Stephanie House-Niamke

House-Niamke is a doctoral student in sociology at West Virginia University and a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow. She has guest-lectured on Critical Race Theory (CRT) at Virginia Tech and American University. Since arriving in Morgantown, she has worked with Dr. Katie Corcoran as a summer graduate research assistant and has been invited to speak at workshops addressing systemic racism in business and technology fields. She has three papers under review, one with Dr. Corcoran concerning multiple church attendance in the United States, another with Dr. Chris Scheitle about advisor-student relationships and demographic matching across race, gender, and religious identities, and with Dr. Josh Woods concerning the athlete's self-concept and self-branding via social media. Most recently, she has published her first single-authored article, "Hannah's Suffering: The Power of Voice" concerning womanist interpretation of a popular Old Testament scripture and its implications for minoritized women.

Broadly speaking, her research interests concern power, access, and choice, across the areas of race, gender, and religion. This includes anti-racist pedagogy and identity development for melanin-dominant communities and women who participate in religious institutions. Additionally, she has published work on BIPOC teachers' resistance to CRT in curricula. She has also published work focused on incorporating Critical Race Theory into graduate policy programs as well as general policy-making.

She serves as the Student Section Chair for the North Central Sociological Association. Her master's thesis, which focused on the impact of the White Jesus Phenomenon on Black Protestant women and men, was funded by The Joseph H. Fichter Research Grant through the Association of Sociology of Religion, the Korie Little Edwards Grant, the Student Research Grant from the Sociology of Religion section of the American Sociological Association and WVU's prestigious Carl del Signore Scholarship.

Most recently, she taught an amazing group of BIPOC, first generation, low-income students at Princeton University via the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America's 2022 Summer Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. The course curriculum focused on utilizing leadership skills and knowledge of social movements/activism to create and facilitate broader social change.