Natasha Shrikant is an associate professor in the Department of Communication. She has worked at CU Boulder since Fall 2016. Natasha uses qualitative methods, namely ethnography and discourse analysis, to analyze how everyday conversations constitute identities and inequalities. Her previous projects have explored:
- How Asian Americans discuss race and diversity in the workplace, and
- How meanings of “racism” are constituted and contested in public discourse.
Currently, Natasha is part of an NSF grant-funded project analyzing misinformation that circulates among Asian American and Pacific Islander communities on social media platforms and designing communicative interventions that can remedy the harmful effects of misinformation in these communities. She is also conducting community-based research with a refugee-serving organization in Colorado. In this project, she is facilitating focus groups with refugee communities and analyzing how they construct stances towards identity, literacy and multilingualism. Findings will inform the construction of a "language library" containing multilingual books that serve needs voiced by refugee communities. Her interests in inclusive mentoring are tied to her research expertise in race, equity and identity as they surface in everyday interactions (like mentoring!) and from her own personal experiences as a mentee and a mentor.