OCCRL Staff and Affiliates

Dante Studamire is a scholar-activist who attributes social activism and purposeful scholarship as key motivations. Presently, he is a doctoral student in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership (EPOL) and serves as a mentor through the Office of Minority Student Affairs (OMSA) and a teaching assistant within the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

His scholarly research activity engages, troubles, and interrogates experiences in academe across a multiplicity of identities. He brings intersectional framing and a critical theoretical lens to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and education. Dante aims to contribute counternarratives to dominant discourse and add to an emerging body of literature on African American social and educational resilience, but more largely, to provide visibility to a population that is often pathologically approached, if represented at all, in research concerning Black men in America and education scholarship.