That's a cap

This story by Megan Mendenhall is an excerpt of an article written for Endeavors, UNC's research magazine. Read the full version on endeavors.unc.edu

Research gives UNC-Chapel Hill undergrads access to unexpected places: the stage of Moeser Auditorium, the shores of Jordan Lake and a lab bench in Marsico Hall.

This May, thousands of Carolina undergraduates will get their degrees. Their participation in research has shaped their college careers and prepared them to help solve some of the world’s most significant challenges.

“Research is so valuable,” explains Malak Dridi, a senior who has participated in several social science research projects while at Carolina. “Even if you don’t want to go to grad school or get a PhD, it teaches you writing skills, communication skills, and how to empathize with certain topics and communities.”

Dridi learned two invaluable things from her first research experience as a sophomore. One, she was not interested in biometric technology, and two, she loved the research process.

The Carolina journalism and public policy major was first introduced to research during an internship at the UNC Office of Ethics and Policy, where she helped research biometric technology — like facial recognition and fingerprint software — and the university’s policies surrounding it.

During her time here, she participated in projects on a range of topics — hate crimes against Muslims in the South, democratic disenchantment after the 2011 revolution in Tunisia and the differences in outcomes between graduates of historically Black colleges and predominately white law schools.

“I think research has truly shaped my trajectory as both an academic and an individual at UNC,” Dridi explains. “I’ve realized that research has been an avenue for me to feed my curiosity. It’s asking big questions. It’s looking at communities to try to better understand what’s happening so we can create solutions that are actually impactful.”

Over the spring 2024 semester, she worked with public policy professor Malissa Alinor on a project studying the emotional reactions to employment discrimination and discrepancies between Asian-American and African-American populations in the United States. The project aims to understand how discrimination occurs within these communities and provide interventions to help mitigate this issue.

“We’re able to see what populations in these communities are more likely to quit their jobs or which communities are more likely to speak out and try to advocate for themselves,” she says.

One unexpected challenge Dridi faced during her research was the emotional connection she had with the community she was studying.

“I myself am a Muslim, so when researching hate crimes against Muslims in the South, I’d find myself empathizing with the stories I was hearing, finding a sense of familiarity in the trauma that these victims have experienced,” she says. “It’s important to recognize that your position as part of the community you’re researching is actually a skill and an asset to the research team because you can see things that others may not be able to.”

After graduation, Dridi will work as a legal administrative assistant with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington D.C. She plans to attend law school in the next few years and eventually work as a civil rights public interest lawyer.