Ashlee Dauphinais
Ashlee Dauphinais, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, at The Ohio State University, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Education, International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office. Doctoral candidates can engage in full-time dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies through the DDRA grant. Nationwide across all disciplines only 100 Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowships were awarded.
Ashlee Dauphinais will conduct her dissertation research in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for 12 months studying Linguistic Practices among Women with Turner Syndrome in Brazil.
Dauphinais will examine the topic of linguistic practices and the construction of womanhood among individuals with Turner Syndrome (TS), one of the most common chromosomal intersex conditions. She will be affiliated with the Applied Linguistics program and the School of Medicine at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her project examines linguistic variation and other discursive practices to explore how TS individuals mitigate personal and group identity in light of larger discourses of womanhood and femininity in Brazil. Employing mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Dauphinais will conduct an in-depth ethnography of Brazilian TS communities and doctors to understand how TS individuals negotiate their embodied gendered identity and medical treatment through language. More broadly, her research facilitates insights on intersections of language, the body, health practices, and social conceptions of gender for scholars and medical practitioners.
Dauphinais earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and international relations from Saint Joseph's University (2010) and Master of Arts in linguistics from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras (2014). Her academic advisor is Anna Babel.
The Office of International Affairs administers the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship Program for The Ohio State University, and grant competitions are held annually. Doctoral candidates interested in applying for the Fellowship must contact Fulbright-Hays program director, Joanna Kukielka-Blaser, kukielka-blaser.1@osu.edu.