Subini Annamma

Subbini Annamma is an American academic who is a professor of education, and sociologist. She is Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

She is a pioneering researcher in Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit).

Her areas of research include sociology of education, critical race theory, disability studies, intersectional justice in education, ethnic studies, carceral logics, school-to-prison pipeline, restorative justice, Black feminist sociology, educational inequality, and special education in the United States.

Annamma identifies as a "multi-racial Black and Asian woman of color" and as "disabled [and] chronically ill."

Education

Annamma completed her BS in Special education in 2002 at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. She has a MA in special education and English as a second language (2008) and a PhD in educational equity, cultural diversity, and "social, multicultural, and bilingual foundations."

Academia

Annamma began her career as a special education teacher in California, Oregon, and Colorado, working both in public schools and youth detention centers.

Annamma worked as an assistant professor from 2013-2014 at Indiana University-Indianapolis. Also in 2014, she began working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Denver. After leaving the University of Denver in 2015, Annamma became an assistant professor at the University of Kansas where she worked until 2019.

In 2019, Annamma began working as an associate professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Education. She was awarded the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship the same year. The dean of the School of Education said "The Ford Foundation Fellowship is wonderful recognition of the important work Dr. Annamma is doing on incarceration issues for students of color with disabilities... This fellowship will give her a full year to continue her research in this area of growing significance.”

In 2024, she was a Scholar in Service for the Stanford Impact Labs and was awarded a Research and Innovation Grant from the Stanford Accelerator for Learning for her project "Whose expertise matters? Centering Youth Voice to (Re)Conceptualize and Expand Accessibility in Ethnic Studies." Annamma designed an accessible ethnic studies curriculum for the San Francisco Unified School District.

Annamma is the Senior Fellow and Faculty Lead in Education at the Stanford Center for Racial Justice. She co-leads the Roses Talk Project – a project designed to include student voices in equitable education policy – with the Center.

Annamma is a co-director of the Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Walk Out! Lab For Youth Justice with Law Professor Ralph Richard Banks.

In 2024, Annamma developed the Formerly Incarcerated Research Experts (FIRE) Fellowship. The six-month fellowship allows formerly incarcerated researchers to work with Annamma in researching the races and disabilities of incarcerated youth or developing their own research project.

Writing

Annamma has edited and written five books. Her book The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus was awarded the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award and the National Women's Studies Association Alison Piepmeier Book Prize.

In a review for the London School of Economics and Political Science, Allison Stein wrote that The Pedagogy of Pathologization "in its findings and methods will serve as a model for future researchers who seek an intersectional view of the school-prison nexus that puts the voices of those being criminalised and pathologised at the front and centre." For Teachers College Record, reviewers Shereka King and Abiola Farinde-Wu wrote that "Through the lens of DisCrit, The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-Prison Nexus is a powerful qualitative research study that highlights the experiences of girls of color who fight against hyper-surveillance, hyper-labeling, and hyper-punishment within prison nation... Annamma achieved her goal in this in-depth exploration of the lived experiences of incarcerated multiply-marginalized dis/abled girls of color."

Annamma's book DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education was included in Thompson's "Black Disabled Woman Syllabus."

For the Educational Review, Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar Valentina Migliarini described DisCrit as "an exciting and ground-breaking volume addressing the root of some of the most entrenched educational inequities within Western culture from an intersectional and cross-disciplinary lens, while creating spaces for solidarity and new alliances in education policies and practices." They added that Annamma's 2013 article "Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability" was "invaluable in developing my doctoral research project on the disablement of refugee children in the Italian context." In Disability Studies Quarterly, reviewer Phil Smith began by writing "This book. SO much to like. SO much good energy." While his review was positive, he did highlight that the book was "dense, academic" and "over-focused."

Annamma has served on the editorial board of Race Ethnicity and Education and Focus on Exceptional Children. She has also worked as an editor for Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners.

Annamma has had journal articles published in the Educational Researcher, Race Ethnicity and Education, NYU Review of Law & Social Change's The Harbinger, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Teachers College Record, and more. Annamma has also been featured on Disability Visibility Project.

She wrote an article for Teen Vogue on the intersectional criminalization of disabled Black girls with Rep. Ayanna Pressley and advocate Vilissa Thompson. The article tied into Rep. Pressley's Ending PUSHOUT Act. She has also written articles for Insider Higher Ed, Los Angeles Times, and The Imprint.

Publications

Awards and honors

References