Professor
Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy
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.
Instructional Interests
- Decolonization and Education
- Education and Society
- Social Movement and Education
- Critical Policy Analysis
- Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality
- Literacy Foundations
Scholarly Interests
- The relationship between struggle and study
- How narrative create and justify material inequities
- Language and literacy as ways of re-shaping curricula
- Decolonizing research
- Historical analysis of education
Selected Grants
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
Featured Publications
- Patel, L. (in press). There is no study without struggle: Higher education and settler colonialism. Beacon Press.
- 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.
Awards and Honors
- 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
Engagement, Partnerships, and Professional Service
- 2019-present - Honorary Consultant, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
- 2010-present - National Board Member, Education for Liberation
- 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