Emerging Scholars

On Thursday, May 11, 2023, the UC Davis School of Education and the Graduate Group in Education presented “Expanding Equity in Research on Language, Race & Culture, and Intersectionality & Policy,” a special Emerging Scholars Series panel showcasing critical, diverse disciplinary perspectives in education from exceptional pre-tenure scholars across the nation.

Presenters

Sofía E. Chaparro, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education program at the School of Education and Human Development. Her research investigates how race and class influence ideologies of language development and bilingualism, as well as equity in bilingual programs and for bilingual Latinx students and families. She obtained her PhD in Educational Linguistics from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, Chaparro was a teacher in bilingual schools in Massachusetts and Texas. Chaparro is originally from the border town of El Paso, TX, where she grew up bilingually and biculturally.

Lauren Leigh Kelly, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. She is also the founder of the annual Hip Hop Youth Research and Activism Conference. Kelly taught high school English for ten years in New York where she also developed courses in Hip Hop Literature and Culture, Spoken Word poetry, and Theatre Arts. Her research focuses on adolescent critical literacy development, Black feminist theory, Hip Hop pedagogy, critical consciousness, and the development of critical, culturally sustaining pedagogies. Dr. Kelly’s work has been nationally recognized, including receiving the 2022 Nasir Jones Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, the 2022 NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, the 2021 Save the Kids Hip Hop Activism Scholar-Activist of the Year Award, and the 2020 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Writing and Literacies Special Interest Group Steve Cahir Early Career Award. 

Manali Sheth, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the University of Illinois Chicago College of Education Department of Educational Policy Studies. Her research interests focus on disrupting educational injustices experienced by multiply marginalized students of color in their capacities as knowers and learners. Working from a critical race and intersectional feminist pedagogy lens, Dr. Sheth examines how academic conditions exacerbate educational inequities as well as how transformative pedagogies can cultivate critical academic praxis across disciplines, including STEM. Her current and future research projects illuminate how relationships of power, knowledge, and practice shape and can be shifted through pedagogy, curriculum, and policy for students of color whose experiences, interests, and needs are often marginalized in equity and justice initiatives across secondary and post-secondary academic settings.

Krystal L. Williams, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the University of Georgia Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. She is also the Director of the Education Policy & Equity Research Collective. Her research explores issues regarding equity and public policy, with an emphasis on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for underrepresented groups. Prior to joining the University of Georgia faculty, Williams was a faculty member at the University of Alabama, a Senior Research Associate at the United Negro College Fund Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Postdoctoral Fellow at Educational Testing Service and an AERA Minority Dissertation Fellow in Education Research.