{"id":73440,"date":"2021-07-29T13:09:01","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T17:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=73440"},"modified":"2021-07-29T15:18:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T19:18:18","slug":"horizon-scholarship-recipient-fuels-research-with-personal-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2021\/07\/horizon-scholarship-recipient-fuels-research-with-personal-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Horizon Scholarship recipient fuels research with personal experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

NOTE: This is one in a series of stories on Brock\u2019s inaugural Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship recipients. To read other stories in the series,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Elvia Lopez was two years old when she and her father left their home in Mexico to start a new life in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The pair crossed the border and settled in Fresno, Calif., where Lopez lived undocumented until the age of 12. At that time, she was able to obtain permanent residency, before eventually gaining her American citizenship at age 21.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father\u2019s decision to migrate him and I to the U.S. is something that has impacted me all my life,\u201d says Lopez, a Brock master\u2019s student in Social Justice and Equity Studies (SJES). \u201cMy relationship to the U.S.-Mexico border is something that has defined me under U.S. law. For many years, I was voiceless. When I began my undergraduate studies at California State University, Fresno, I found my voice and my passion for research blossomed.\u201d<\/p>\n

That passion has continued to grow over time, with Lopez now using her personal experiences to drive her graduate research project at Brock.<\/p>\n

Her dedication to her work saw her recognized earlier this year as one of 20 inaugural winners of the Brock Horizon Graduate Student Scholarship. The scholarship fund will provide $1 million over the next 10 years to high-achieving graduate students from Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) and other under-represented groups. Twenty students from research-based programs will be chosen each year to receive a one-time award of $5,000.<\/p>\n

Lopez was drawn to Brock after searching for a social justice master\u2019s program where she could pursue a thesis in the area of sex and labour trafficking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked what I read about Brock, the faculty members and the look of the campus, so I took a chance and decided to come to Canada,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

When she arrived at the University, she was instantly impressed by Brock\u2019s program and the peers she met.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole cohort is great,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are all like-minded people, and I\u2019ve made instant friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those quick connections was fellow SJES student Zabrina Downton, who Lopez worked with in February 2020 to run a Niagara Social Justice Forum session aimed at busting immigrations myths and teaching strategies for bystanders when witnessing racism or xenophobia.<\/p>\n

After their presentation, Lopez and Downton learned it had been attended by two white nationalists who secretly recorded and livestreamed the session on a website for other white nationalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the turning point for me,\u201d Lopez says. \u201cThe fact that these people were using our presentation as fodder for people with such opposite views to me, I knew at that moment that I needed to switch my research focus to learn more about anti-immigration sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez settled on a project that examines the conservative, far right American news coverage of the 2019 El Paso, Texas, mass shooting at Walmart and the detaining of migrants by the United Constitutional Patriots at the U.S.-Mexico border. She is investigating how these two instances of border violence are connected to the larger discourse of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are dying and families are being separated, in part, due to the anti-immigrant content in the U.S. media,\u201d Lopez says. \u201cA constant in my educational career has been my intellectual motivation to centre marginalized voices. As an immigrant myself, it\u2019s important that I bring light to these issues and reaffirm existing literature on this topic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez expressed thanks to the University for choosing her as a recipient of the Horizon Scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found out I had been selected, it was a surreal moment. I was very happy,\u201d she says. \u201cMy experiences at Brock have generally been very positive, but to have the University show its support for under-represented student groups like this helps me know I made the right choice in coming here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elvia Lopez was two years old when she and her father left their home in Mexico to start a new life in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":73442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[188,55,1,4,38],"tags":[159,10580,522,3335,3330,9928,128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73445,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73440\/revisions\/73445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}