Featured Speaker Event: Dr. Danelle Adeniji

The Education & Social Justice Minor (ESJ) and the Center for Education, Equity & Diversity (CEED) are collaborating to bring to WWU keynote speaker Dr. Danelle Adeniji (they/them), whose research and work focuses on intersectional Black identities, teacher education, critical pedagogy, and social justice. This event series on March 5th, 2024 will feature a public roundtable evening event open to campus community and local educators, as well as a student-centered lunch workshop focused on co-constructing community spaces in schools through queer, feminist and Afrofuturist lenses.

We aim for these events to support our campus and local communities in continuing the critical work of celebrating, centering & supporting Black LGBTQ+ students and teachers in our educational systems, and to provide a learning opportunity for current and future teachers.  

For the lunchtime workshop event, we would love to prioritize seats for students in our teacher education pathways and campus partner programs whose identities are centered by Dr. Adeniji's work – to reserve your seat, please RSVP by emailing ESJ@wwu.edu

For the evening public roundtable, we warmly welcome students, faculty, staff and community colleagues to join us and Dr. Adeniji in transformative dialogue with our collective education community – please RSVP here.

Dr. Adeniji, Ph.D., (they/them) is a recent Curriculum and Instruction graduate from the University of North Texas. Dr. Adeniji's primary research is situated through a queer, Black, and Afrofuturist lens, which intersects with early childhood, teacher education, and literacy development. Their research illustrates the way traditional teacher education programs can draw from a queer Afrofuturistic lens to co-construct curricula and pedagogical practices, where everyone has access to dream and see their future. As a queer Afrofuturist Black feminist teacher and researcher, De. Adeniji aism to continue these collaborations and support teachers and students as they wade through politically-driven policies and practices stripping them of fundamental humanizing rights.

As Black Panther Fred Hampton quoted Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Judas and the Black Messiah, "Words are beautiful but actions are supreme."

When: March 5th, 1-2:30 | VU 735 (MCC) and 5-7 | Fairhaven Auditorium