Maya McFarlane is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She obtained her BA in Human, Social, and Political Sciences (2022) and her MPhil in Sociology (2023) from the University of Cambridge. Maya’s MPhil thesis explored the role of hairstyling, emotion and memory in the racialisation of predominantly white universities. She has presented the findings of this research at the British Sociological Association and Eastern Sociological Society. She is currently researching the formation of racialised and gendered class identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, combining a racial frames analysis with theories of racial phenomenology.
Maya worked on the Black British Voices Project as a research assistant and continues to work in various levels of project output. Maya has held numerous student advocacy roles including Ethnic Minorities Officer of Pembroke College (2020/2021), Women’s and Non-Binary Officer of the SU BME Campaign (2020/2021) and President of FLY Cambridge (2021/2022). She was awarded the inaugural George Bridgetower Essay Prize in 2022 and has written for publications including Varsity and The Voice.
