by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle
Hayden Dawes and Denise “Dee” Yookong Williams, two Ph.D. students in the School of Social Work, were recognized as part of the 2023 Duke Sexual and Gender Minority Wellness Symposium, a three-day event that took place Sept. 17–19.
Dawes received the Pauli Murray Sexual and Gender Minority Wellness Outstanding Dissertation Award from Rosita Stevens-Holsey, a civil rights activist and Murray‘s niece, on Tuesday, Sept. 19, for his research involving self-permission and self-compassion for LGBTQ+ people of color. The award is named for the work of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, a pioneer in fighting for change aimed at policies and laws that discriminated against individuals due to their gender or race. They were a leading advocate for both civil rights and women’s rights. The annual award received by Dawes gives recognition to dissertation research done by current or former graduate students.
“To call it an honor would feel like an understatement,” Dawes said. “I don’t really have a better word. I feel very humbled by it, excited for my future and I feel so incredibly appreciative that my community of practitioners that are like me and researchers that are like me are honoring me in this way. It feels like a high pinnacle of my life, one of the moments of ‘wow.’ I feel kind of in awe, very grateful, especially given that I’m not even finished writing up the dissertation. Who wins an award for something that has not yet even been completed?
“I was talking with one of my academic colleagues, one of my friends, and he said, ‘Our impacts go much further than even what’s written.’ I think this is just such a wonderful example of that because I think we can forget that the impact and the process of how things are being created matters just as much as when something has actually been completed and being disseminated out to the world.”
Dawes’ dissertation, “Liberating Ourselves with #RadicalPermission: A Mixed Methods Intervention Study of People in Digital Community,” is a project that began years ago. In 2017, after his friend made it a goal to write a haiku on Instagram every day for 100 days, Dawes came up with the idea of posting a personal permission slip on the social media app each day. The pieces of advice included treating himself kindly and giving himself permission to have a difficult conversation with a loved one, if needed.
“And I just found that it supported my day-to-day showing up for me and that I didn’t have to look for someone else’s consent nor power outside of me, that I do have some agency in my life,” Dawes said.
From there the project grew. Dawes arrived at Carolina and continued to think about the ideas of agency and autonomy, culminating in focusing his dissertation project on a 30-day online community program for “Queer people of color between the ages of 18 and 29 who might be having some symptoms related to their mental health such as anxiety, depression, some regular, regular stuff just being in the world and particularly being a targeted, minoritized community,” Dawes said.
“And I just found that it supported my day-to-day showing up for me and that I didn’t have to look for someone else’s consent nor power outside of me, that I do have some agency in my life,” Dawes said.
The virtual community provided members with an outlet to show support for one another. Although Dawes is still analyzing the data from the experiment, he’s received plenty of positive feedback from participants.
“Hayden you really have created something really special and beautiful,” wrote one participant. “I’m so excited to see how this grows. You have already touched so many people.”
Williams, meanwhile, represented Carolina at the Symposium as part of a panel on Sunday, Sept. 17, following the presentation of CURED, a documentary detailing a landmark moment in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. Williams was joined in the discussion by the film’s co-director, Patrick Sammon, and two others.
“I felt excited and very honored to be selected as a panel member for the CURED screening event, especially considering the high esteem in which I hold my colleagues who were on the panel with me, and those who coordinated and participated in the 2023 Sexual and Gender Minority Wellness Symposium through Duke University,” Williams stated. “I learned a lot from the documentary as well as hearing the experiences of my elder queer counterparts, two of whom lived through and survived the time where homosexuality was considered a mental illness.”
Williams was recognized for the honor in part thanks to the work they’ve done around highlighting beneficial health outcomes for LGBTQ+ populations and focusing on mental health outcomes for gender diverse adolescents and young adults through the Queer Behavioral and Emotional Health Community Network and Research Collaborative, where they work with School of Social Work faculty members Associate Professor William Hall and Assistant Professor Ankur Srivastava.
