2012-2013 Recipient: Alicia Elizabeth Enciso

Alicia Elizabeth Enciso is the 2012-2013 Recipient of the Student Scholar Hispanic Women/Latina Award.

Con Alma: Dialogues in Decolonizing Counseling — Reciprocal Ethnographic Explorations in Mestiza and Indigenous Spaces for Community Healing

Alicia E. Enciso is a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her upbringing in Nogales, Ariz., on the U.S.-Mexico Border profoundly influenced her interest in the study of cultural dimensions in the human experience. She earned a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2000 and is interested in integrating her training in anthropology with her work in counseling psychology — particularly in exploring new ways of understanding cultural resonance in clinical work. Enciso's present research focuses on how communities of color create their own contexts for healing outside of mainstream mental health services. Her dissertation research is centered on a community organization in central Texas founded by indigenous women and mestizas to facilitate social change on many levels — spiritual, emotional, physical, mental and environmental. From a training and methodological standpoint, Enciso is interested in the utility of ethnographic research methods in creating clinical training contexts that privilege local knowledge systems. Enciso is grateful to her faculty mentors, her loving family and compañero and the inspiration of the mujeres and comadres at Alma de Mujer for their support of this work.