Department of Marketing Assistant Professor, Anne Hamby, in collaboration with co authors including principal investigator Krishna Pakala, has contributed to a trio of publications stemming from their interdisciplinary, NSF-funded research. This body of work explores how storytelling can shape personal and professional identity, particularly in the context of student development in STEM fields.
The three pieces include:
- “The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves: A Narrative-Based Intervention to Shape Aspects of Identity” published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.
- “Using a Storytelling Intervention to Develop Professional Identity in Undergraduate Engineering Courses: An Exploratory Study” published in the International Journal of Engineering Education.
- “Our Stories, Ourselves” featured in Prism, the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education.
These publications reflect an innovative application of narrative psychology to real-world education challenges. “This work lies at the intersection of my interest in narrative process, persuasion and consumer well-being,” Hamby said. “. “It’s a concrete application of how the stories we tell ourselves really shape our lives in tangible ways.”
The team’s research demonstrates that encouraging engineering students to craft and reflect on their personal and professional stories can help reduce feelings of imposterism—a critical barrier to persistence in technical fields. For Hamby, witnessing this impact has reinforced her belief in the transformative power of narrative. “It makes me think about the other stories people tell themselves—and how those stories shape not only personal identity, but also the divides in our society,” she said.