Chrystal George Mwangi, PhD

Chrystal A. George Mwangi is an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her scholarship broadly centers on 1) structures of opportunity and issues of inequity that impact the trajectory of diverse students into and through college; 2) internationalization efforts within higher education, the transnational nature of universities, and the use of higher education as a tool for international mobility/migration; and 3) African and African Diaspora populations in higher education with a specific emphasis on the impact of race, racism, and coloniality on their educational experiences. Dr. George Mwangi engages qualitative, mixed methods, participatory, and critical research designs and frameworks. Her research has been published in journals including Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development, Review of Higher Education, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Prior to her faculty position, Dr. George Mwangi worked for a number of years as a college administrator. She received her PhD in Higher Education Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park and her MS in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Florida State University.

George Mwangi’s research “Partner Positioning: Examining International Higher Education Partnerships through a Mutuality Lens” explores “60 international higher education partnerships through the lens of mutuality…examining how partners negotiate and navigate power.” These partnerships were created with the goal of addressing international development challenges through collaboration between a university in the Majority World and a university in the U.S. The findings emphasized “the process of partnership creation, navigating cross-cultural contexts, partner positioning and partnership dynamics, and stakeholder engagement.”

Chrystal A. George Mwangi received the 2018 Innovative Research in International Education Award.