Biography
Dr. Mary Ann Bodine Al-Sharif currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at UAB. She served as a Social Justice Graduate Research Fellow during her doctoral studies, and in 2019, she was awarded a Saudi Fellow by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education. She has worked in higher education as both a faculty member and student affairs and services administrator. She is a critical qualitative intersectional researcher who focuses on student identity development, international and global education, and issues of social justice and advocacy within higher education. She explores the lives of individuals within higher education who define themselves as living between worlds at the intersections of ability, race, religion, ethnicity, gender expression, and the like at the micro-level and dominate power structures within their environments at the macro-level. She intentionally engages in research that focuses on sociological, philosophical, historical, political, and/or cultural perspectives. She is extremely passionate about this work and the insight it can provide to the unique experiences of minoritized and marginalized populations in higher education both in the United States and abroad.
Research Description
For the 2023 ISRL, Mary Ann is completing research with fellow ISRL Participant Stacye Fraser-Thompson on best practices for strategic planning for campus internationalization.
Education
B.A. in Religious Studies, Randall University
M.A. in English, University of Central Oklahoma
M.Ed. & Ph.D. in Adult and Higher Education, University of Oklahoma.