Spring 2025 Graduate Student Research Fellow
Kristin Kelly
Ph.D. Candidate, Language, Literacy, and Culture
Project: A Participatory Action Research Exploration of Black Women Educators and Black Girl Spiritual Literacies Utilized in School-Based Mentorship Program Design
Kristen Kelly proposes to conduct a research project using Participatory Action Research that explores Black women educators’ spiritual experiences as they design and implement a school-based mentorship curriculum (318 VISION) for 9th-12th grade Black girls at an urban high school in Shreveport, Louisiana. She aims to understand how Black women educators and Black girls collaborate, drawing on their spirituality and imagination to inform the ways they understand and navigate oppressive and harmful systems. Kelly also aims to uncover how Black women mentors help Black girls reimagine education and their futures, especially in classrooms that often do not represent their experiences but center on Eurocentric ways of teaching and exhibit gender inequality. This study provides implications for Black women educators who mentor in school-based and community-based mentorship programs and offers recommendations on supporting Black women educators and Black girls.
For a list of previous Graduate Student Research Fellows, please visit the Archives page.