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UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies is home to two departments. Each is a leader in their field, helping to pioneer what's next in the Education and Information worlds.

UCLA Ed&IS faculty are at the forefront of their fields, addressing issues of equality, access and social justice in the fields of education and information. Their scholarship has an international reputation for excellence and commitment to addressing the most critical issues facing our society.

An ecosystem of K-12 teaching schools where UCLA partners to develop, study, share, and advance innovative best practices.

The work at UCLA Ed&IS is guided by the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve. Learn more about our mission and values, our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our faculty and students, our history and more.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are defining features of UCLA Ed&IS and we embrace them as a source of strength.

Department of Education 2023 Information Sessions

Department of Information Studies Programs

Department of Information Studies 2023 Information Sessions

Learn more about the undergraduate and graduate academic programs we offer, when program information sessions are being offered and how to apply.

The UCLA Ed&IS Office of Communications is responsible for providing strategic communications support for the school, our faculty and research centers. 

Our Media Relations team which is housed in the Sudikoff Public Forum, works with local, regional, national and international print and digital news media to tell the story of our work. 

Sharing research, ideas and expertise with educators, the press, policymakers and the public.

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The UCLA School of Education and Information Studies’ magazine highlights the public scholarship of our faculty.

UCLA Ed&IS Magazine

Founded in 2004 by doctoral students from UCLA Ed&IS, InterActions is a peer-reviewed, open access journal committed to the promotion of interdisciplinary and inclusive scholarship. The journal brings together senior and emerging scholars, activists, educators, and professionals whose work covers a broad range of theory and practice.

Interactions: UCLA Journal of Education & Information Studies

XChange is an online repository of publications and resources released in themed issues on the work of transforming public schools. The issues include articles, evaluation reports, research papers, lesson plans, professional development tools, dissertations, and book reviews.

XChange: Publications and Resources for Public School Professionals

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Our journals integrate research and practice. They serve as a reference, resource, and action plan for a wide array of audiences, including educators, policy makers, researchers, and the general public.

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New research, Gentrification and Schools: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Options, published by The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, examines the growth of gentrification in California and its impact on schools and educational opportunities in the state.

The report finds gentrification widespread, with close to half of all low socioeconomic status neighborhoods becoming gentrified* since 2000 with one in five becoming intensely gentrified. Looking closely at three prominent and diverse cities with unique desegregation histories and school choice dynamics, the research finds that over 50 percent of all low socio-economic status neighborhoods in Oakland have gentrified, and in Los Angeles and San Diego well over half have gentrified.  

"Gentrification is changing neighborhoods across California and the rest of the nation," says co-author Jennifer B. Ayscue, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University and research associate of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.  "Given the relationship between neighborhoods and schools, we must consider the impact that gentrification has on the racial composition of schools and highlight the need for cross-sector collaboration and explicit policies that address gentrification and support school desegregation."

The study highlights the complex connections between gentrification, school choice, and school segregation patterns, finding the relationship between gentrification and local elementary schools largely depends on the specific city and community being gentrified. Statewide, gentrified neighborhoods have become more racially and economically diverse compared to those that did not gentrify, but the analysis finds only modest changes in local schools. 

These trends have played out differently across California cities and schools.  In Los Angeles, where 55% of all low SES neighborhoods have gentrified since 2000, exposure to low-income students in gentrified neighborhoods has declined for each racial group, with the steepest decline for Whites and Asians. In Oakland, one of the nation’s most rapidly gentrifying cities, racial isolation in schools has declined for each group in areas that gentrified, but with white and Asian student isolation declining the most.  In San Diego, the research finds that racial contact in schools has remained relatively stable over time for most racial groups. There also continues to be a substantial number of majority-minority and intensely segregated schools in all three cities, with the most (by far) in Los Angeles, followed by Oakland, then San Diego. 

Importantly, the analysis reveals that gentrifying neighborhoods have a larger share of charter schools than communities that do not gentrify. The research illustrates a bifurcated and racially imbalanced charter sector, with some charters serving high concentrations of minority students and others serving high concentrations of White students. 

The report makes clear that gentrification is a growing social and economic force, yet California’s schools remain among the most segregated in the nation.  The authors suggest that while gentrification may produce the conditions and opportunities for significantly lowering California’s extreme educational stratification, little change will occur under the existing policies and practices without serious new initiatives, different policy conditions, and support for successful and lasting socioeconomic and racial integration. 

“Public schools in California's cities have extreme school segregation by race and poverty and a large decline in students,” states Civil Rights Project Co-director Gary Orfield. “Gentrification is a massive force that could bring enrollment and integration, but leadership and imagination are needed to capture the potential benefits.”

The authors argue for widespread policies and tools to help communities manage gentrification and recommend that policy discussions include the education sector to truly harness the potential upside of gentrification while minimizing the hazards of displacement, increased housing cost, and the potential for long-term re-segregation. 

"Gentrification is a mixed bag, especially when it comes to schools," says lead author Kfir Mordechay, an associate professor at Pepperdine University and research associate of The Civil Rights Project. “Neighborhoods get more diverse, but schools struggle to keep pace.  Integrating schools is important, and gentrification could help if done right. It is possible with the right balance and policies to make sure everyone benefits."

“Gentrification and Schools:  Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Options,” provides detailed analysis and data on the demographics of gentrification, school enrollment patterns, racial and economic demographics, and other information. It includes detailed information and data on Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego. 

The report is co-authored by Kfir Mordechay, associate professor of education and policy studies at Pepperdine University; David Mickey-Pabello, post-doctoral fellow at The Civil Rights Project; and Jennifer B. Ayscue, assistant professor of educational evaluation, policy analysis and in educational leadership at North Carolina State University. 

 The report was published by the UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles as part of its research series, “A Civil Rights Agenda for California’s Next Quarter Century,” in commemoration of the Project’s 25thAnniversary. The full report is available online. 

*(To measure neighborhood gentrification, the researchers use Freeman’s (2005) method. A census tract is defined as gentrifiable if at the beginning of a defined period (2000 for this study), it had a median income and a share of recently constructed housing, both of which were below the 40th percentile of its city. A neighborhood is considered gentrified if it met the previously described criteria in 2000, and also experienced an increase in inflation-adjusted house values and a percentage increase in college-educated households that exceeds the increase in college-educated households in the city from 2000 to 2019.)

New Research Examines Impact of Gentrification on Schools,
Potential for Reducing Segregation

Miriam Posner, an assistant professor of Information Studies and Digital Humanities at UCLA, is part of a team of scholars receiving a new grant from the Mozilla Foundation Responsible Computing Challenge.

The grant will fund a new project, “Responsible Datasets in Context: Collaboratively Designing for Ethical Humanities Data Education.” Posner will join colleagues to create an interdisciplinary working group to develop "responsible datasets in context," and revised courses in humanistic critical computing and data studies.

 “Data is an integral part of our lives, yet so many of us only have a vague idea of what "data" looks like.  I've found the hands-on experience with datasets helps students to see that seemingly small decisions—like how to categorize or quantify something—can have enormous ethical and political ramifications,” says Posner. 

“I want all students, even those in non-STEM fields, to have a say in what happens with data about their communities. This grant will help us to codify what we've learned about how to teach critically and thoughtfully with datasets so that other students can have this hands-on experience, too.”

The principal investigator for the project is Melanie Walsh of the University of Washington. In addition to Posner, the team members include Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla of the University of Texas, San Antonio, Anna Preus of the University of Washington, and, Amardeep Singh of Lehigh University 

The grant is one of fifteen through the Mozilla Foundation and its partners awarded through the Responsible Computing Challenge providing $2,225,000 in support of efforts of the next generation of digital builders to create technology in the public interest. The projects blend traditional computing education with the Humanities, Library and Information Science, and Social Sciences to reimagine how computer science is taught. The awardees will explore a range of topics including biased data sets, AI ethics, accessible computing, and more. 

Posner teaches courses at UCLA in the Information Studies Department and the Digital Humanities program. She is a digital humanist with interests in labor, race, feminism, and the history and philosophy of data. Posner is particularly interested in the visualization of large bodies of data from cultural heritage institutions, and the application of digital methods to the analysis of images and video. She writes frequently on the application of digital methods to the humanities. She is currently working on a project about what “data” might mean for humanistic research, and a new book exploring how data works in global supply chains.

Responsible Computing Challenge funds efforts to reimagine how computer science is taught

Information Studies Scholar Miriam Posner is part of team awarded Mozilla Foundation Grant

For the last 11 years, Kyndall Brown (’09, Ph.D., Education) has served as executive director of the California Mathematics Project, a statewide network of providers of professional development for K-12 teachers of mathematics. It is fitting that Brown’s current post has historically been based at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, enhanced by the expertise of faculty and researchers at the UCLA Mathematics Project.

While still a classroom math teacher, Brown attended the UCLA Mathematics Project Summer Leadership Institute, which led him to contribute more broadly to the teaching of mathematics across California. He was recently involved in the creation of the new California Mathematics Framework and will be instrumental in its implementation across K-12.

Brown previously served as a researcher and teacher educator for the UCLA Mathematics Project at Center X. He achieved his master of arts degree in mathematics education and his teaching credential at CSU Dominguez Hills. Brown is the co-author of "Choosing to See: A Framework for Equity in the Math Classroom." 

Kyndall Brown ('09, Ph.D., Education) serves as executive director of the California Mathematics Project.

How did you contribute to the new California Mathematics Framework?

In July of this year, the State Board of Education approved the new California Mathematics framework. I was involved in a group of folks organized to give feedback on the second draft of the framework, and I did write a snapshot which is an example of mathematics teaching, and that ended up being included in the final version. I'm going to be actively involved in supporting the implementation of the framework. My understanding is that they've posted all the edits from the last revision and they're good to go. Right now, publishers are trying to think about how they're going to align their materials with the new framework.

From a statewide perspective, how can educators and administrators best prepare themselves to implement the new framework? What would you urge them to do?

I would urge them to read the framework, but I know that's asking a lot. It's 1,000 pages, so they need to think, pick, and choose, and most teachers usually don't read the framework. I would want them to read chapters one and two, and then there are grade level- specific chapters, so they definitely need to look at the chapter related to their specific grade level. They also need to get together with other teachers at their school. If they belong to any math ed organizations, they need to be forming study groups [and] to begin to collaborate with their colleagues, to really think about what it's going to mean to change their instruction, to align to what the framework is asking [of them].

How would you allay any fears that this could shortchange students who are aspiring to, or in advanced levels of math learning? 

There is nothing in the framework that would make make any changes to the access that students had, to advancing in mathematics. There's a lot of misconceptions out there about the framework, and a lot of misinformation that's been put out. But there are no changes in the framework that would stop someone from taking whatever courses they wanted or needed to take.

How will the framework give a leg up to those students who are not at advanced levels, from those who are struggling, to those with average math ability?

It’s about thinking about teaching in a different way. In the previous frameworks, the focus was on standards – really, since the 1997 framework, which was the first framework that laid out of the topics that a teacher was supposed to teach at their grade level.

Teachers have these lists of standards, without any real guidance as to how are all these standards interconnected, [such as] what are the most important standards to teach and how they are connected to other ideas in mathematics. Usually, they just followed along the sequence of the textbook, starting with chapter one.

This new framework is reframing that and talking about what are the big and most important ideas in each grade level. And so, in the framework they have created these visual images. For each grade level, [the framework] has these nodes. The larger the node, the more emphasis [that] should be placed on that particular idea or concept. The lines in between show relationships between the big ideas. This gives teachers a much more coherent plan around how these different ideas are connected to one another and what [they] need to place more emphasis on, as opposed to less emphasis. And so that's one way the [new] framework is different. 

In the 2013 framework, or in the Common Core era, the framework introduced the Standards for Mathematical Practice [which] described how students should be engaging in mathematics. (link to visual of Standards) Teachers have been talking about them using them and we’ve been doing professional development around them since 2013. 

What the new framework has [added] are the Drivers of Investigation to talk about the why -  the forever question in math is “why do I need to know this?” The tasks that we have students engaging in should be helping them to make sense of the world; predict what could happen; and [understand] affect, or impact on the future. And then, the Content Connections are the what. There are four Content Connections:  reasoning with data; exploring changing quantities; taking wholes apart and putting parts together; and discovering shape and space.

One of these three drivers should be the focus of whatever tasks you're engaging students in. This is hopefully bringing a lot more coherence to the work and helping teachers make those connections for themselves and for the students. 

The first standards were [created] in 1997. In 2013, the Common Core standards came along and kind of refined them. You get fewer standards at each grade level, and then, once the standard is hit, it [isn’t] revisited over and over again. That's the idea of the framework, that every seven years we would revisit it but they didn’t choose to change any standards in this framework, the standards are the same. 

They’re not going to change. Again, hopefully, with teachers looking at what the big ideas are, they'll be able to focus on those standards that are the most important, where they should be putting most of their emphasis. 

At all grade levels, teachers tend to teach what they like to teach. They have their favorite things to teach as opposed to what's necessarily standards or grade level-aligned. It’s important that the teachers know the standards to them figure out what's grade level-aligned, but now they're really going to be able to understand what are the most important concepts their students need to master at each grade level and how are [the concepts are] connected to the other big ideas.

Will this affect frameworks for teaching math across the nation?

Probably not. It will probably influence textbooks, because publishers are going to be writing curricula specifically to these standards. I can imagine other states might adopt some of these curricula as well. But I don’t think it will [affect] all. Education is a state-by-state thing. 

It’s mandated every seven years that the framework be revisited and be updated, so statute is one of the reasons. But again, we’ve been on this path since the Common Core to really focus on student understanding, reasoning, and problem solving. And, this framework took a strong stance towards access and equity as well.

What propelled you to transforming math education?

I began my career as a classroom teacher, and I taught for 13 years at both the middle and high school level. About nine years into my teaching career, I attended the UCLA Math Project Summer Leadership Institute and everything changed. It changed the way I taught, and got me  involved in leadership in math education. It was kind of a natural progression and from there, I started getting involved in teacher education. 

After being able to observe math education on both statewide and national levels, what do you think are some of the biggest issues in math education right now?

There has always been a shortage of qualified teachers [in] low- performing urban schools, the entire time I've been in education [and] now, it's hitting more affluent schools. But there is still a huge problem in the most economically impacted communities [with] stability in terms of teaching, and particularly with math. I can think of some middle schools where there are no permanent math teachers. There are long-term subs, which means they're only there for a certain amount of time before they have to leave and be replaced by somebody else. 

When you have that kind of situation, there's no stability, there’s no consistency. And if that happens three years in a row, it's very unlikely that the student is going to enter high school ready to do college preparatory mathematics. So, we need a stable work force, and particularly in the most heavily impacted schools.

Literature and humanities can be a hotbed of controversy in teaching, but how is the teaching of math affected?

A huge part of math is solving problems, and if it’s a real world problem, then it has to have some context. There has been a huge push towards culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, and so problems should reflect the realities or students lives. At the lower levels, it’s not that big of an issue, because [within] the nature of the math that they're doing, you can cover [material] with lots of context that are very benign, not controversial. We’re talking about fractions, you can have them divide up food, anything. 

As you start to get into the higher grades, most of the context you see for math problems are military, industrial, or [financially-related]. They just as easily could be about social issues. There has been a movement since around 2005 to incorporate social justice into mathematics classrooms. Not all topics can be taught using a social justice context, but a lot can, particularly at the middle school level. If you're talking about the strand of statistics and probability, students can collect data about anything. So, why not collect data about things that are important to their lives? 

But there's a pushback. There are people who feel like math should be neutral, that it shouldn't involve any kind of social context, even though it does. If you're talking about the the path of a missile, that's a context. And you'll see that oftentimes in a math class when they're talking about quadratic functions and parabolas. 

There have been a number of books that have come out in the last few years, focusing on social justice tasks at different grade levels. One is called, “Do Postal Codes Predict Test Scores?” They use a GIS map, an interactive map that has laid out all of the different census tracts in, let's say, the state of California. So, it has all this data about median income, parental education level, median household value, things like that. But, it also has on it the high schools in each area, and their SAT or ACT scores. The students then can collect data where they compare SAT score and household income. There are all these different factors that they can analyze it by, and then they create a scatter plot. They create a line of best fit, which is an algebraic equation, and then they interpret it in the context of the problem. 

What the data is likely going to show is the higher the median income, the higher the SAT and ACT scores. You’re teaching them about slope, y- intercept, algebraic functions, but it has a context around social justice that causes them to think, “Okay, what does the SAT or ACT really measure?” So it's raising social and political consciousness and at the same time, it’s showing them that math can be used for these purposes, that math can be used as a tool for liberation. 

In Chapter Two of the framework, which is Teaching for Equity and Engagement, it talks about five components of equitable and engaging teaching for all students. The components are plan teaching around big ideas; use open engaging tasks; teach towards social justice; provide student questions and conjectures; and prioritize reasoning and justification. So, teaching towards social justice is one of the components that the framework identifies as equitable, engaging teaching for all students.

How do you hope this new framework and any other measures like it, will help to shape a new generation of math educators, as well as people in positions like yourself that can help push change from a bigger perspective? 

I'm hoping that it will influence professional development of in-service teachers; that it will influence the preparation of pre-service teachers; that it will influence the curriculum that gets created so that teachers will have the instructional resources to implement the framework. 

There is going to have to be an investment in professional development, there’s no two ways around it. We’re not going to see change unless teachers really have an opportunity to spend time, like I said before, collaborating with one another to make sense of what the framework is asking for; thinking about, “What does it look like in my classroom, for my students?”’ and getting the support that they need to experiment and try things out. And I hope people don't think that the fact that a new framework was created, that in and of itself means that there's going to be change. It's not. There have to be some real money resources put behind this for it to work.

At this point, do you see most districts buying in, or is it too soon to tell?

There is this quasi- governmental organization called the California Collaborative for Excellence in Education. They made this $50 million grant available that will be divided amongst the 58 county offices of education in California, a math science and computer science grant. And so, county offices have four years to spend the money. They're in the process right now of doing asset mapping in their regions, creating action plans. The hope is that a lot of this money will be used to support framework implementation. I also heard that Superintendent Thurman is trying to propose legislation specifically for mathematics professional development, so I’m hoping that will work out as well. 

How did your education at UCLA prepare you for an opportunity to lead math education in the state of California? 

Going to the UCLA Math Project was a pathway to graduate school. The person who preceded me in my current position, Dr. Susie Hakansson was at the time, the site director of the UCLA Math Project. She really was the one who nurtured my leadership, and there were so many other people. I was working here, and then this NSF grant called Diversity in Math Education became available [and provided] a full ride. It was real easy to do, working for the Math Project, being here on campus, having Megan Franke as my advisor, who at that time was the director of Center X, and so it was easy to connect with her and interact with her and get her support [for the] math ed focus of my dissertation.

What inspired your recent book, “Choosing to See: A Framework for Equity in the Math Classroom”? 

My co-author Pamela Seda and I wanted to really share what does equity mean in a math classroom or what does culturally relevant pedagogy look like in a math classroom. In a language arts classroom, I can have students read literature that reflects the cultures that they come from. In social studies class, I can have them study [those] cultures. 

What we wanted to do is to pull together all the resources from over the years, because she has about as much experience as I have. What are the resources that teachers can use to make their math classrooms more equitable? As as part of her dissertation, she came up with a framework called the ICU CARE framework. Each letter stands for one of the principles: include others as experts; be critically conscious; understand your students well; use culturally relevant curricula; assess, activate and build on prior knowledge; release, control, and inspect. For each one of those principles, there's a chapter in the book. We talk about what the principle is about, why it’s equitable, and what happens when you don't engage in that principle, as well as sample activities of what [teachers] can do.

SEIS alumnus and executive director of the California Mathematics Project oversees K-12 teaching and learning across the state, discusses potential of the new California Mathematics Framework.

Kyndall Brown: Leading California in Math Education

The two groups of children with the most unstable home environments - foster youth and those experiencing homelessness - are the two groups that educators are most likely to send home by meting out punitive "out-of-school" suspension, according to new research published  by the UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles and the National Center for Youth Law. 

 "School administrators need to ask themselves what educational or community benefit is achieved when we punish homeless and foster children by sending them home,” says Ramon Flores, Ph.D. candidate in education at UCLA and co-author of the report. “For homeless and foster youth, when they are suspended out of school, the consequences may be grave."

 The new research report, “Lost Instruction Time in California Schools: The Disparate Harm from Post-Pandemic Punitive Suspensions,” analyzes CDE data sources to provide a detailed review of how suspensions directly contribute to disparities in learning opportunities for students in foster care or experiencing homelessness, as well as along the lines of race and disability in every California school district. The report is the first to highlight how post-COVID suspensions in 2021–2022 added to the pandemic’s harmful impact of instructional loss, especially for students from “high-needs” groups most harmed by the pandemic.

 "Too little attention has been paid to the disparate impact of punitive responses to foster and homeless children,” says Daniel Losen, report co-author and senior director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.

 Disturbingly, the research finds that African American children in the foster system are being denied an opportunity to learn, at a rate of 121 days of lost instruction per 100 enrolled. African American children in these two groups are losing instruction at a rate that is 7 to 12 times higher than the state average for all students (10 days of lost instruction per every 100 students).

 “We know from our other studies, investigations, and direct work with school districts that despite the important efforts to restrict such punishment for merely disruptive behaviors, these students are still sent home in high numbers for other minor forms of misconduct, including use of profanity and vulgarity," Losen added.

The new research also shows that in 2021–2022, students across California lost more than half a million days of instruction due to out-of-school suspensions, a slight decline statewide from previous years. Yet the findings describe high rates of punishment that have increased dramatically post-pandemic in particular districts. Despite the slight statewide decline, many districts increased suspensions and show widening racial/ethnic disparities, including two districts that are currently under agreements with a federal civil rights enforcement agency.

 The report also identifies school districts that appear to have made some progress in reducing school suspensions. For example, the rates for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the first California school district to prohibit suspensions for disruptive behavior or willful defiance, are notable for how low they are for each racial/ethnic group and for students with disabilities (IDEA). LAUSD’s rates declined from 2018–2019 for all students, including African Americans, Latinx, and students with disabilities (IDEA).

 “While the LAUSD is far from perfect, their progress stands as an example that other large school districts can learn from in reducing out-of-school suspensions,” adds Losen.

 Although the study highlights the need for increased investments to help improve school climate and reduce rates of disciplinary exclusion, the analysis also suggests some districts have policies that lack sufficient educational justification. Others may be providing too few supports for students and teachers, or ignoring well-established research on more effective ways to respond to student misconduct that do not entail shutting them out of the schoolhouse.

 The report lists recommendations for improving the accountability for school climate including calling for more comprehensive discipline data reporting and greater oversight of district practices to ensure that harmful, counter-productive punishments are eliminated. 

“Lost Instruction Time in California Schools: The Disparate Harm from Post-Pandemic Punitive Suspensions,” is co-authored by Ramon T. Flores, graduate student researcher at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies (CCRR), an initiative of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP), and Daniel J. Losen, former director of CCRR and current senior director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.

Spreadsheets detailing discipline trends for every school district in California are available upon request and will be posted for download on the release date. For further questions about the report content please contact Daniel J. Losen at 617-285-4745 or dlosen@youthlaw.org.

 Findings underscore excessive punishment of homeless and foster youth

New research details harm of post-pandemic punitive suspensions in CA

While earning her MLIS at the University of Pittsburgh, Tonia Sutherland was assailed by the media images and footage of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and its surrounding areas in 2005. What stood out to her in the disaster’s coverage was the indifferent portrayal of the destruction and death that affected the Black communities.

This realization led Sutherland, an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, to write her new and first book ever, “Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife,” which was released this month by the University of California Press, and recently featured on Ms. Magazine’s October list of “Reads for the Rest of Us.”  

Sutherland employs a lens of critical archival, digital, and cultural studies in her examination of the technology and societal mores around the ways that Black Americans are portrayed posthumously online, acknowledging historic bigotry, current forms of racialized aggression, and the unique ways that Black cultures continue to fight against the erasure or distortion of their histories.

Professor Sutherland joined the UCLA faculty in 2022. She serves as co-director of the UCLA Community Archives Lab, and is a member of Scholar Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). An internationally recognized expert in the study of Black archival practices, Sutherland focuses her research on critical and liberatory in archival studies, digital studies, and science and technology studies, emphasizing the often-messy entanglements of memory, community, and technology.

Prior to arriving at UCLA, Sutherland was an assistant professor in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She is currently the co-founder and co-director of AfterLab at the University of Washington iSchool and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University.

Professor Sutherland has been a member of the American Studies Association, the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Society of American Archivists and the Association for Library and Information Science Education. She is the author or co-author of more than two dozen articles and book chapters, with her work appearing in journals such as The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion; New Media and Society; The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies; The American Archivist; The Black Scholar; Open Information Science; Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture; Archival Science; The Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics; and Radical History Review. 

Sutherland holds both her PhD and MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh, and her bachelor’s degree in history, performance studies, and cultural studies from Hampshire College.

What inspired “Resurrecting the Black Body”?

The first kernels of inspiration came from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was earning my master's in library and information studies at the time. I was working on a paper and the television was on, and I could see all of the bodies of the deceased floating in the flood waters in New Orleans. I was shocked by the callousness with which the news media were displaying dead bodies, and these bodies were primarily Black people's bodies, because the toll of the storm really impacted Black communities [or they were] hit the hardest.

It reminded me of the footage I saw as a child, where you would see TV campaigns with emaciated children with distended bellies from Africa. No specific country was named, except maybe Ethiopia. There were flies flying around them and again, [they were] all Black children. I started to think at the time what is it about us culturally and as a society that we feel comfortable displaying Black bodies, Black people in pain or in death, with such callousness.

That was the root of my thinking as an information studies scholar about this project: when we die, do we have a right to say what is done with our image, which expanded over time to [asking] do we have a right to to say what happens to any of our data after we die? We live in this very digital world. Do we have a right to say what happens to our Facebook profile… our Twitter? What happens to our email, what happens to all the data that other companies have collected about us?

Thinking through all of that, and then also seeing the increasing use of technologies such as holograms, and the way that people were being reanimated after death using data and a variety of digital practices - like the Tupac hologram - were the the main impetus for writing this book.

What were the avenues you traveled to dig deeper on this very timely topic?

The book reads as a series of case studies. For each case, it was actually a very different kind of research process. The first part is framed around records, because I'm trained as an archival scholar. The next part is framed around resurrection, and I look at digital resurrection processes and a couple of cases of digital afterlife practices. The third part is framed around rights.

The first case looks at the digitization of records from the slavery era, really focusing on what it means for those records to circulate in new contexts. Slavery ended almost 150 years ago. What does it mean for those records to now circulate online - for the images and even some of the nomenclature that's used in and to describe these records - for them to just pop up in your Instagram feed, with no context? What people are doing is imposing context where they don't have the education or knowledge to fill in the context for what it is that they're seeing. So, there's a strong visual literacy component to the research.

The second chapter looks at lynching era photographs and images and postcards and how they correlate to [current] images like the video of of George Floyd's murder in 2020. I wouldn't call them bookends, but they're points on the same timeline. There is also a visual literacy component to what happens when there is distancing between someone actually experiencing pain and us watching someone experience pain; and what kinds of emotional agency those images are then allowed to kind of convey.

There is a chapter on Henrietta Lacks, whose family has been in the news again recently for suing Thermo Fisher. That is a historical analysis of Henrietta Lacks, a retelling of her story, and then looking at what happened when German researchers put her genome online and all of a sudden, she became a digital body. Her genome became something people could download and read, even though this woman died in 1951. Her cells – HeLa cells - have become part of of curing so many diseases, including being part of the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The research there was about trying to understand what someone can do with a genome and what we are doing with DNA. It's a little scary. We have created synthetic DNA, and we are now storing information data in it, because it's a stable storage medium. That chapter is grappling DNA in digital environments, the kinds of things we are doing with DNA, and how we understand bodies and embodiment, especially in the case of this woman who died in the 1950s, and yet is still very much present today.

The next chapter is about Tupac Shakur and understanding the technology [behind his] hologram that was presented at Coachella in 2012, digging into the technology and trying to also understand--from the hip-hop, Black community perspective--why this hologram might have been a thing that was valued or wanted. It was kind of a jarring and disorienting experience for people to see this reanimated rapper on stage, years after he had died.

Finally, the last two chapters are about our right to be forgotten. Do we have a right to be forgotten? Do we have the right to be remembered, and if so, do we get to say under what conditions?

How can individuals have their say on the option to be remembered or forgotten while they are still with us?

Right now, folks in Hollywood - actors and other performers - are fighting for [their rights to autonomy]. This remains a big part of the SAG-AFTRA strike. People don't want to be turned into AI and then have that image be able to be used in perpetuity. We are already seeing a huge pushback here. Carrie Fisher stated very explicitly that she did not want to be reanimated in any way. Prince also had something in his will saying he did not want to be reanimated. This is a very small but growing area of the law - afterlife services and practices.

A lot of [social media] companies are also coming around to this idea. For a long time, Facebook has had memorial pages. You can, before you die, designate someone to be the inheritor of your Facebook page and you can choose to have it turned into a memorial page. I have a cousin who passed away, and her [Facebook] page is now one of these memorial pages.

In terms of the data itself though, we don't have control over what third parties do. We don't have control over what will happen to that data or what can be can be done with [it] when we die. I know that for some organizations, some governmental institutions, some companies, it's going to eventually become a huge concern because we create so much data every day, each of us individually, and all of it is being gathered and stored.

A recent study noted that there are more dead people than living people on Facebook. When your living customer base is exceeded by [the] deceased, what do you do with all the data from the deceased? Are you going to maintain it in perpetuity? Our data is surviving us and for companies, there may be reasons they want this data to survive. But at what point do we lay a body of data to rest?

We are approaching a crisis point where people are going to have to start grappling with this because, it’s been just long enough that this data has been allowed to build up and we haven't really thought it through it as a society. All this data has been collected and then what happens when the person dies? It’s a legal issue; it’s a social issue; it’s an information issue; it’s a technology issue. It’s going to take all of us coming together from these different perspectives and having these conversations.

How did your background in history and performance studies inform the creation of this book? 

One of the things that I think is really beautiful about this book, just for myself, is that it really is a lovely coming together of a lifetime of training. Being able to think interdisciplinarily and having an opportunity to pull from all these fields and ways of seeing the world, I think, actually gives the book a lot of depth and and richness.

As the book is focused on Black people and their afterlife images in history and digital history, what are some of the main racial issues and implications you examine?

Black people in the United States have long had our bodies be both subject and object. When you are enslaved, you don't get to make decisions about your body. When you are imprisoned or incarcerated in the high numbers that Black people are, you don't get to make decisions about your body. We have a history in this country of denying and depriving Black people of bodily autonomy, and to see this continue into the afterlife is particularly galling.

I really wanted to sit with what that means for the Black community and what it means for all of us. If you look at how you treat the the people that are least respected in your society, it will tell you a lot about yourselves. What I learned is there is a very callous disregard – and maybe a thoughtless disregard as well – for how these digital afterlife practices impact Black communities in particular… this sort of continuation of of the slavery project, the carceral state, where you are constantly imprisoned by your Blackness. And if we allow these practices to become acceptable, if they become the baseline for policy, then we're all in trouble.

How does your work in this area enhance your teaching?

Right now, I teach “Values and Communities in the Information Professions,” and we’ve had some conversations about DNA. We’ve talked about information as a public good, about access to information and what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. I also teach in our archival studies area, so there are a lot of resonances there. 

I'm teaching a class this year called “Community Engagement,” a doctoral seminar. That class focuses on getting students to engage with communities where rather than imposing the researchers’ needs, desires, thoughts, or beliefs [about] the community, [we are] really allowing communities to speak for themselves which is an important aspect of this work. Last year, I taught an undergraduate class on “Information and Power,” where we talked about a lot of these things as well.

How does your research strengthen your role as co-director of the Community Archives Lab?

The Community Archives Lab is co-directed by my colleagues, Michelle Caswell, Thuy Vo Dang, and myself. I have a grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to study descriptive practices in archives, the language that we use to describe people and things and events, but mostly people. The grant is to look at the way this move from analog into digital has shifted some of those practices and we're going to spend some time talking to community members about how they would like to see themselves represented or, if they would like to see themselves represented in archives and if so, what language would they like to be used when someone is talking about them, or describing them or describing their community.

I feel like with the Lab we're actually connecting with local communities and thinking more broadly about what it means to document [them] and to be in partnership with communities who wish to document themselves.

Professor Sutherland will speak on “Resurrecting the Black Body” in an Online Network Book Forum titled, “Caring for Digital Remains.” The event will be presented by Data & Society on Thursday, Nov. 16 at 1 p.m., EST. To register and attend, visit this link.

Scholar of the critical and liberatory in archival studies points interdisciplinary lens toward the afterlife digital presence of Black Americans, from the slavery era to the present.

Tonia Sutherland: New Book Explores “Resurrecting the Black Body” and its Afterlife Legacies

The UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families welcomed Los Angeles County Third District Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath to the UCLA campus. The meet-and-greet in Murphy Hall was held to acquaint Supervisor Horvath with UCLA’s numerous experts in child and family related needs, to hear more about her goals as Supervisor, and to learn of ways the campus community can be supportive toward her policy agenda. 

In partnership with numerous campus experts serving children and families, a roundtable discussion with campus experts from intersecting disciplines, touched upon topics such as child welfare, foster care, juvenile justice, child health, and education. Supervisor Horvath also awarded the UCLA Pritzker Center with a certificate of commendation on behalf of the LA County Board of Supervisors, in recognition of the center’s work supporting children, youth, and families throughout Los Angeles County.

Taylor Dudley, JD, executive director of the UCLA Pritzker Center, opened the discussion with Supervisor Horvath. A land acknowledgement was given by second-year UCLA undergrads and Pritzker Center research assistants Olivia Gilchrist, a public affairs and psychology major, and Cristopher Espino, who majors in political science as well as the Education & Social Transformation major program at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. 

"Hosting Supervisor Horvath was an honor for our team and partners at UCLA--a true demonstration of the bridges we aim to build on campus and from the doors of UCLA into neighorhoods across LA,” said Dudley. “With the Supervisor’s engagement, we can provide more meaningful research in our communities, share training and education with LA County colleagues and form genuine and impactful partnerships with organizations committed to helping families thrive. We look forward to supporting her vision for the Third District.” 

UCLA Professor of Education Tyrone Howard, co-director of the UCLA Pritzker Center, is a scholar whose research addresses the intersections of race, culture, access, and educational opportunity for minoritized student populations.

“We’ve been excited to do a number of research projects with the County that are really informative around how we think about issues tied to racial bias, domestic violence, issues that we know have an impact on children and families’ abilities to thrive,” said Howard, who also directs the Black Male Institute and CTS. 

Audra Langley, PhD, is co-director of the UCLA Pritzker Center and a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior as well as in the Department of Pediatrics, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. She encouraged Supervisor Horvath to “… leverage the incredible resources and expertise, some of which you see here today, in order to bridge with communities and elevate the ways we help children and families. I’m excited for everyone who’s here today representing some of the best of UCLA’s investment in prevention and intervention for children and people with families.”

The UCLA Pritzker Center was represented by Nancy Olivares, MPP, who spoke about the center’s Courageous Conversations and Blind Removal research projects, which aim to raise awareness and reduce racial bias and racial disparities in foster care; Isabella Reina, research assistant, who described the center’s work in the Antelope Valley in partnership with Baby2Baby, and meeting seasonal needs such as distributions of backpacks for school and toys during the holiday season. Taylor Thaxton, MPH, a 4th year Drew/UCLA medical student, spoke about a new pilot program with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in a domestic violence shelter called Valley Oasis, and how the center will continue to examine the intersection between domestic violence and entering foster care; and Kahlila Williams, a research assistant, spoke about her lived experience in foster care. In addition, the Anthony & Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation was represented by Winnie Weschler, senior advisor and Lauren Nichols, director. 

UCLA’s medical expertise was represented by Wendelin Slusser, MD, Associate Vice Provost for the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA and professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and School of Public Health; Shannon Thyne, MD, professor and vice chair of pediatrics at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine; Claudia Wang, MD, associate clinical professor and pediatric consultant for UCLA Ties for Families; and Patricia Lester, MD, the UCLA Jane and Marc Nathanson Family Professor of Psychiatry, director of the Nathanson Family Resilience Center, medical director of the Child and Family Trauma Service, and part of the leadership team at the UCLA Pritzker Center. Catherine Mogil, PsyD, co-director of the UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence and Eugenia Tsao, PhD, director of clinical services at UCLA TIES for Families, rounded out the group of on-the-ground practitioners who shared their work with Supervisor Horvath.

Bianca D.M. Wilson, PhD, the Rabbi Zacky Senior Scholar of Public Policy at The Williams Institute in the UCLA School of Law; Elise Brumbach, JD, policy and practice coordinator, UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent; Angela James, PhD, research director, CTS; and Jennifer Poulakidas, Associate Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, also shared their expertise and work.

Also in attendance were Marco Perez, assistant director, UCLA Government Relations; Jess Aceves, administrative assistant, UCLA Government Relations; Brenda Tully, PhD, research fellow, UCLA Pritzker Center; Laura Liévano-Karim, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow, UCLA Pritzker Center; Ana Rivera, program coordinator, UCLA Pritzker Center; Sophia D’Souza, survey researcher, UCLA Pritzker Center; Laura Lindberg, executive director of development, UCLA Ed&IS; Nicole Payton, senior executive director of external relations, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Patrick Brennan, MBA, director of the UC/CSU Fellowship, UCLA Ed&IS; Teaira Nelson, MSW, program director, Bruin Guardian Scholars Program; and Catherine Imbery, project coordinator, UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative.

LA County Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath presented the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families with a certificate of commendation on behalf of the LA County Board of Supervisors. L-R: Taylor Dudley, executive director, UCLA Pritzker Center; Supervisor Horvath, Audra Langley, PhD and UCLA Professor of Education Tyrone Howard, co-directors, UCLA Pritzker Center. Courtesy of the Office of Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath

Supervisor Horvath, who took office in 2022, expressed her hopes for improving outcomes for children, youth, and families, and her goal of “…moving away from ‘mandatory reporting’ to ‘mandated supporting.’”

“What I would really like to see is the County to be a social prevention network, that we don’t just catch you when you fall, but prevent you from falling in the first place,” she noted. “We are focusing on how we expand equity, expand resources, and help families who have been traditionally excluded on purpose from these systems to not only have the systems changed to welcome them in, but to help them have all of the understanding and support that they need to be loving parents and happy families they’ve always envisioned for themselves. We are pushing to include more LGBTQ families in the service work that we do in the County, and to hear from all of you… especially people who work with people having lived experience of these systems to understand where we need to be doing them better.” 

Horvath, who will assume the post of Board Chair in December, said that her new role will assist her in more timely action on the most pressing issues facing young people in foster care and the juvenile justice system.

“I am moving with our team with a sense of urgency on these issues, because we know every single day that our young people, whether they are justice involved, whether they are surviving foster care, whether they are struggling in a different home that’s experiencing all kinds of trauma, every day makes a difference,” said Horvath. “With your help, I know we will bring the change that is desperately needed. I’ll have a new role to play and hopefully [will be] highlighting these issues in partnership with my colleagues to bring even more awareness and sense of urgency to creating that change.”

Supervisor Horvath previously served as a City Councilmember and as the longest consecutively serving Mayor of West Hollywood. She has made history as the youngest woman to be elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and as the first millennial and only renter on the Board.

“I’m a different face for a supervisor that most people are used to,” said Horvath, “and when you change the face of leadership, you can change the work that you do. You can change policy, you can change the way you serve people. 

“I look around the room and see how much we’re changing the face of the work that will be done and how much you all will inform that, so thank you,” she said. “One of the things that’s very important to me is as I have been given opportunities, I want to make those opportunities available to others. My leadership is only good if I kick open that door and bring a lot of people with me because I can’t do it by myself. We need all of you in those rooms with us.”

 Photos courtesy of the Office of Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath

Campus briefing on Oct. 6 for Horvath, the youngest woman to lead the County Board of Supervisors, showcased UCLA expertise and partnerships in support of children and families. 

UCLA Pritzker Center Welcomes LA County Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath

Aiming to reduce out-of-school suspensions for students in Transitional Kindergarten through twelfth grades and promote alternatives to punitive practices, California’s legislature awarded $1 million over three years to the newly created Race Education and Community Healing (REACH) Network led by the UC Berkeley School of Education and UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. 

The funding will enable the REACH Network to work across California with public and charter schools, local education agencies, community-based organizations, and universities to develop alternatives to out-of-school suspensions and engage directly with teachers and school leaders to establish public schools as hubs for racial and community healing.

Travis Bristol, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley School of Education

“Teachers need tools to improve their practice. Principals need tools to support teachers. How do we gather these tools? We come together with individuals who have the same north star and we learn from and with them,” said UC Berkeley School of Education Associate Professor Travis Bristol, who will co-lead the project with UCLA Professor Tyrone Howard.  “You can tell educators to end suspensions, but that’s not enough. Educators need opportunities to learn how to create school and classroom environments that engage students’ minds and not police their bodies.” 

The project is aligned with State Senator Nancy Skinner’s successful SB 274, which is designed to keep students in school by eliminating suspensions for “willful defiance” or low-level behavior issues in TK through grade 12. The bill has passed the state legislature and now sits on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. 

“SB 274 is based on a simple premise: Students belong in school. Suspending students, no matter what the age, does not improve student behavior. Instead, suspensions greatly increase the likelihood that the student will fail classes or drop out of school completely,” said Senator Skinner. “To put student success first, it’s imperative that we work directly with teachers and school administrators to develop thoughtful and engaging alternatives to out-of-school suspensions so that teachers and classrooms can flourish and students can thrive. That’s why I’m so pleased that we were able to secure funding in this year’s budget for the newly created REACH Network at UC Berkeley and UCLA.”

Research indicates that willful defiance suspensions have disproportionately affected students of color, LGBTQ+ students, students who are unhoused or in foster care, and those with disabilities, and can have a cascading effect on a student’s educational and life outcomes.  

"Policy is only a start to ending the overuse of punitive practices in schools that disproportionately impact students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and historically marginalized groups in California. Schools and educators need greater capacity and tools to promote positive and healthy relationships,” said Joseph Bishop, Executive Director & co-founder, UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. “Thanks to Senator Skinner's leadership, we're going to build upon our statewide CA Multi-Tiered System of Support partnership and focus unapologetically through REACH on the relationship between race, education, and student learning." 

The REACH Network will launch communities of practice for educators statewide to develop and document evidence-based models for alternatives to suspensions, expulsions and criminalization practices in schools.  The network will also curate resources and concrete prevention strategies for educators and school leaders and build school-university-community partnerships to promote healthy, safe learning environments to address past punitive harms to students of color and other students who have been disproportionately affected. 

The REACH Network will work with a geographically diverse set of schools across California to lower suspension rates and to generate recommendations to expand the efforts across schools statewide. 

UC Berkeley: Andrea Lampros, alampros@berkeley.edu, 510.847.4469