About Us

Michelle Angelo-Rocha is a Brazilian doctoral candidate in the Education Leadership and Policies Studies program at the University of South Florida. Her research agenda focuses on social justice issues such as human trafficking, femicide, indigenous education in Brazil, multilingual education in the U.S., and media analysis. Her study efforts are con underprivileged Latinx immigrant families in the United States and Latin America. Michelle has experience working as teacher assistant helping adult refugees and K-12 English as a second language learners in the Tampa Bay area. She conducted ethnographic research with immigrant victims of human trafficking in Florida, and with women victims of femicide in Argentina. She worked with service providers, nongovernmental organizations, human rights activists, educators, policymakers, and law enforcement that work directly with Latinx trafficking victims and refugees.  

 Jake Burdick is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at Purdue University. His research interests include public and popular sites of education, activist studies, and community knowledge and perceptions of education. In his studies, he utilizes narrative inquiry, psychoanalysis, and post-structural thought as inquiry approaches. His work has appeared in the Review of Educational Research, Review of Research in Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Curriculum Inquiry, Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies, the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, and The Sophist’s Bane. Jake is also the co-editor of two collections, The Handbook of Public Pedagogy (Routledge) and Complicated Conversations and Confirmed Commitments: Revitalizing Education for Democracy (Educators International Press). 

  Dr. Kevin Donley   

Kevin Donley, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the MA in Educational Transformation Program at Georgetown University. He has previous experience as a secondary social studies and history teacher at a Spanish-English bilingual school in Quito, Ecuador. His research examines how teachers of multilingual learners navigate the complex personal, social, political, and curricular dimensions of language policy and literacy instruction. He primarily employs qualitative research methodologies to demonstrate how teachers draw on their practical experiences, knowledge, and judgment to implement culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies for their multilingual learners, like translanguaging. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2473-428X 

  Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She earned her Master and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed her bachelor’s and licentiature’s studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Miryam is an active scholar with a distinguished record of teaching, service, and professional activity. Her teaching and research draw on decolonial indigenous feminist research methodologies. It is recognized by being transnational in scope yet intimately collaborative using poetry, testimonios, ethnography, and art-based qualitative methodologies. Miryam’s scholarly and artistic publications appear both in leading academic journals, handbooks, peer-reviewed books, and regional/local publications that evidence the broad interdisciplinary, community based, and intellectual curiosity of her engagement. Miryam is currently working on decolonizing research/teaching/learning through various scholarly projects. 

Christen Sperry García is Assistant Professor of Art Education in the School of Art and Design at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Originally from the San Diego/Tijuana borderlands, García’s work is informed by Latina/x, Chicana/x, and borderlands theories. García is co-founder of the Nationwide Museum Mascot Project (NWMMP) that has performed at over 40 art museums and galleries including Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Lima, Peru; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia. García has published in peer-reviewed journals including Art Education, The Drama Review, and Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Her co-edited book with Dra. Leslie Sotomayor, Dr. Indira Bailey, and Glynnis Reed: BIPOC Alliances: Building Communities and Curricula (a volume in Curriculum and Pedagogy) was published by Information Age Publishing in 2023.

Karin Ann Lewis is an associate professor in the Teaching & Learning Department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Following a teaching career in public education, she earned her Ph.D. in Educational and Counseling Psychology from the University of Kentucky. Dr. Lewis teaches courses in Educational Psychology in the areas of cognition, learning, and human development at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. Her scholarly focus explores complexities of identity and agency from a social justice perspective intended to challenge the status quo and open transdisciplinary discourses. She seeks ways to transcend traditional educational paradigms through transformative, culturally responsive pedagogies. Dr. Lewis’s scholarship is grounded in qualitative, collaborative, collective ethnographic methodologies.   

     Erik L. Malewski is a Professor of Curriculum Studies at Kennesaw State University in the Bagwell College of Education. His scholarship has focused on cross-cultural international experiences for pre-service teachers, the implications of ignorance for curriculum and pedagogy, and synoptic study of the field of Curriculum Studies. He has taught courses focused on diversity, multiculturalism, equity, and global issues in education. His current research focuses upon ignorance in education and the implications of epistemologies of ignorance for current political and educational movements. Prior to his current faculty appointment, he served eight years as a chief diversity officer at Kennesaw State University and was an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at Purdue University. 

 Dr. Stephanie Masta is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians, and is also an Associate Professor in Curriculum Studies at Purdue University. Much of her research focuses on the experiences of Brown and Black individuals in K-20 educational environments, with particular interest in Indigenous peoples and their relationships to academic spaces. Stephanie’s work is also invested in uncovering the intersections of colonialism and race within the academy. Her research is narrative-based and she uses both Indigenous methodologies and critical race/decolonial theories in her work.

Dr. Karla O-Donnell is a senior instructor at Texas Christian University's Department of Spanish and Hispanic Studies.  Possessing a doctoral degree in Curriculum Studies, her pedagogical influence extends far beyond the confines of academia.  Dr. O'Donald's research interests span a diverse array of critical areas, including Chicana feminist epistemologies, Latinx education, translanguaging, world language teacher education, testimonio, and pláticas. Her involvement in supporting Spanish speakers within the community underscores her commitment to service-learning. Her teaching practices are enriched by the application of decoloniality, providing students with a nuanced understanding of diverse perspectives and empowering them to navigate complex educational and personal landscapes with critical insight.

Karina Oliveira de Paula, Ma in Applied Linguistics, is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Instruction Program at Texas Tech University. Karina has previous experience as an English teacher in Brazil and a Portuguese teacher in the United States. She applies decolonial and translanguaging theories to investigate language learning and teacher preparation practices in multilingual borderlands and regions of international immigration in Brazil and in the US. Her research interests are emergent bilingualism, multiculturality, critical language teaching, global English, and raciolinguistics. karina-oliveira.de-paula@ttu.edu

         Alexander B. Pratt received his PhD in the Critical and Socio-Cultural Studies in Education program at the University of Oregon. He is currently an assistant professor of elementary education at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona. His research focuses on posthuman and antiracist curriculum theory and teacher education. Pratt loves teaching and has wanted to be a teacher his whole life. His favorite subject has always been social studies because of the great stories. His research is focused on teacher knowledge and how that knowledge develops in response to changes in curriculum. Pratt's hope is that this work will better foster teachers' ability to create equitable classroom spaces.