Working Groups

Dr. Kevin Foster is a thirty-year veteran educational leader, administrator, and policy maker. He has worked in schools, in local, state and federal government, founded a non-profit organization, and authored dozens of academic publications. He is currently serving as Vice President of the Austin ISD Board of Trustees, Executive Producer of Blackademics Television, and manager of the Rather Prize in Education. He is past president of several national organizations including The Association of Black Anthropologists, The National Black Graduate Student Association, and The Council on Anthropology and Education. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from The University of Texas at Austin, and his B.A. from William and Mary. He is the parent of two young adults, Malcolm and Marlee.

Email: kmfoster@mail.utexas.edu

Dr. Yasmiyn Irizarry is an Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and founding director of the Numbers 4 Justice Lab. She is a quantitative sociologist, survey methodologist, and leading expert in the emerging field of QuantCrit. Dr. Irizarry's research focuses on the critical study of race and racism in K-16 schooling contexts, racial identity and measurement, social attitudes, and justice. Much of this work considers the complex landscape of race, ethnicity, immigration, class, and place as intersecting identities, experiences, and interactions linked to systems of power. Dr. Irizarry has published in leading journals, including Educational Researcher, Social Science Research, Socius, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Race and Justice, and Journal of Homosexuality. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and American Educational Research Association Grants Programs. Dr. Irizarry earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Email: yirizarry@austin.utexas.edu

Marcelo Paixão is an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a faculty at the African and African Diaspora Studies Department (AADS) in conjunction with the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS). Prof. Marcelo is a Brazilian economist and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (IUPERJ, Brazil). Before coming to Austin, he was a Professor of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) for 16 years, the same place where he majored. Between 2012-2013, he was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University, where he was a member of the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA). He is the author of several books and articles about race and labor relations in Brazil, among others: A Lenda da Modernidade Encantada (Ed. CRV) e 500 Años de Soledad: estudíos sobre las desigualdades raciales en Brasil (Ed. Universidad Nacional de Colombia). Between 2020-22 was tenured President of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), a professional association with 684 affiliated from American and Brazilian higher education institutions. Nowadays, he is the Chair of the UT Brazil Center. His expertise is ethnic and racial relations and inequalities in Brazil and Latin America, afro-entrepreneurship, and development.

Email: marcelopaixao@utexas.edu

Dr. Nneka Ibekwe-Okafor is an Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and holds courtesy appointments in the Early Childhood Education and Psychology programs. She is also a Faculty Scholar at the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis and the Population Research Center. Her research sits at the intersection of developmental science, early childhood education, and social policy. She investigates the social and environmental determinants of Black children’s early development by examining how poverty, racial discrimination, structural inequalities, and educational inequities influence access to quality early care and education and the developmental outcomes of Black children from birth to age eight. Her research has a particular focus on identifying protective factors across various ecological levels in efforts to promote the optimal developmental outcomes of Black children. Utilizing large scale national data and quantitative methodology, her goal is to inform social policies and practitioner-led interventions through the science of human development. Her work has been published in leading journals, including the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Child Development, Child Development Perspectives, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Journal of Social Issues, and Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 

Email: niokafor@utexas.edu

Nessette Falu (pronouns she/her) is a Black queer feminist and cultural anthropologist and assistant professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book entitled, Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (2023, Duke University Press), argues that Black lesbians enforce wellbeing against intersectional intimate violence in gynecology, leading them to evaluate, protect, and chart their sense of worth within these spaces and draw upon their daily sense of worth making. Her current manuscript examines through a Black feminist lens the extensive sexual violence by gynecologists in the U.S. and its sociohistorical ties to the history of medicine and slavery that serves to undermine racial and gendered vulnerabilities of patients. She partners with allgo, a POC queer organization in Austin to develop community-based participatory research as part of a mentoring program with the Dell Medical School and Population Health Department at UT Austin. She holds a Master of Divinity from the New York Theological Seminary. She enjoyed a seventeen-year clinical career as a Physician Assistant in neurosurgery, internal medicine, HIV-specialty, hematology-oncology, and pain management.

Email: nessette.falu@austin.utexas.edu