Solidarity Forever: Coalition Building with Communities in Community Engaged Research — Cookies with the Collective
Dr. Naomi Mae W. (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As an activist and community organizer for over 15 years, Dr. Mae’s current work centers youth organizers of color as they build multiracial-multiethnic coalitions to actualize educational justice in under-resourced urban districts. In studying the ecology of youth organizing (including intergenerational CBOs, youth workers, community partnerships, etc.), Mae researches how the praxis of youth organizing can serve as an exemplar of meaningful critical civic education and engagement. She engages community-based research methods, action research, and critical ethnography while leveraging youth resistance and relational race theories to inform praxis and actualize greater justice and solidarity in collaboration with young people and communities.
Cookies with the Collective
Meet research fellows of The SoulFolk Collective, inquire after our research, and share a treat with our community during Cookies with the Collective. Come learn about Black geographies with The SoulFolk Collective and Dr. Rachel Elizabeth Williams, an Assistant Professor in the Educational Policy Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Williams’ interdisciplinary research brings together Black studies and critical geography with education policy to examine race, place, and political economy in the U.S. metropolitan South. Her research agenda explores: 1) the impact of charter schools and state takeover on local democratic governance in majority Black contexts; 2) the relationship between education, capital, and the spatial organization of metropolitan landscapes and 3) Black intra-racial politics, representation, and spatial imaginaries within and beyond geographies of racial capitalism.