2025 Conference Plenaries

Friday, July 11, 9:00–10:15 a.m. ET
Maisha T. Winn is the Excellence in Learning Graduate School of Education Professor and Faculty Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s Equity in Learning Initiative. She is the Principal Investigator for the Futuring for Equity Lab. Her scholarship examines how non-dominant youth and communities have developed literate trajectories across a range of historical and contemporary settings within and outside formal schooling. She seeks to understand how communities that have been depicted as underresourced create practices, processes, and institutions of their own—and what we can learn from those examples to build more just, more collaborative, and more equitable futures. An ethnographer by training, Dr. Winn also engages in historical research focused on social movements in education.

Friday, July 11, 4:15–5:30 p.m. ET

Dr. Valerie Kinloch became the 15th president of Johnson C. Smith University on August 3, 2023. With nearly three decades of experience in higher education, Kinloch has distinguished herself as a passionate educator who has taught and/or served in administrative roles at The Ohio State University, Columbia University’s Teachers College, the University of Houston-Downtown, and, most recently, the University of Pittsburgh.

In addition to her professorships and administrative tenures, Kinloch is the author or editor of numerous books and publications on race, place, identities, literacies, and justice, including her most recent coauthored book, Where Is the Justice? Engaged Pedagogies in Schools and Communities.

Saturday, July 12, 9:00–10:15 a.m. ET

Melanie M. Acosta, PhD, works for the educational well-being of Black folks through careful study of teacher practice. Dr. Acosta is an associate professor of education at Florida Atlantic University and co-organizer of Liberate Literacyä, an African American family literacy program. In these spaces, Dr. Acosta centers African American ways of teaching and teacher education. Previously, Dr. Acosta was an elementary school teacher and community organizer for a grassroots parent empowerment group.

Saturday, July 12, 4:30–5:30 p.m. ET

Stephanie R. Toliver is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In her research, Toliver employs creativity and imagination as tools to confront systemic inequities and promote more equitable education environments. Specifically, her scholarship focuses on three main areas: (1) investigating Black storytelling as a mechanism of social critique and transformation; (2) examining the applicability of speculative fiction (i.e., science fiction, horror, fantasy, etc.) as a tool to assist Black youth in articulating and challenging social injustice; and (3) exploring the use of creative and arts-based literacy pedagogies to help preservice English teachers develop strategies to address racial injustice in their future classrooms.