A couple of years ago, I was walking to Allard Hall for a theatre class I was taking to work on my public speaking when I found myself in the middle of Student Research Day presentations. I thought it was really cool that students could do research and thought I’d like to do that one day – to study something and put it out there for people to see.

The following year, I was in a course in critical criminology with Dr. Amanda Nelund when she briefly mentioned incels. I went home, logged into the library website and discovered this entire group of people I didn’t know about – people who have beliefs and ideologies that society is built on a hierarchy of attractiveness, who place themselves at the bottom of this hierarchy and who believe there is no hope of finding an intimate partner. When I looked further, I found this budding subgroup called femcels – women who have similar beliefs but who internalize their feelings rather than blaming external factors for their inability to find romantic partnerships and turning to violence. 

I was fascinated by a whole world of “black pills” and “pink pills” – online symbols that send a message about a person’s level of dedication to an extremist ideology – that I had no idea even existed. When I realized femcels were under-researched, I asked Dr. Nelund if she would supervise an independent study. Earlier this year, I presented my research at the Ending Sexual Violence Research Forum. I was blown away when I listened to everyone’s research – it was all so good – and receiving the student research award felt really great. Now, I’m getting ready to share my work at Student Research Day.  

Research can seem daunting at first, but we all have a lot of questions we’re asking every day, and any of those can be research questions. Seeing where the information takes you is an adventure and a lot of fun.

– Chadene Forrester, Bachelor of Arts, Psychology major, Sociology minor student

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