Kathleen Cash

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Kathleen Cash is an independent researcher and educator interested in integrative methodologies that bring social change to economically and educationally disadvantaged women and youths. Using ethnographic research methods, she collects stories people tell about themselves and their sexual experiences and transforms this research into composite stories that mirror the vulnerabilities and emotions expressed. She then creates picture books in which the composite stories are accompanied by culturally appropriate images and told in the vernacular. These are used by trained peer educators in a pedagogical process that incorporates storytelling, dialogue, and structured interactions. While a specific goal is to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS, a more general goal is to foster confidence in participants by improving communication in their public and private relationships.

As a Radcliffe fellow, Cash will write a book describing her gender-based model of HIV/AIDS prevention and sexual health education and how she integrated research and pedagogy. She will relate the evolution, adaptation, and impact of her programs in Bangladesh, Haiti, Thailand, Uganda, and Latino and African American communities in Los Angeles, and discuss how the multifaceted nature of womens’ and youths’ vulnerabilities were addressed within the programs.

Cash did undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Wisconsin and earned her EdD at the University of Massachusetts. She has received two Fulbright fellowships, a 1987 teaching fellowship at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and a 2004 AIDS research fellowship in Uganda, where she looked at the relationship between sexual and domestic violence and the transmission of HIV/AIDS.