Two students mentored by Mason Legacies Associate Director Wendi Manuel-Scott presented independent research projects adding to our understanding of bias and inclusivity in education and their effects on young people. As a mentor, Manuel-Scott is known as a designer of CML's central pedagogy of Affective Historical Praxis. Both Summer 2025 projects received assistance from Mason’s Office of Student Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR), which promotes opportunities for undergraduates to conduct and present independent research projects.
Junior Amaiyah-Monet Parker, an English major, and Alessaundra Shallal, a senior in Integrative Studies (Legal Studies concentration) last month presented summer 2025 projects as posters in OSCAR's Celebration of Student Research and Impact. Shallal expressed gratitude for Manuel-Scott’s “unwavering” support over nearly two years, crediting her mentorship for enabling her to pursue research across semesters and “maintain faith in the progression of inclusion in academia.”
adultification of Black girls.
Both projects drew on personal experience. Parker’s “Multigenerational Experiences of Structural Racism and the Denial of Innocence in the Lives of Black Girls in Philadelphia,” examined not only her hometown but phenomena she had faced there. “I experienced firsthand the impacts of adultification and the way it harms the lives of Black girls,” Parker said. “Adultification for Black girls is more than catcalling. It is the removal of health insurance, care, protection, and education, and much more.”
Her research revealed how Black girls’ experiences are removed from policy intended to help them, she said--a phenomenon she hopes to continue studying, ultimately designing policy “that includes the experiences of Black girls in hopes of creating change.” Parker, who is minoring in international and comparative studies, also serves as student body representative (at large) and serves as president of the university’s NAACP branch.
Shallal, a first-generation Chaldean (Babylonian)-American from McLean, Va., also is minoring in International and Comparative studies and remains active on campus as a student government representative for the Mason Core Committee and an editor of the university's first Undergraduate Law Review. An aspiring attorney, she considers her research “a vessel to honor my racial heritage and demonstrate my dedication to inclusivity through policy.”
Her 2025 project, “Living Between Labels: Race, Religion, and Recognition Among MENA Students at GMU (1960–2025),” emerged from two years of coursework in classes including INTS 203 with Manuel-Scott. It focused on lived experiences of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students at Mason, examining fluctuating Arabophobic and Islamophobic sentiments throughout history and how present-day anti-discrimination policy addresses bias incidents. In her comparisons of several regional universities' approaches and how funding affects them, she was surprised to find that none of her oral history participants "were aware of, nor had much faith in, the bias reporting process,” prompting further questions about inclusivity policies' efficacy.
Shallal hopes to pursue such questions and continue building on “Living Between Labels” through more oral histories, at Mason and regionally. The work advances her goals of building “a framework to advocate for the collective rights of minority students in higher education,” she says. Especially in “the current socio-political climate surrounding DEI and affirmative action,” she noted, “I hope that by sharing my findings, others will feel empowered to speak out, advocate for themselves, and secure their rights.”
September 30, 2025