From Survivor to Scholar: How UB Libraries Supports Gabby Pascuzzi’s Next Chapter

by KAITLYN LIU

Imagine you suddenly find yourself on a remote island with 19 strangers. Together, you get to decide: What kind of society would you create? And what does it mean if the society you create ends up looking a lot like the one we already have? 

These are some of the questions Gabby Pascuzzi, a former contestant on Survivor season 37 and a social psychology PhD candidate at the University at Buffalo, seeks to answer after her time on reality television. What began as a fascination with human behavior has become the foundation of her academic research. Today, with the support of UB Libraries, Pascuzzi investigates these questions as she prepares for a future in academia. 

Reality television fans like Pascuzzi may already know that Survivor is one of the most popular reality shows in U.S. history. The show has withstood the test of time for many reasons, including its competitive challenges, off-grid adventures and dramatic tribal councils. These facets of the show are what initially appealed to Pascuzzi and her family back in the early 2000s. But when she returned to the show years later as a linguistics and professional writing major at Carnegie Mellon University, she was drawn to something else.

“I realized there’s all this social politicking and strategy and storytelling as well. From a television perspective, I found that really intriguing,” Pascuzzi said. 

That interest eventually became personal. When Pascuzzi competed on Survivor: David vs. Goliath, competitors were divided into two tribes: Davids, representing underdogs, and the Goliaths, representing high achievers. As a member of the David tribe, Pascuzzi experienced firsthand how group identities and assumptions can influence relationships and decisions. She executed several successful blindside votes before finishing in eighth place.

“Survivor is a microcosm,” she said. “Thinking back on the game, the airing experience and people’s reactions were an exercise in group dynamics and perception. I now know these are all social psychology questions.”

The experience offered Pascuzzi more than a memorable television appearance. It gave her a new lens through which to understand human behavior, eventually leading her back to the classroom. 

After Survivor, Pascuzzi returned to her full-time job as a technical writer. But her interest in the social dynamics she had witnessed on the show continued to grow. 

While attending a psychology lab at Yale University, Pascuzzi encountered a presentation by UB psychology professor Shira Gabriel on parasocial relationships: one-sided relationships in which someone feels connected to a media figure who does not know they exist. 

Unsurprisingly, Pascuzzi had a unique perspective to bring to the conversation. Her shared interest in these topics eventually inspired Pascuzzi to apply to the social psychology PhD program at UB, despite having no formal background in psychology. Her acceptance marked the beginning of a new chapter—and a return to research after nearly five years away from academia. 

As she began exploring the questions that had followed her from the island, UB Libraries became an essential part of her process. Pascuzzi spent much of her time on campus researching in Silverman Library, where she used UB Libraries’ OneSearch to locate scholarly research on Survivor. 

As a Filipina woman, Pascuzzi was constantly aware of how she would be perceived by male castmates, contestant juries and her audience. Though she was only 25 when the season aired, Pascuzzi’s tough skin allowed her to have empathy for viewers and their negative perceptions of her. Finding studies that examined patterns in the game helped her connect her personal observations with broader evidence. 

Her work now focuses largely on close relationships between people. To explore this topic and answer her questions, she regularly uses UB Libraries’ Delivery+ service to obtain and review relevant research materials. 

“I am on Delivery+ all the time,” Pascuzzi said. “I don’t know who is doing it, what benevolent being, that I press a button to ask for some obscure material, and then it magically appears in my inbox days later. I am so grateful for the work that the Libraries do, truly.”

For Pascuzzi, these library services help bridge the gap between a research question and the scholarship needed to investigate it. Whether she is tracking down a hard-to-find source or using OneSearch to discover relevant studies, this access to research allows her to move beyond her own experience and consider what the evidence reveals.

Like many other doctoral students, Pascuzzi has had to navigate intensive research. After years away from academia, she has found herself learning to manage the reading, writing and data alongside the many responsibilities of graduate school. Thankfully, she discovered UB Libraries’ data management workshops that have helped her wrangle what she would otherwise call a “very messy” writing and research process. 

“I kind of assumed everyone already knew how to do data management,” Pascuzzi said. “Hearing how other people choose to do it, I’m like, ‘Oh, there are things out here to make my life easier.’ I can do this rather than struggling alone.”

Now in her sixth year as a PhD candidate, Pascuzzi continues to sign up for library workshops on data management and citation management systems. The ongoing learning reflects an important part of academic life: building sustainable ways to find, organize and work with information as it grows. 

The Libraries have also influenced how Pascuzzi approaches her own teaching. As a psychology instructor, she engages her students with the Libraries by forgoing textbooks in favor of assigning peer-reviewed empirical studies, drawing on scholarly resources available through UB Libraries. 

While academic articles may be intimidating for some students, she uses her pre-Survivor technical writing background to help her students break down complex ideas and see the personal interests guiding the studies they read. Her goal is to not only to teach her students what researchers have found, but to help them understand how knowledge is developed and evaluated, introducing students to the habits of critical thinking. 

That distinction has become especially important in conversations about generative artificial intelligence. Pascuzzi sees the Libraries as its own kind of David facing the Goliath of AI hype. 

“The idea is that generative AI is pulling from all knowledge ever uploaded, but that knowledge is here in your Libraries,” she said. “The real value of knowledge is not in the summary that gets spit out at the end. It is in the original sources and records and your own conclusions.”

For Pascuzzi, the Libraries offer something that a quick answer alone cannot replace: access to original sources, opportunities to evaluate evidence and the ability to draw one’s own conclusions.

When she’s not conducting research, Pascuzzi remains a fan of reality television. In addition to Survivor, a look at her social media features commentary on shows like Love Island UK or RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reminder that her academic interests grew out of a genuine fascination with reality shows and the people who watch them. 

Though her path to UB has taken her through Singapore, the Philippines, Washington D.C., Denver, Pittsburgh and more, Pascuzzi has found something in Buffalo that she wants to keep building on.  

“I love what I’ve built here,” she said. “When you move a lot, you don’t get to experience community in a long-term way.” 

Pascuzzi will soon defend her dissertation in hopes of becoming a professor herself. Of course, she is unique in that on top of balancing the typical PhD identities of student, writer and instructor, she can add media figure to that list. 

Thankfully, she has fellow academic and former Survivor contestant Christian Hubicki, a member of her season’s former “nerd” alliance, to connect with. Both understand what it means to move between the worlds of reality television and academia. 

As Pascuzzi prepares for her next chapter as a scholar and educator, UB Libraries will remain part of that work, helping her find the research she needs, manage the process of discovery and introduce her students to the original sources behind the ideas they encounter. 

On Survivor, success often depends on knowing how to navigate a complicated social landscape. In academia, Pascuzzi has found that asking the right questions matters just as much as knowing where to look for answers. And with UB Libraries as a resource, she is always ready for her next challenge.