
Brian Davis - Undergraduate student scholar and leader at the Pennsylvania State University
Contemporary Black Freedom Struggles: Crafting Leadership By Design
Brian Anthony Davis is an activist, motivational speaker, and scholar. Davis’s most recent work is his Scholarly Paper for The Ronald McNair Scholars program — an explorative investigation of Slavery and Freedom from the 17th Century to emancipation. During Brian's tenure at The Penn State University, Brian has completed 4 study abroad programs in Haiti, Cuba, Amsterdam, and Australia. He has received over 22 awards for his selfless ethical leadership domestically and internationally. During August 2016, Brian created a yearly publication for Penn State titled, "Penn State Treasure" which is a resource guide for first-year and change-of-campus students.

Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya - Associate Professor of Educational Leadership & Qualitative Research at Kansas State University
Ways to Occupy the Margins of Schools and Society
Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya has been in academia for twelve years, currently as an associate professor, housed in Educational Leadership, at Kansas State University. She serves as a qualitative methodologist for the College of Education and beyond, while substantively focusing on transnational issues in higher education across various axes of differences. Her co-authored text with a former student, Kent Gillen, entitled, “Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative,” won AERA’s 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from Graduate and Postsecondary Education Across the Disciplines SIG and International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry’s 2017 Outstanding Book Award. In this book they explore the complicated power relations when working with students who benefit from dominant social structures. They explore the difficult navigation of being raced, internalizing racialized discourses, and holding space for difficult conversations. As a Brown woman in predominantly white spaces in higher education, Dr. Bhattacharya has integrated personal and professional experiences in her published work. Within such documentation are histories of daily microaggressions, struggles in liminality, issues of belongingness, and a need to reimagine a de/colonial existence while shuttling between multiple subject positions.
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I'm an Associate Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. I focus on dismantling supremacist patriarchies through research, teaching, and coaching. As a sociocultural literacist, I work to understand personal and public voices and stories to solve personal and public problems. I do this by researching the evolutionary nature and function of literacies and texts through the discourses of narrative research. My work exposes impetuses for various personal and social ills such as racism, sexism, and ableism.
I love to meditate way before dawn, work out like a soldier, and shop alone. I prefer rum to wine, jeans to skirts, and like my heels sky high (except when I'm wearing cowboy boots). Every year I ask my stylist to cornrow and bead my hair in homage to Patrice Rushen and Stevie Wonder (if you know of these artists and understand why demonstrating embodied respect for them is important, we can probably be friends). I believe in ghosts, fairies, and hobbits (for real). Musically, I vibe to old school everything (hip hop, R&B, jazz, rock, and classical) and especially dig Hildegard von Bingen. I trust children a little bit more than adults, respect teens for their fearlessness, admire elders for their tenacity, and occasionally prefer the company of dogs to people. I'm really getting into interior design and have a penchant for acquiring east coast real estate. I'm also a survivor of multiple terrors in love.
I invite you to learn more about me and the projects I am involved with at JeanineStaples.com.