Deborah E. Southern

Dr. Deborah E. Southern (she/her) is a University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Education and Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. As a higher education scholar and qualitative methodologist, Dr. Southern employs critical theories on racialized organizations and whiteness to study organizational change and how racial justice is possibly facilitated or restrained by organizational mechanisms and leaders. One important contribution of Dr. Southern’s research examines how whiteness in institutions via areas like organizational structures, practices, and leaders’ racial comfort works to obstruct racial justice.

Formerly, Dr. Southern was a research assistant in the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium and the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Dr. Southern earned her Ph.D. from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.

Originally from Rochester, N.Y., Dr. Southern earned a Master’s in Higher Education at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor where she also worked as a practitioner in student affairs for five years. Dr. Southern earned a Bachelor’s in Asian Studies and History at Occidental College after transferring from community college.