Jocie Osika
Biography
Jocie is a PhD candidate in anthropology and is currently working on her doctoral research. Her work examines systems and institutions as infrastructures intended to deliver envisioned social futures. Using qualitative methods, she examines the child welfare system as a case in which government intervention redirects unwanted social practices toward those expected to produce certain types of citizens. She is particularly interested in how personal values and ideals contribute to conflicting stakeholder rationalities and assessments of child welfare efficacy. Jocie seeks to contribute ethnographically to the theorization of infrastructure and governmentality while also applying her findings to contemporary child welfare abolition and reform debates.
Education
Wayne State University - Anthropology PhD - September 2020-Present
University of Idaho - BS Anthropology; BS Psychology - September 2017-May 2020
Research Focus
child welfare, infrastructure, governmentality, foster care, classification, categorization, qualitative methods, anthropology, United States
Professional Associations
Foster Care Visitation Specialist; Fostering Futures; Ann Arbor, MI
Courses Taught
ANT 2050: Anthropology of Business
ANT 2100: Introduction to Biological Anthropology
Honors and Awards
Aswad Award, Wayne State Anthropology Department, April 2024
Professional Development Award, Wayne State Anthropology Department, 2022 & 2023
Thomas C. Rumble University Graduate Fellowship, 2020 - 2021
Rich and Mary Fox Memorial Scholarship, May 2020
Sigma Cum Laude University of Idaho CLASS, May 2020
University of Idaho Honors College Certificate, May 2020
Butch Boyer Scholarship, 2019-2020
Publications
Osika, J. and Luborsky, M. Making A Good First Impression: A Qualitative Descriptive Study of Online Adoption Photo Listings of Children (under consideration at Qualitative Social Work)
Osika, J. Persona Performance: Constructed Gym Archetypes for Tension Mitigation (under consideration at International Review for the Sociology of Sport)