GMU Center for Consciousness and Transformation

In 2010, Dr. Dwyer, along with GMU colleagues Dr. Supriya Baily (Initiatives in Educational Transformation) and Jessica Heineman-Pieper (School of Public Policy), received a grant for a project entitled "Many Meanings of ‘Empowerment”: A Case Study of Projects to Transform Indonesian Women’s Consciousness." The project is a collaborative, trans-disciplinary initiative to understand the meanings, nature and processes of empowered consciousness and transformation from the perspectives of women whom international organizations have been seeking to target. Focusing on Aceh, a region of Indonesia that emerged as a development “laboratory” after the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami and decades of armed conflict, the researchers are exploring how women make sense of their experiences and roles within a multi-pronged empowerment program that combines transformative education with provisions of economic and social capital. By highlighting women’s experiences as they engage the opportunities and demands of development, we aim to contribute to theoretical understandings of consciousness and transformation as subjectively mediated and dynamic processes of negotiation, accommodation and dialogue.