Asmaa Elsayed (Education Policy, Organization & Leadership) is a 2025–26 HRI Graduate Fellow. Her current research project, “Between Shadows and Stories: Navigating the Physical and Digital to Redefine Womanhood and Reclaim Belonging for Minoritized Women in the Global South,” examines how vulnerable and minoritized women in the global south navigate, resist, and reconstitute identity, belonging, and citizenship under conditions of extreme constraint.
Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a year of dedicated research and writing in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.
What is unique about your research on this topic?
My current research focuses on spirituality among college students in higher education, particularly women from underrepresented and minoritized backgrounds. I am especially interested in how students navigate questions of meaning, belief, and belonging as they make sense of their identities within and beyond inherited frameworks. What is unique about my approach is that I center the intersectional, lived, gendered, and embodied processes of identity development and transformation among minoritized women graduate students, situating these experiences within broader socio-political, religio-cultural, linguistic, and institutional contexts. By doing so, my work contributes to a more holistic understanding of college student development and highlights how institutions can better support students in navigating complex questions of purpose, alignment, and well-being.
What drives your interest in this research?
In a world shaped by global uncertainty—wars and conflicts, climate-related disasters, rapid developments in artificial intelligence, and exposure to competing ideologies—students are confronted not only with complexity, but with the challenge of making meaningful sense of it. One of the most pressing challenges I observe in higher education is students’ struggle to think independently, to self-author their lives in a world that constantly prescribes who they should be, and to cultivate a sense of fulfillment beyond external markers of success. In my work with students, I see many who feel overwhelmed, burned out, and disconnected—often lacking a sense of alignment and deeper purpose. This project is, in many ways, a response to that gap. I am interested in how students engage questions of meaning, direction, and connectedness as they navigate identity and belief. For me, building students’ spiritual resilience and advancing a more holistic approach to student development offers a critical lens for this inquiry. It involves, as Joanne Hindman describes, “discern[ing] that which brings us life, wholeness, and integrity” (2002, p. 169), and connects to what C. Carney Strange (2001) describes as “a profound sentiment of peace and contentment” (p. 58). This orientation continues to guide my work and sustains its intellectual and personal significance.
How has the fellowship seminar shaped the way you’re approaching your research?
Through the fellowship, I developed a stronger ability to present and translate my research for multidisciplinary audiences. This experience expanded my confidence in articulating the relevance and impact of my work beyond a single field. As a result, I feel better positioned to pursue a range of academic and professional pathways that involve interdisciplinary collaboration, public engagement, and applied research. The fellowship not only supported my academic progress but also deepened my sense of purpose as a scholar. It enabled me to more fully connect my research on identity, meaning-making, and holistic student development with broader conversations in the humanities. Being part of an intellectual community that values humanistic inquiry strengthened my commitment to advancing research that supports students’ well-being, purpose, and sense of belonging. I am especially grateful to Antoinette Burton, director of HRI, whose leadership illuminated what it means to practice the humanities with care, integrity, and depth. She cultivated a space that was both refuge and provocation—humane, safe, and brave—where scholars could gather not only to share ideas, but to wrestle with them. Through her thoughtful and generative presence, she invited us to linger with uncertainty, to reimagine the contours of our work, and to gently confront the questions that had been waiting for our attention.
– Hindman, D. M. (2002). From splintered lives to whole persons: Facilitating spiritual development in college students. Religious Education, 97(2), 165–182.
– Strange, C. C. (2001). Spiritual Dimensions of Graduate Preparation in Student Affairs. New Directions for Student Services, 2001(95), 57–67.