WHO WE ARE

Jen McCormack, M.A.
Research Analyst
Doctoral degree student, Geography and Regional Development

Address: 803 E. First St., Tucson, AZ 85719
Phone: (520) 626-6335
E-mail: jenmack@u.arizona.edu

Biographical Note

Jen McCormack is currently a Research Analyst, and is thrilled to be working with the NNI team again. Back in 2000-2001, she was an editorial associate with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and spent happy hours writing with Manley Begay, Joan Timeche and Steve Cornell.

Jen has a B.A. in Geography and Photography from the University of Arizona (UA), a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (UT), and is a PhD candidate in the departments of Geography and American Indian Studies at UA. Her UT master’s work was with first generation women students from Palestinian Bedouin towns in the Negev Desert, Israel at Ben-Gurion University. She looked at higher education with these women who face a complex set of institutional and social challenges, and how they do amazing work in their communities.

Jen’s PhD research is a critical look at law, space, “counter-mapping,” and Native sovereignty/power. She is specifically interested how young people in the Sonoran Desert Native nations articulate their spaces, drawing from both tradition and their personal experiences. The research is poised as a true collaboration with young people in co-developing the theoretical posits to outlining alternative spatial-power presentations---using hip hop, dance, film and/or graffiti murals.