Vaughn W.M. Watson

Vaughn earned his Ed.D. in the Department of Curriculum & Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is a former public high-school English teacher of 12 years in New York City. Before teaching, he was a pop music writer for The Providence Journal, and a freelance music reviewer for NPRjazz.org. Beyond the classroom, Vaughn has coached high-school track, and completed seven 26.2-mile marathons and numerous 13.1-mile half marathons, 10K and 5K road races.

Joanne Marciano

Joanne Marciano's research engages qualitative participatory methodologies to examine opportunities for supporting youth's literacy learning across contexts of secondary English education, urban education, teacher education and college readiness. Her work extends understandings of how curriculum and instruction, co-designed and co-authored with youth, and emerging from and with youth's communicative repertoires, reimagines enactments of teaching and learning toward social justice. Joanne's research agenda is informed by her experiences teaching secondary English for 13 years in a NYC public high school.

Her current research projects include a participatory study examining issues of educational opportunity as experienced by youth across multiple school contexts. This inquiry examined youth's digital multimodal representations of their researcher positionalities as they considered issues of educational inequities in their schools and community; how youth used Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a student voice initiative to bolster justice-oriented education research; and how youth in the YPAR inquiry engaged literacy practices to design, enact and share research about issues of educational opportunity within their broader community.

Another recent research project analyzed educators' experiences across 28 secondary schools in NYC as they sought to enact a culturally relevant, school-wide, college-going culture supportive of Black and Latinx youth's college readiness and access.

Teresa Satterfield

Co-Author of “Facilitar no es fácil” Latino/a high school students as initiators of Spanish community service learning during the pandemic

Teresa Satterfield (she/her/ella) is a Professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her affiliations include the Combined Program in Education and Psychology. Satterfield has published extensively on child bilingual language and literacy development, ethnic identity in heritage language speakers, and community service learning. She is the founder and director of the En Nuestra Lengua Literacy and Culture Project.

Anita Purushotham Chikkatur

Co-Author of Kinship and being together “otherwise” in community-university partnerships

Anita Chikkatur (she/her/hers) is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Her research broadly focuses on how educational institutions can be supportive and resource-full environments for everyone (students, teachers, and staff). She is currently the principal investigator of an AmeriCorps-funded grant that focuses on Youth Participatory Action Research in five Minnesota school districts.

Abigail Rombalski

Co-Author of Kinship and being together “otherwise” in community-university partnerships

Abby Rombalski, PhD, is a faculty member in the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, who uses Participatory Action Research as one method of public scholarship. As an organizer, Abby supports YoUthROC and other coalitional educational justice efforts, especially when they are youth-led. As an educator and a mom, Abby is committed to being of service within interracial organizations with BIPOC-leadership and with white-bodied educators, families, and students who have much work to do.

Miguel N. Abad

Co-Author of On Solidarity and Methodological Innocence in Youth Participatory Action Research

Miguel N. Abad is a youth worker with over a decade of experience collaborating with community-based and non-profit organizations in the Bay Area in numerous fields such as college access, career development, arts education, and social movement organizing. As a youth studies researcher, his scholarly work touches upon race and social justice, out-of-school-time education, youth development, youth activism, and participatory action research.

Jennifer Renick

Co-Author of On Solidarity and Methodological Innocence in Youth Participatory Action Research

Jennifer Renick is an incoming assistant professor of Ecological/ Community Psychology at Michigan State University. Her research is focused on the intersection of community, developmental, and educational psychology, with two main areas of focus: the developmental appropriateness of adolescents’ educational environments and higher education institutions’ ability to address societal needs. She is a community-engaged researcher, with prior experience facilitating research-practice partnerships with both schools and educational nonprofit organizations, and conducting youth-participatory action research.

Alexis E. Hunter

Co-Author of A Sacred, Communal Pause: How Racially Marginalized Youth’s Commitment to Healing Expands Understandings of Activism

Alexis E. Hunter is a doctoral candidate with dual focuses in Educational Foundations, Policy & Practice (EFPP) and Learning Sciences & Human Development (LSHD) at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a Black feminist and youth activist, she explores how youth of color understand the relationships between healing and social justice advocacy.

Ben Kirshner

Co-Author of A Sacred, Communal Pause: How Racially Marginalized Youth’s Commitment to Healing Expands Understandings of Activism

Ben Kirshner is a Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the past two decades, he has worked collaboratively with educators, community organizers, and young people to design and study learning environments that support youth development, activism, and social justice change.

Danielle N. Aguilar

Co-Author of #NoFilter: Exploring the Experiences of BIPOC Students at a HPWI

Danielle N. Aguilar (she/her) is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Danielle holds an M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont and a B.A. in Feminist Studies and a minor in Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before joining CU Boulder, Danielle worked in Residence Life, Multicultural and LGBTQ Affairs, and college access programs. Her research interests include the intersections of young women of color, the school-to-prison nexus, and resistance.

Erica Powell Wrencher

Author of We Got Us: The Process of Engaging Youth as Participants and Co-Researchers

Erica Powell Wrencher, PhD, is a community-engaged Black mama-scholar with roots as a high school public educator and community-based cultural worker. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in U.S. History, a Master of Arts in Teaching, and a PhD in Educational Studies and Cultural Foundations. Her community work, research, and her role as the Assistant Director in the Institute for Community and Economic Engagement (ICEE) at UNCG have centered her passion for facilitating and co-creating pockets for knowing—spaces for reconstituting people in their place and purpose. 

She is most interested in foregrounding ways to nurture a culture of care within partnerships and has a deep passion for facilitating human connection (with self and others) in the belief that this kind of connection shapes the way we act individually and collectively in our work and world.