Doctoral student Kimberly Ransom studying Black childhood with Spencer Dissertation Fellowship support
Educational Studies PhD candidate Kimberly Ransom has been selected for the National Academy of Education Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Ransom’s scholarly interests are concerned with the social construction of Black childhood within education, over time—which includes how Black childhood has been imagined or unimagined, historically, in and around schools.
Drawing from scholarship that asserts Black childhood has been unimagined due to their devalued position and disregard within the social conception of childhood, her dissertation examines what might be learned about the agency of Black children and the character of Black childhood in and around pre-Brown segregated schools by foregrounding the vantage and perspectives of Black children. She is examining archival sources, oral histories, and material objects of once-children who attended Rosenwald Schools in Pickens County, Alabama (1940-1969). Foregrounding the perspectives and products of Black children, her study restores and expands understandings of the experiences and agency of Black children in and around Rosenwald Schools; and by implication, it expands the understandings of Black childhood in this space and time.
“I am truly honored and grateful for this opportunity. I am so grateful to the University of Michigan School of Education—leadership, faculty, and students—who have provided such a rich, inspiring, and challenging space to learn, grow, and create,” said Ransom.
The Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, analysis, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world.