My Biography
Alison Hanson is the recipient of the 2023 David M. Schneider Award. This award honors an original graduate student essay that focuses on work on kinship, cultural theory, and American culture.
Alison Hanson is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She graduates in September 2023. Her dissertation, “This University is Not Made for Someone Like Me”: A Survivor-Centered Study of Campus Sexual Violence, explores how survivors’ experiences overlap with and diverge from institutional structures for support and remedy. Her awarded paper, “Survivor Stories: Fragments as/of Care,” argues that we must broaden our capacities to hear stories of sexual violence and survivance beyond that which is made legible through Title IX. More broadly, Alison’s work demonstrates that supporting survivors and preventing harm are matters of equity and belonging. She is committed to applying her findings to effect institutional change. Through the course of her research, she worked for 2 years as a confidential advocate and prevention educator at UCSC and recently served on a sexual harassment working group for the AAA.