Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology, University of Kentucky

M.A., Anthropology, University of Kentucky 2018

Graduate Certificate in Gender & Women's Studies, University of Kentucky, 2017

M.L.A., Gastronomy, Boston University, 2014

B.A. (Hons), Anthropology, University of Tennessee: Knoxville, 2012

M. Ruth Dike is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. She was born and raised in Memphis, TN but holds a Bachelor of Arts in Honors Anthropology from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy from Boston University. 

Funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant, my dissertation explores how Moroccan family life is changing, with regards to the gendered negotiations of reproductive and paid labor and the cultural meaning and lived experience of contemporary middle-class identities. Reproductive labor is broadly defined as unpaid and paid labor associated with care giving and domestic roles including but not limited to cleaning, cooking, and child care. While the majority of existing research on reproductive labor uses quantitative methods which pre-formulates participants’ responses, this project employs a fine-grained ethnographic approach to explore everyday practices in the household in order to uncover participants’ own reasons and strategies for negotiating reproductive labor in the way they do.