Meet 2018 RBSI Scholar, Zoe Walker

Zoe Walker, University of Notre Dame

Zoe Walker is a junior at the University of Notre Dame studying English and political science. Passionate about both research and community involvement, Zoe has devoted her time at Notre Dame to pursuing both service and academics. She has served as an intake volunteer at Indiana Legal Services in South Bend; worked as an intern for a public defender in St. Joseph County and has worked for the Northern Indiana Reentry and Restorative Justice Clinic, a nonprofit organization that helps former offenders to expunge their criminal. Zoe’s real-life experiences have shaped her interest in academic research. Inspired by her time working with both the legal aid clinic and the public defender, Zoe pursued research on the importance of considering intersectionality in family court proceedings and the vulnerabilities black women face in the family court system. For both this work and her high academic standing, she was named as one of Notre Dame’s Doan’s Scholars and was selected to present her research at Notre Dame’s Undergraduate Scholars Conference. Zoe has also worked as a research assistant for Professor Traci Burch at the American Bar Foundation where she analyzed local newspaper coverage of police brutality, fatal police encounters and subsequent protests. As a writer, Zoe also enjoys working with her peers as a tutor in the university Writing Center and as an editor for her university’s undergraduate political science journal Beyond Politics. She looks forward to pursuing a joint JD/PhD program to unite her interests in the relationships between communities and legal systems and the politics that drive the construction of these systems.

See all 2018 RBSI Scholars.