Special Adviser to the Provost on Diversity

Margaret Abraham is Professor of Sociology and also serves as the Special Adviser to the Provost for Diversity. In this advisory role, Professor Abraham works directly with Provost Herman Berliner, the Provost’s Office and the Deans on developing strategies to increase faculty and administrative diversity. Professor Abraham played a critical role in furthering the Agenda of the Provost’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity. She has also served as Chair of Department of Sociology and as the Director of Women’s Studies.

She is the Co-President of the International Sociological Association – Research Committee on Women and Society from 2006-2010. Her areas of research and teaching interest include ethnicity, migration, gender, globalization, domestic violence and the South Asian Diaspora. She is the author of Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States (Rutgers University press 2000) which won the American Sociological Association: Section on Asian and Asian America Outstanding Book Award in 2002. In 2007 she was the co-recipient of a Community Action Research Grant from the American Association’s Spivack Program in Applied Social Research and Public Policy for the project, “Seen and Sheltered: Effective response to NIMBYism”.

Dr. Abraham has presented papers at numerous conferences and published in various journals including Gender & Society, Violence Against Women, and the Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She has served on the board of Directors of Sakhi for South Asian Women and the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA) and Westbury Friends School. She has been an advisory board member and consultant on national projects related to issues on violence against women. Dr. Abraham has been involved in research and activism in the field of domestic violence in the South Asian immigrant community for more than fifteen years. She has been honored for her work by Sakhi for South Asian Women, Indus Women Leaders, the Indian American Kerala Cultural and Civic Center, and the Office of the Executive, Nassau County, State of New York. Her work has been profiled and quoted in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, India Abroad, Malayalam Pathram, India Today, Indiathink.com, and Rip Rap: The Academic Book Program.