M. Beatrice (Bea) Dias (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Learning, and Leadership at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education. She studies the ways dominant technology and progress narratives shape education and society, while also excavating more liberatory pedagogical possibilities emergent across lived experiences. In particular, her research engages pedagogical and philosophical questions at the intersections of technology, environment, and hegemonic progress ideologies. Across these junctures, she seeks to understand how people within self-determined communities and contexts engage in longstanding and innovative praxes that subvert prevailing colonial systems. Dr. Dias pursues these lines of inquiry through decolonial and transnational feminist theoretical frameworks and storytelling methodologies. Through this lens, she critically interrogates the roles of technology and science in education, explores liberatory online pedagogies, and examines decolonial environmental justice possibilities. Her scholarly disposition is deeply shaped by her experience as a Third World woman emerging from a postcolonial Sri Lankan context.
Through critical, decolonial pedagogical traditions, Dr. Dias is invested in creating course environments that engage students’ authentic voices and invite them to practice critical inquiry, while recognizing their own power and responsibility to act on what they learn.
Courses:
- Education & Society
- Technology in Context
- Justice and STEM
- Research Seminar
- Technology in education
- Online pedagogy
- Environmental justice
- Decolonial and anticolonial theory
- Third World feminism
Dias, B. (2026). Interrogating AI through a lens of being. Equity & Excellence in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2026.2660173
Dias, B. (2025). Protest pedagogy. Radical Teacher, 132. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2025.1157
Dias, B., & Vaught, S. (2025). Colonial schooling, technology, and the project of pacification: Reclaiming the apocalypse. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 57(13), 1195–1209. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2025.2527235
Dias, B., Quigley, C., Lyon, A., Ford, A., and Lunsford-Evans, E. (2025). Grounded justice: Unearthing the birthright of liberated, collective Black environmental justice futures in Pittsburgh and beyond. In J. Z. Bennett, C. L. McGuire, L. Delale-O’Connor, T. E. Dancy II, & S. E. Vaught (Eds.), Black freedom struggle in urban Appalachia (pp. 34-46). University Press of Kentucky.
Dias, B. (2024). Myths and matters of science education: A critical discourse on science and standards [A rejoinder]. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-023-10207-x
Dias, B. & Boulder, T. (2023). Toward humanizing online learning spaces: An experiment in applying Paulo Freire’s humanizing pedagogy in an online learning environment. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 12(4). https://edtechbooks.org/jaid_12_4/toward_humanizing_online_learning_spaces