Martina Sharp-Grier

Title: Graduate Student
Dept/Program: Sociology
Phone: 330-972-7481
Email: mlg16@zips.uakron.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format

Biography

Martina L. Sharp-Grier is a PhD student at the University of Akron. She is also an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Gerontology at Stark State College in North Canton, OH, and a Certified Equity Consultant for The National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE). She has a long history of public service, having been employed as a probation officer for the Montgomery County Ohio Adult Probation Department and as a parole officer for the State of Ohio Adult Parole Authority. She has also maintained professional positions in victim advocacy and forensic social work.

As an educator, Sharp-Grier has designed and taught courses in sociology, social problems, sex and gender, and racial and ethnic relations. She previously held a Lecturer of Women’s Studies assignment at The University of Akron.

Martina’s research is interdisciplinary and has primarily utilized qualitative methods through Autoethnography, Indigenous Cultural Research methods, and Critical Performance Pedagogy. Her areas of inquiry have included racial and gendered identity formation and maintenance; inequalities within the social structure related to race, sex, and sexuality; microaggressions in higher education; domestic violence/intimate partner violence; sexual harassment and anonymity; and bullying in the workplace as correlated with minority status. In addition to multiple single and co-authored refereed articles, book chapters, and gray literature, she is a co-editor of the anthology, Feminist Pedagogy, Practice, and Activism: Improving the Lives of Girls and Women, which was released by Routledge Press in 2017.

As a public speaker and Equity Consultant, Martina has spoken nationally and internationally on the phenomenological reality of motherscholaring and the inculcation of racial and ethnic identity in her children. She also lends her voice, to work with educators and individuals who support students and educators in areas including culturally competent teaching, othering in the educational milieu, microaggressions in the educational venue, nontraditional careers, and bullying in academe. Sharp-Grier has written for and presented to physicians, mental health and substance abuse clinicians, and criminal justice professionals regarding the cultural nuances inherent in providing assistance to targets of domestic violence/intimate partner violence (DV/IPV), on identifying the multiple iterations of DV/IPV, and on assisting children affected by DV/IPV.

Lastly, Sharp-Grier is the proud mother of two adult children and an Honorably Discharged member of the United States Army Reserve.