Two alumni of the UW–Madison School of Education — Laura Chávez-Moreno and Ashley Smith-Purviance — have been selected as 2022 National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellows.
Laura C. Chávez-Moreno is an assistant professor at UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies. She earned her PhD from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW–Madison.
Chávez-Moreno studies how schooling teaches about race and racism and makes ideas about Latinidad. Her research critiques systems of oppression in schooling and supports advancing education for self-determination.
Chávez-Moreno’s forthcoming book from the Harvard Education Press, “Realization and Equity in Education,” presents how a school district’s bilingual education program and its teachers engage in racialization (that is, demarcate racialized groups) and construct ideas about race and Latinidad. The project explores how what bilingual schools teach about race, racism, and Latinidad can disrupt racial hierarchies and provide students an education for self-determination.
Smith-Purviance, who earned her doctorate in educational policy studies with a minor in gender and women’s studies at UW–Madison, is an incoming assistant professor in the Departments of African American and African Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State University. Her scholarship critically analyzes how social structures, educational policies, and institutions shape and reproduce harmful inequalities for Black women and girls.
Smith-Purviance’s study, entitled “Post-Pandemic Possibilities: Black Women Youth Workers Reimagining Education,” explores the spaces Black girls escape to for respite, healing, (educational) freedom, safety, and well-being within and outside of schools, and specifically, examines the experiences of Black women youth workers who create these spaces alongside Black girls outside of school contexts.
The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship provides $70,000 to early-career scholars to focus on their research and attend professional development retreats. This year, the 25 postdoctoral fellows were selected from a pool of 258 applicants.
Learn more about Chávez-Moreno and Smith-Purviance and their research — as well as all of those selected as 2022 NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellows — on this NAEd webpage.