Biography

Dr. Silver uses ethnographic and other critical qualitative methods to study international development education processes and knowledge production practices. Specifically, she pays attention to how diverse actors and institutions in two sub sectors, girls’ education and refugee education, define development “problems” and navigate the dynamics of power, ownership, and partnership that animate their daily work. Silver’s research draws on and contributes to several fields: the anthropologies of education, gender, and policy; comparative and international education; critical development studies; and refugee and forced migration studies.

Silver has two current research projects. The first, with graduate student HaEun Kim and Kenya-based collaborators Phyllis Mureu (Windle International Kenya), Dr. Josephine Gitome (Kenyatta University), Mark Okello Oyat (Dadaab Response Association, and Sahra Mohamed Ismail (Dadaab Response Association), examines the implications of Kenya’s new Refugees Act and Shirika plan on refugee education and education governance. The second, conducted with Dr. Alyssa Morley (Michigan State University) and colleagues in Malawi, explores the implications of recent USAID and other cuts on Malawi’s education sector. Silver, Morley, and colleagues pay particular attention to how Malawians civil servants, NGO officials, and fieldworkers reconfigure their programming and reimagine new pathways to sustainable education practice.

Scholarly Interests

critical development studies; ethnography, girls' education; sexual and reproductive health education; forced migration and refugee studies; state/NGO/international funder relations; transnational feminisms; globalization and education

Faculty & School/Dept

• Faculty of Education -

Selected Publications

• Rachel Silver, Stella Makhuva, and Alyssa Morley (2024). Counternarratives of COVID-19: Girls' Stories of Disrupted Schooling in Malawi Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 56 (2).
• Alyssa Morley and Rachel Silver (2024). Undoing Aid: UK Aid Cuts, Development Relationships and Resourcing Futures in Malawi Development and Change.
• Alyssa Morley, Stella Makhuva, and Rachel Silver (2024). Nuancing Representations of Global Girlhoods: Possibilities and Problematics Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies.
• Sarah Sherman Stokes and Rachel Silver (2023). Titan Rescue Raises Questions about Whether Migrants' Lives are Also Worth Saving Boston Globe.
• Rachel Silver and Alyssa Morley (2023). Returns at Risk: Girls' Education and the Gendered Racial Vernacular of COVID-19 Comparative Education Review.
• Rachel Silver (2022). The Virgin and the Mother: Girl Stories and their Implications for Girls' Lives Compare.
• Rachel Silver and Nancy Kendall (2022). Syndemic Sex Education Sex Education.
• Rachel Silver, Mark Okello Oyat, HaEun Kim, and Sahra Mohamed Ismail (2022). Rhetorical Commitments and Funding Realities in Dadaab, Kenya Forced Migration Review.
• Rachel Silver, S. Nombuso Dlamini, and Nathan Englander (2021) Travel Bans Expose Continued Enforcement of Colonialism.Toronto Star
• Rachel Silver and Alyssa Morley (2021). Girls' Education and Sexual Regulation in Malawi Gender and Education.

Other Research Outputs

2021-2022 BHER Speaker Series: Reciprocal Learning Beyond Crisis

2020-2021 BHER Speaker Series: Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis

Research Projects

Refugee Education Governance and Alternative Futures in Kenya

Borderless Graduate Education and the Politics of Knowledge Production

Returns at Risk: COVID-19 and Girls' Education in Malawi

Awards

• Gail P. Kelly Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, Comparative and International Education Society - 2020
• Concha Delgado Gaitán Presidential Fellowship, American Anthropological Association's Council on Anthropology and Education - 2021
• Dean’s Research Impact Award-Emergent Stream, Faculty of Education, York University - 2023

Professional Affiliations

• Comparative and International Education Society: SIGs: Gender Justice (co-chair), Africa, Global Migration
• American Anthropological Association: Council on Anthropology and Education; Association for the Anthropology of Policy

York University Affiliations/Cross Appointments

• Centre for Refugee Studies

Service/Community Activities

• Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER): Director
• Creative Centre for Community Mobilization (CRECCOM): Consultant