UW–Madison’s Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr. is receiving the Early Career Award in Educational Politics and Policy from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division L.
This award recognizes a scholar whose initial career shows a high level of productivity and excellence.
Henry is an assistant professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. The 12 divisions of AERA are organized to represent major scholarly or scientific areas within education research that add to the field and the association as determined by the AERA Council. AERA’s Division L centers its efforts on educational politics and policy.
Henry’s interdisciplinary research and teaching revolves around two central, interrelated questions. The first critically examines how power and dominance shape and structure educational policies, practices, and reforms. His second question is concerned with how Black educational actors understand, resist, reconstitute, and transform educational fields to be equitable, just, and humanizing.
More specifically, Henry’s research investigates: the racialized lived realities of charter schools and school choice policy and practice; the persistence of anti-Blackness in education; neoliberalism and educational markets; and culturally relevant and restorative justice approaches in education.
Henry explains that his teaching and mentoring aim is to inspire and engender community, intellectual creativity, and a commitment to freedom.
Henry will receive the award on Friday, April 14, during the Division L Business Meeting that is part of the 2023 AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago.