bio
Myshele Goldberg grew up outside of Hartford, Connecticut, in a diverse,
working-class town. Writing, learning, and creating art have always been
her greatest joys, and in recent years, these have been infused with a growing
social consciousness and political awareness.
Her first major research project took place at the age of fifteen, as part
of her first job. As an historic interpreter, she used old newspapers, books,
pamphlets, letters, and other primary sources to uncover details about the
life of Alice Cogswell, the first student at the American School for the
Deaf in 1817. Based on this research, she created a successful one-act play
that integrated spoken words with American Sign Language. She also performed
first-person interpretation and gave museum tours to groups of all ages,
galvanizing an early love of bringing invisible stories to light.
At the age of seventeen, she was accepted to an early-entrance programme and enrolled at the University of Southern California. She initially planned to study Theatre, but the gap between poverty and wealth in Los Angeles left a deep impression. She soon changed her major to Anthropology, in hopes of understanding the roots of injustice. Over the next three years, as she began to grasp some of the world’s complex issues, she became increasingly involved in activism. In addition to founding several student organizations, she helped create USC's Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Understanding, campaigning for tolerance in the wake of 9-11.
After graduating with honours, she returned to her family's home and spent two years engaged in activism and whatever employment she could find, including teaching, office work, retail, a short stint in a tanning salon, and serving as a union representative for Connecticut healthcare workers. During this time, she helped organize a 200-mile march between Boston and New York to protest the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and participated in a variety of interfaith and anti-war activities. She also founded a successful fusion of activism and popular culture, Goo Goo Dolls Fans For Peace.
Meanwhile, she had fallen in love with Scotland. During her third year abroad in Edinburgh, she discovered that everything from the city’s green spaces and architecture to its famously rainy weather suited her perfectly. After two years in Connecticut, she was finally able to return to Edinburgh for a masters course at the Centre for Human Ecology. The course united her many passions – social science, politics, psychology, spirituality, history, writing, and most of all, understanding the world’s injustice and how it might be changed. In her thesis, she examined the mythological dimensions of activist literature, and the experience solidified her desire to work in academia. She earned an MSc with distinction in February 2006, and is now on the Board of Directors for the Centre, also acting as newsletter editor and helping run the masters course.
After completing a six-month job with NHS Education for Scotland, she began her PhD in September 2006, at the University of Strathclyde’s department of Geography and Sociology. Her project focuses on social conscience and higher education in in Scotland - for more details, please see the academic page. More than two years of commuting allowed her to get to know Glasgow and appreciate its charms, and she moved there in October 2008 for the remainder of her PhD. She hopes to submit her dissertation in June 2010, fulfilling her grandfather’s desire to have "a doctor in the family."
In addition to her studies and activism, for two years Myshele wrote a column on the education page of the Scotsman newspaper. It was discontinued due to space limitations, but she still engages in freelance writing projects (details on the writing page). In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, gardening, playing bodhran, and dancing.