The value of a physics identity
Being able to see themselves as physicists can make or break students’ ability to thrive in the field.
People with minoritized racial, ethnic and gender identities face unique challenges when trying to build a physics identity, says Simone Hyater-Adams, who earned her doctoral degree at CU Boulder studying the intersection of race, performance and physics identity. “Who a physicist is clearly has a standard, and a definition”—usually a White, cisgender man who conducts research at a top laboratory or university, she says.
In her research, Hyater-Adams found that Black physicists—regardless of their career stage—often don’t identify as physicists because they don’t fit into that mold. That’s a critical problem to solve, she says, as having a physics identity can make all the difference in whether marginalized students feel able to persist and thrive.
Many diversity initiatives in physics center around inviting more people of marginalized identities into the already-existing structures of the discipline. But a true commitment to equity and inclusion, Hazari says, requires transforming what it means to do and teach physics to make it possible for those who are invited in to stay. “Right now, what we might call a physics identity is defined very narrowly,” she says. “And so what I’m talking about is disrupting what it means to be a physics person—to make that broader and more diverse.”
