Pempho Chinkondenji, a Ph.D. Candidate in Education Leadership and Policy with a concentration in International Education, has been selected as a Research Associate for the 2020/2021 academic year by the Five College Women's Studies Research Center.  The Research Associate program brings together scholars dedicated to feminist scholarship and teaching in the world and to encourage engaged, critical feminist scholarship from diverse perspectives.

Chinkondenji’s doctoral research focuses on in-school pregnancy, school re-integration for student Mothers, and the impact of pregnancy policies on girls’ schooling experiences in Malawi. Her study analyzes the forces that support young mothers to return/stay in school and the forces that restrain them from returning to school after pregnancy. The study also examines teachers’ attitudes towards in-school pregnancy, bullying, and readmission of young mothers. 

Before joining the degree program at UMass Pempho co-founded the Loving Arms Malawi, a nonprofit organization that supports rural girls’ education and raises awareness about sexual violence in Malawi. She recently published a media review in the May 2020 issue of the Comparative Education Review of  the video Sex for Grades: Undercover in West African Universities that was produced by the BBC Africa Eye in 2019.