Biography

Dr. 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. At its core, her work explores two overlapping concerns: (1) how international development discourses, policies, and programs related to student sexuality intersect with broader political economic projects (e.g., colonialism, racial capitalism); and (2) negotiations around ownership and partnership in development/humanitarian aid structures and knowledge production practices.

She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Southern and Eastern Africa, including in Malawi and Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camps, as well as with refugee communities resettled in the US.

Silver has two current research projects. The first, with graduate student HaEun Kim and Kenya-based collaborators Mark Okello Oyat and Sahra Mohamed Ismail, examines the possibilities for graduate-level education in refugee camps to shift the politics of knowledge production in the field of forced migration studies, where the vast majority of research is conducted by non-refugee scholars from the global North. The second, conducted with Dr. Alyssa Morley (Michigan State University), examines gendered discourses of risk and girls' experiences during COVID-19 in comparative perspective.

At York, Silver is co-director of York University's Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project with Dr. Don Dippo.

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 -

Courses Taught

• Comparative Perspectives on Global Migration and Education (GS/EDUC 5463)
• Ethnography of Education (GS/EDUC 6205)
• Rethinking Schooling: A "Re-Introduction" to Education (ED/EDUC 1000)

Selected Publications

• Alyssa Morley and Rachel Silver (2024). Undoing Aid: UK Aid Cuts, Development Relationships and Resourcing Futures in Malawi Development and Change.
• 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, 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

• Graduate Program in Development Studies
• Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist & Women's Studies
• Centre for Refugee Studies

Service/Community Activities

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