about
Hi 😊 I’m Linzie Taylor (they/she), a first-generation PhD student and self-identified black feminist neuroscientist. I have always been a lover of science. I’m a person who asks many questions and thinks (probably too) deeply about what they observe, constantly trying to make sense of life. I had the greatest interest in how biology and psychology converge. This dipole curiosity (and my mother’s hard work and extra hours to make sure I could have this experience <3) led me to a biotechnology camp in the summer before my junior year of high school. I remember learning what neuroscience was via someone’s presentation on stem cell research. It felt like it was the missing piece that put it all together…the brain/nervous system and how it brings our body to life. This was the key. So, when I started college at Georgia State University I knew I wanted to be a neuroscientist. Immediately I started in a neurobiology lab where I explored locomotive patterns of C. elegans. This appreciation for knowledge coming from near microscopic organisms supported my foundational understanding of neuroscience. In the neuron lay a promise, an action potential continuously cascading itself into being. Building and building until the desired/ homeostatic action is achieved. Searching for balance.
At the start of my junior year in high school I also went to my first protest. Me and friends, outraged by the murder of a young Mike Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer, took to the streets to voice our pain, hurt, and rage at yet another life slain. Our hearts still sore, remembering Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice, found comfort in the hundreds of others who decided to share and work through pain as a collective. In this tension of pain and solace, the ways of our world were becoming clearer to me. Starting in high school and continuing throughout my academic experience, I remember nurturing a love for science while also mending wound and after wound realizing just how deep and pervasive our society’s commitment systems of oppression via violent methodology.
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It was in therapy where I first realized how everyday racism and microaggressions could be traumatic. This understanding changed my relation to neuroscience. After my first year of college, I transferred from a neurobiology lab to a neurosociology one and declared an African American Studies (AAS) minor. In this lab, I was introduced to how society, via values and social inclusion/ exclusion, influences our neural functioning. It was becoming more clear how normalized systems of oppression could actually influence how our bodies function in the long term. Following my time in the neurosociology lab, I decided to explore the intersection of race and stress disorders by working in an anxiety research and treatment lab. Around this time I also took an African American Political Thought class where I was exposed to black feminist scholarship. My final paper was on Patricia Hills Collins, her articulation of the outsider within paradigm illuminated the value that lay in an experience that is neither here nor there, thus able to provide novel perspective(1). I remember at the annual AAS department conference, after clarifying my major and minor, I asked a question about what the panelists’ thoughts were in regards to the intersection/ and blending of science and AAS. One person replied, “I should be asking you that question. It’s young scholars like yourself who are on the frontlines of that work.” I took that conversation to heart. The word frontlines echoing in my mind. Evoking an image of the need to continue an intellectual revolution that extends into science.
Space to remember lives lost to police violence:
-Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, Dominque Fells, Tony McDade, Riah Milton, Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, Tyre Nichols and countless others-
Link for donations for activists’ and protesters’ bail in Atlanta
The vision
I had the idea to start a blog while attending an international conference focused on black women’s creative and intellectual labor: Loophole of Retreat: Venice. At this conference, I saw how scholarship and intellect could be engaged in creative and embodied ways. Admiring and learning how these women are able to weave in and out of, and merge individual and collective ways of knowing to create art that speaks volumes without uttering a sound. I learned a lot through feeling at this conference. To know what it feels like to be in space surrounded by people who look like you, think like you, and literally accept you as part of a historical vision. There was no need to prove myself or what I knew, I was there and I was accepted. Speaker after speaker I felt poured into, crying many times because of how my way of knowing and being felt so seen and understood. This conference showed me that it is possible to do things in your own way to create and contribute to knowledge in ways that are in accordance to what we feel, in ways that resonate beyond our minds and touch our souls. After experiencing countless creative, intellectual and physical barriers in my journey to design a dissertation and communicate a perspective that traverses aspects of black feminism and neuroscience, I realized that I want my science to reflect a fuller expression of who I am. Remembering the feeling I felt at the conference I decided I needed to get rid of the obstacles so I could think freely and creatively about black feminist neuroscience. And blackfemmeneuro was created.
I write about my intentions for this blog in my introduction, but overall my vision for this creative endeavor is to give myself a chance to honor the feeling of full recognition that I felt at Loophole of Retreat. Knowing that this desire for more reflects the deep potential of my imagination and creativity, I’m using this blog as a space to harness this potential and incorporate it into my scientific understanding and approach. My hope is that others may find some kind of recognition in this blog, even if they do not identify as a black femme. My hope is that it inspires readers to honor what they desire, allowing feeling to illuminate novel paths towards scientific discovery and advancement.
Research
After graduating GSU in 2020, I started graduate school, embarking on my doctoral experience. Since 2020 was the year of… many things but most notably the pandemic and rise in international/global protests against police brutality situated me in a unique place of reflection. I could be still and really think about how to use my power as a graduate student to incorporate black feminism within neuroscience, especially considering the amount of attention that was being drawn to diversity, equity, and inclusion at this time. I began to explore neuroethics as an avenue to advocate for the inclusion of nontraditional and cultural perspectives within science research which eventually led me to coauthor a paper “Mitigating White western individualistic bias and creating more inclusive neuroscience”(2).
To start my dissertation project, I joined a lab investigating neurobiological mechanisms of trauma in a predominantly black women sample. I believe that in order for science to serve black women, there is a need to incorporate the intellectual and creative contributions of black women as well as create space to listen to their lived experiences and integrate this within research design, experimentation, and dissemination. Thus my dissertation uses a mixed methods approach to explore how cultural, psychological, and neurobiological mechanisms of emotional regulation compare in a sample of black women. I use the culture of dissemblance (3,4) as a theoretical ground for my research question and pair it with the qualitative assessment of this culture and how it relates to emotional engagement via participant interviews. I’m currently in my third year of graduate school and in the process of data collection. Results from the interviews will be compared to results from emotional regulation strategy questionnaires and neuroimages taken during an emotional processing task. My hope for my research is that it demonstrates how in order to incorporate intellectual contributions and the lived experiences of black women within research there is need to use novel approaches and methodology that is able to learn and integrate understanding from nontraditional sites of knowledge.
Citations
1. Collins, P. H. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Soc Probl 33, S14–S32 (1986).
2. Taylor, L. & Rommelfanger, K. S. Mitigating white Western individualistic bias and creating more inclusive neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 389–390 (2022).
3. Hine, D. C. Rape and the inner lives of black women in the middle west. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14, 912–920 (1989).
4. Schalk, S. Contextualizing black disability and the culture of dissemblance. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45, 535–540 (2020).