and institutional abuse that push victims of professor-student sexual abuse out of the academy. A summary of the main points has been published at the PhD Voice blog, in an article entitled “The Hidden Curriculum: Insights from a #MeTooPhD Survivor.”
Helana is available for podcast interviews and guest lecturing engagements about sexual abuse in the academy. Please direct all email inquiries to helana.darwin@gmail.com.
Helana has been trying for many years to organize support groups for survivors of sexual abuse within the academy. Currently no such forum exists. If you simply need a friend as you struggle through this fear and silence, reach out on Twitter or via email.
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Bio
Dr. Darwin is an innovative and insightful researcher with thirteen years of experience in human-centered research projects. She is currently employed as a Senior UX Researcher at JP Morgan Chase, where she drives product design in a cross-functional quad team. Previous to joining JP Morgan, she worked as a UX Researcher at AnswerLab, where she led over twenty end to end research projects in a client-facing agile environment.
Helana is experienced in leading all phases of research. Her methods have included IDIs, focus groups, usability testing, card sorting, and competitive market analysis. Her deliverables have included written reports, slide deck reports, and personas. Her areas have included social media, information architecture, privacy policies, e-commerce, fintech, educational technology, and messaging apps. Prospective employers can request access to her research portfolio by emailing helana.darwin@gmail.com.
Helana is an oft-cited scholar of culture and social inequality. Her past research subject areas included craft beer culture, religious culture, the Body Positive Movement, and the gender binary system. She has utilized a range of digital methods including virtual ethnography, blog discourse analysis, and online comment sentiment analysis, in addition to traditional methods such as in-depth interviews and survey research.
Her most recent book is available for purchase here. Redoing Gender: How Nonbinary Gender Contributes toward Social Change illuminates the everyday labor that gender nonbinary people perform in order to achieve social recognition. In keeping with the famous “doing gender” sociological model, Helana analyzes these process at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional levels, through in-depth interviews with 47 nonbinary people.
Helana recently completed her second book, intended for a general reading audience, tentatively titled #MeTooPhD: A Trauma Memoir. She is currently searching for a literary agent and a press for this book, which highlights the intricate layers of interpersonal and institutional abuse that push victims of professor-student sexual abuse out of the academy. A summary of the main points has been published at the PhD Voice blog, in an article entitled “The Hidden Curriculum: Insights from a #MeTooPhD Survivor.” Helana is available for guest lecturing engagements about sexual abuse in the academy. Please direct all email inquiries to helana.darwin@gmail.com.
In her spare time, Helana is beginning to draft her third book, tentatively titled The Legacy. This book focuses on the themes of intergenerational trauma and mental health, explored through a focus on Helana’s mother’s life history.
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Books and Articles
NEW BOOK!
Available on Amazon for $25 through the hyperlink-
Redoing Gender: How Nonbinary Gender Contributes toward Social Change
Redoing Gender demonstrates how difficult it is to be anything other than a man or a woman in a society that selectively acknowledges those two genders. Gender nonbinary people―who identify as other genders besides simply “man” or “woman”―have begun to disrupt this binary system, but the limited progress they have made has required significant everyday labor. Through interviews with 47 nonbinary people, this bookoffers rich description of these forms of labor, including “rethinking sex and gender,” “resignifying gender,” “redoing relationships,” and “resisting erasure.” The final chapter interrogates the lasting impact of this labor through follow-up interviews with participants four years later. Although nonbinary people are finally managing to achieve some recognition, it is clear that this change has not happened without a fight that continues to this day.
The diverse experiences of nonbinary people in this book will help cisgender people relate to gender minorities with more compassion, and may also appeal to those questioning their own gender. This text will also be of keen interest to academics across Sociology and Gender Studies.
Second Book-
Dr. Darwin is in search of the right press for her second book. #MeTooPhD: A Trauma Memoir combines memoir and autoethnographic conventions to illustrate how sexual abuse operates in the academy. This book reflects on the complicated issues of consent and agency when graduate students interact with predatory professors, the whisper network, mandatory reporting, Title IX, the academic job market, and trolls on the Internet. Publishers and literary agents are encouraged to email helana.darwin@gmail.com for sample chapters.
Articles
2020. Darwin, Helana. Navigating the Religious Gender Binary. Sociology of Religion.
2018. Darwin, Helana. Redoing Gender, Redoing Religion. Gender & Society .
2017. Darwin, Helana. Doing Gender Beyond the Binary: a virtual ethnography. Symbolic Interaction
- Doing Gender Beyond the Binary Video Abstract
2016. Darwin, Helana. Jewish Women’s Kippot: Meanings and Motives, Contemporary Jewry
Book Chapters
Darwin, Helana. “You are What you Drink: the masculinization of cultural legitimacy in the New York craft beer scene.” In Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer (2017), edited by Nate Chapman and J. Slade Ledlock.
Book Reviews
2017. Darwin, Helana. “Hairy_History,” NORMA International Journal of Masculinity Studies: 175-176.
2016. Darwin, Helana. Book Review: Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism by Amber Jamilla Musser. Gender & Society: 703-705
2015. Darwin, Helana. “In Pursuit of Hairlessness,” Women: A Cultural Review (2015): 361-363.
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Helana in the News
“More than one million nonbinary adults live in the U.S., a pioneering study finds.” Washington Post
“Cheers to Girly Beer: Bro-Based Beer Culture Explained.” Quench Magazine
“Meet Athletic, The Brewery Finally Making Non-Alcoholic Beer Cool,” Thrillist
“A Chance to Exhale–The Sanctity of Women’s Bottle Shares,” Good Beer Hunting
“On Instagram, Seeing Between the (Gender) Lines,” New York Times Magazine
“Even What We Order at the Bar is Gendered,” Playboy Magazine
“Redoing Gender, Redoing Religion,” Gender & Society
“On Reclaiming Body Hair,” American Sociological Association, Body and Embodiment
“Beyond Real Women and Real Men,” Huffington Post
“To Shave or Not to Shave”: If Only Women Had a Free Choice,” Huffington Post
“News, Nuggets & Longreads,” Boak & Bailey
“What we Talk about when we Talk about ‘Bitch Beer,” PUNCH
“Bros and Beer Snobs,” Sociological Images
“Should Academics Talk to Katie Couric?” Chronicle of Higher Education
“The Bro Whisperer,” The Atlantic
“30 People who Quite their Miserable Jobs Share if they Regret Doing It,” Bored Panda
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Podcast Interviews
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Art
Before becoming an academic, Helana worked with her mother as a face painter and caricature artist for ten years. But her preferred artistic method involves expressive painting with acrylics on wood while listening to Bjork. Helana is open to painting commissions. She specializes in goddess art and can arrange to do belly casts for pregnant people in NYC.
Helana’s mother is a portrait artist, who regularly takes commissions. You can email Portraits by Baila at gypsyberks@yahoo.com. Pricing varies by medium.
Helana’s grandfather was the Ambassador of the Arts during the Clinton administration. Robert Berks’s public statues are all over the world, including the Einstein monument in Washington, DC. and Presidential busts in the Oval Office.
Helana’s cousin Alixandra Mullins is a fantasy photographer and digital artist. Visit her website for merchandise featuring her artwork and information for booking portrait sessions.
Helana Darwin 