Connecting Counterspaces and Community Cultural Wealth in a Professional Development Program.

This qualitative study analyzes the relationship between two concepts from critical race theory-counterspaces and community cultural wealth. Counterspaces are supportive, identity-affirming community spaces, while community cultural wealth highlights the importance of the knowledge, skills, and networks used by individuals belonging to marginalized groups to successfully navigate academia. This study investigates the hypothesis that the processes operating within counterspaces serve to strengthen an individual's access to their community cultural wealth.

Centering female agency while investigating contraceptive use: a case study in Agincourt, South Africa.

Background: Rural areas of South Africa face persistently high teenage and premarital childbearing rates, reflecting a lack of or inconsistent use of modern contraception. In attempting to understand this behavior, much of the literature has denied agency to young women, portraying them solely as victims of their environments. This study moved beyond these approaches to understanding adolescent contraceptive use, to reframe the investigation to focus on the tension around exercising agency within specific structural constraints.

The BRAINS Program: Transforming Career Development to Advance Diversity and Equity in Neuroscience.

In order to better prepare trainees and advance diversity in neuroscience, career development must move beyond scientific skills. The BRAINS Program's continuous professional development model positively impacts participants' careers by fostering a sense of community and creating a counterspace for critical conversations.

Learning to Thrive: Building Diverse Scientists' Access to Community and Resources through the BRAINS Program.

Broadening the Representation of Academic Investigators in NeuroScience is a National Institutes of Health-funded, national program that addresses challenges to the persistence of diverse early-career neuroscientists. In doing so, BRAINS aims to advance diversity in neuroscience by increasing career advancement and retention of post-PhD, early-career neuroscientists from underrepresented groups (URGs). The comprehensive professional development program is structured to catalyze conversations specific to URGs in neuroscience and explicitly addresses factors known to impact persistence such as a weak sense of belonging to the scientific community, isolation and solo status, inequitable access to resources that impact career success, and marginalization from informal networks and mentoring relationships.