About

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Educational and Organizational Leadership Development in the College of Education at Clemson University. I am also currently a 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

My primary research interest concerns how educational systems are designed and organized in relation to educational justice, and how they might be otherwise designed and organized. To that end, I use design and improvement research methods to organize research-practice partnerships focused on creating more just learning environments for minoritized learners. As an enactment of this agenda, my work is currently focused on improving educational systems towards linguistic heterogeneity to better serve multilingual learners and to enact more linguistically pluralistic learning environments.

Broadly, my work is aimed at addressing a longstanding problem in educational change and educational research: Despite decades of research that conceptualize and illustrate practices that generate dignity-affirming, humanizing learning environments for minoritized learners, educational systems continue to be organized in ways that push Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, disabled, working-class, and other minoritized learners to the periphery in ways that limit their opportunities to learn.

Further, my work interrogates dominant assumptions about schools and schooling and how these assumptions and resulting practices restrict access to learning opportunities. These dominant assumptions include neoliberal visions for schooling that position the purpose of learning as preparing learners for labor markets. Instead, following decades of critical education scholarship, I seek to understand how educational systems can be oriented towards preparing learners to contribute to collective thriving and well-being and for sustaining pluralism and heterogeneity in their communities.

Through collaborative research-practice partnerships, I work with critical educators to understand the organizational practices, processes, and routines that constrain educational justice; as well as to design and improve learning environments towards justice at scale. Using design and improvement research methodologies, I leverage these partnerships to mobilize critical research evidence and generate new critical research evidence.