Maisha T. Winn

Dr. Winn is a Co-Director of TJE. She is the Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her program of research examines the intersectionality of language, literacy and justice with attention to how to prepare teachers to “teach freedom” in spaces of confinement. Methodologically, Dr. Winn’s work spans disciplines including historical methods (archival work), ethnography, and action research. Her ethnography of a woman-focused theater company working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls, Girl Time: Literacy Justice and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Teachers College Press, 2011), was groundbreaking as it led the movement in examining how girls—and Black girls in particular—were being criminalized in schools and in out-of-school spaces.

Dr. Winn also co-edited Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (with Django Paris), which won the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Qualitative Research SIG’s Outstanding Book Award (2015). Dr. Winn has been a William T. Grant Distinguished Fellow and spent one year shadowing restorative justice practitioners at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and Impact Justice (both in Oakland, CA) and with the Racial Justice Program at the YWCA in Madison, WI. Dr. Winn was named an AERA Fellow in 2016. Learn more about Maisha T. Winn.

Lawrence (Torry) Winn

Torry Winn is a Co-Director of TJE. With more than 15 years of professional experience, Winn has worked and consulted with foundations, cities, and non-profits, including Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the City of Newark (NJ), the City of Madison (WI), St. HOPE, the MLK Community Resources Collaborative, and Race to Equity. His expertise includes youth programs/education, civic and community engagement, strategic partnerships, race and equity, and community-based participatory research. He is the co-author of the Race to Equity Report, which is a three-year comprehensive study examining racial disparities in Dane County, WI.

Prior to relocating to Madison, he served as the Founding Executive Director of the Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resources Collaborative (Atlanta), the Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships for St. HOPE Academy (California and New York), and the Executive Director of Uth Turn (Newark, NJ). Winn, a native of Phoenix, earned a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley, a Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University Law School, and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a PhD (University of Wisconsin), examining the role of social capital in the educational, leadership and career trajectories of youth of color. Learn more about Lawrence (Torry) Winn.