Carla O'Connor

Carla O’Connor is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor, Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan where she also directs Wolverine Pathways, a free, year-round pre-collegiate program serving underrepresented youth in southeastern Michigan. She received an MA and PhD in education from the University of Chicago and a BA in English from Wesleyan University. A sociologist of education with expertise in African American achievement, cultural studies, urban education, and ethnographic methods, her work includes examinations of: how Black identity is constructed across multiple contexts and influences educational outcomes; how Black people’s perceptions of opportunity vary within and across space and shape academic orientation; how Black educational resilience and vulnerability is structured by social and historical forces; and how the organization and culture of schools influence students’ identities and outcomes. She is currently conducting a study on race and the co-construction of family-school relations. Her work appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Sociology of Education, Review of Research in Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has co-edited or contributed to handbooks and edited volumes that contend with issues of race, identity, and educational access. She delivered the 2019 AERA Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture and is member elect of the National Academy of Education.