CNP Student Fellow Zahra Sharifiheris

Inaugural Center for Nursing Philosophy Student Fellow Zahra Sharifiheris.

Congratulations to our inaugural CNP Student Fellow Zahra Sharifiheris! Zahra served as a CNP Fellow from July 2020 until March 2021.

The competitive fellowship supports promising students in their pursuit of targeted scholarship in nursing philosophy.

The student fellow receives a stipend for support. They are able to use it at their discretion.

The fellowship is a one-quarter (10 weeks) commitment of intensive mentored scholarship in the Center for Nursing Philosophy at UCI, followed by up to two additional 10-week quarters of virtual mentorship to support scholarship completion.

The expectation is that the end of the fellowship corresponds with submission of the completed scholarship as a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Zahra received her bachelor’s and master’s in midwifery from Iran and joined the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing as a PhD student in 2019. She was a member of the Brilliant Talent Institution during her bachelor’s and master’s studies. She has three years of experience working as a nurse-midwife practitioner in both economically poor and rich regions.

As a PhD student, her research interest is in pregnancy, maternity and child health. She credits a required philosophy of science course with sparking her interest in her first year as a PhD student.

Zahra wants to trace the history of the concept of “nursing philosophy” in the literature. Her goals are to:

  • Elucidate how nurses and other scholars have “philosophized” nursing over time
  • Show how that philosophizing has influenced nursing’s understanding of its discipline