Keffrelyn D. Brown (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Cultural Studies in Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She holds a faculty appointment in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Center for Women and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the sociocultural knowledge of race in teaching and curriculum, critical multicultural teacher education and the educational discourses and intellectual thought related to African Americans and their educational experiences in the U.S.
Keffrelyn has published over 40 books, journal articles, book chapters and other educational texts. She serves on the editorial boards for several well-recognized peer-reviewed journals including Teachers College Record, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Teaching and Teacher Education and Urban Education. Her most recent book, After the “At-Risk” Label: Reorienting Risk in Educational Policy and Practice was published by Teachers College Press. Keffrelyn has received recognition for both her research and teaching. In 2017 she received the Division K Mid-career Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In 2013 she was awarded the Kappa Delta Pi/Division K Early Career Research Award from AERA. She is also the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and the Wisconsin-Spencer Foundation Research Training Grant. In 2012 she received the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching award, the highest teaching honor given for excellence in undergraduate teaching across the University of Texas system. She was inducted in the Provost’s Teaching Fellows program at UT-Austin in 2017 and in its Academy of Distinguished Teaching in 2019.
Keffrelyn is a sought after presenter in her local, regional and national communities. She is active in the multiple roles she has as a researcher, teacher, teacher educator and critically engaged community member. As a former elementary and middle school teacher, school administrator, and curriculum developer, Keffrelyn is keen to the everyday challenges of schooling. She continually seeks to produce scholarship that is theoretically robust, empirically rich and both responsive and relevant to practice in teaching, curriculum and teacher education.