Dr. Leigh Patel is a transdisciplinary scholar who studies the narratives that create material realities in society. Her research focuses on both the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be a tool for liberation. She is a highly sought-after speaker and well-regarded scholar across the fields of education, ethnic studies, critical higher education studies, and literacy.
Decolonization and Education
Education and Society
Social Movement and Education
Critical Policy Analysis
Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality
Literacy Foundations
The relationship between struggle and study
How narratives facilitate material realities of opportunity and extraction
Language and literacy as ways of re-shaping curricula
Decolonizing research
Historical analysis of education
De los Ríos, C. & Patel, L (in press). Positions, positionality, and relationality in educational research, International Journals for Qualitative Research in Education.
Patel, L. (2021. No Study without Struggle. Beacon Press: Boston, MA.
Patel, L. (2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. Routledge: NY.
Patel, L. (2013). Youth held at the border: Immigration, education and the politics of inclusion. Teachers College Press: New York, NY.
Patel, L. (2019). Fugitive practices: Learning in a settler colony. Educational Studies (55, 3) 253-261.
Patel, L, & *Price, A. (2016). The origins, potentials, and limits of racial justice. Critical Ethnic Studies, 2(2), 61-81.
2017-2022
Study and struggle: The public and private pedagogies of social movements
Spencer Foundation Discretionary Grant. Amount awarded: $75,000
2017-2018
Interrupting the internalization of inequity
Education research service project funded by the American Educational Research Association . Amount awarded: $4650.00
2015-2016
Out of school language learning in culturally based organizations: A youth participatory project
Robert Browne Foundation $6000.00
2013-2016
Social locations and intersectionality: A cross-setting collaborative project
Boston College-sponsored competitive collaborative research grant of $93,000.
2013
Contact zones: Teachers and youth of color in higher education
$5000 grant from Haymarket People’s Fund
Awards and Honors:
- 2023 – Advocacy Award, Equity & Excellence in Education Journal
- 2017 – June Jordan Award, Presented by The Ohio State University
- 2014 – Nominee for Mid-Career Award, American Educational Research Association
- 2013 – Youth Held at the Border
- American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Book Choice Nominee – Phillip Chinn award, National Association for Multicultural Education
- Nominee – Benjamin Hooks National Book Award
- Nominee – Outstanding book of the year, American Educational Research Association
- 2011 – Jan/Feb – Visiting Scholar – Queensland University of Technology
- 2011 – Mar-Aug – Visiting Scholar – Graduate Center, City University of New York
Present – Co-Director, Cultivating New Voices of Scholars of Color for the National Council of Teachers of English
Present – Member, National Academy of Education
Present – Board President, Education for Liberation
2019-Present – Honorary Consultant, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
2015-Present – Mentor, Cultivating New Voices, National Council of Teachers of English
2015-Present – Mentor, WT Grant Scholars Program
2013-2016 – Youth leadership Initiative, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University
