Maëlle Rihouey is a current junior here at
UW-Superior. She’s an international student
from France, majoring in public leadership and changemaking with a double minor in communications and gender studies. She has had major success and recognition through her research after a summer fellowship in the summer of 2025.
Rihouey applied for her summer fellowship
through her advisor, Haji and the Link Center, and was granted a developmental grant for summer research to be able to research and put together a poster presentation for the campuses symposium in October, after which, she took her research and applied it to different opportunities.
Rihouey’s research focuses on how women’s
discussion of sports affects French people’s perception of a minority and found that there were four main reasons for this: racist stereotypes, gender specific discrimination, representation in the media, along with conceptions that French people have about what it means to be French.
When it came to choosing this topic, Rihouey
said that for her it was because she is from France. “I have had like, maybe not the experience, but I have seen it happening through social media, and things like this,” she said she “wanted to highlight this even more because outside of France, people
don’t know.”
Rihouey pointed her research towards wom-
en’s sports because of the output of things that she was seeing from the Paris Olympics, saying “That’s when I was like, okay, this is why this is happening, I was scrolling through TikTok and I would see stuff, and I was like, this should not be happening.”
Rihouey shared that a majority of her research process was largely done through digging into what international politics and French politics, rules and regulations had to say, sharing that, “Actually, most of my summer was reading articles and learning more about this and that, and you read about one topic and then that brings you to another one.”
Presenting her research beyond UW-Superior’s symposium has been very exciting for Rihouey. From presenting
in Madison at a Women and Gender Studies
Consortium, along with presenting in Virginia
at the National Conference for Undergraduate
Research. Rihouey shared that
the presenting process “can be stressful at first, because you don’t want
to forget key info or anything” but that she found that for her it wasn’t hard.
Rihouey while in Madison presenting found
out that she had actually received a WGSC award; a statewide recognition. “I was invited for lunch, and I’m like, I was confused because I didn’t know I won until that
email, so I was like, what is it? Did I fill out something?” she said. She found validation on another level from the presentation aspect and the award she won in Madison. “It feels good because it’s not just like going to do my research, and then like nobody cares or anything, it’s actually like, I feel like I can
make change.”
Her connection to France throughout the
entire process was important to her, that while presenting Rihouey made connections.
“I met people, I met a French girl, because I’m the only one here, so every time I can catch them, I’m happy,” she said. Throughout her presentations and conversations with people, she was seeing people connect
and find that “this is not just like a France
issue or something, it’s global.”
Looking forward to the rest of her time at UW-Superior, Rihouey shared that she would
love to continue to research. “That’s what I figured out over the summer, I actually really enjoyed it, even if I was getting mad at some French people sometimes.” More than that, for her, “The idea of research, I actually
like it, it’s very interesting, and also, I love researching but also presenting about it.”
Rihouey “would encourage people to learn more about minorities and things
like this…just, change has been made, even from past and stuff, and this is good, and it needs to continue and made even better, you know?” She said that through things “just like
people watching more women’s sports, encouraging more, like, if you see something that is not equal or something, like fight against it, like in a way, and talk about religion, and learn more about different religions.” She found through her
research that prejudice often came from a lack of information.
Being a Public Leadership and Changemak-
ing major, Rihouey has seen firsthand the ways that her and her classmates are able to make change, saying that for those interested, “You can make change, everywhere, anywhere, there’s just so many topics and things you probably don’t
know.” She says most importantly as a student that, “I mean, it hasn’t always been easy, but I’m very glad I choose this school, that I tried these opportunities. Every time you have an opportunity, take it, try it, you might not have it, but you might,
even if you don’t, you learn, and I think it’s one of the most important things.
