Amelia Simone Herbert, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Amelia Simone Herbert is Assistant Professor of Education and Urban Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research and teaching draw on anthropology, comparative education, and Black studies to interrogate the roles that education plays in the construction and subversion of racialized urban inequality, with a particular focus on South Africa and the United States. Amelia's forthcoming book manuscript is an ethnography that examines how youth, families, and educators navigate the racial and spatial politics of aspiration in the increasingly marketized schooling landscape of Cape Town, South Africa. In Spring 2024, she was a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. Prior to joining Barnard College, Amelia was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and an instructor in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers-Newark. She was also Visiting Assistant Professor in Colgate University’s Department of Educational Studies. Amelia's research on the complex meanings of schooling in the lived experiences of Black youth and communities is fueled by over 15 years of professional experience in K-12 schools and a commitment to critical inquiry in service of change. Amelia was a classroom teacher in Newark for nearly a decade and she has also worked as a teacher educator with schools in New York City and Cape Town. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the American Association of University Women, and the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation.Beyond her scholarly work, Amelia is passionate about poetry - reading, writing, and living it.