December 2024

Preeminent scholar and AERA Past President (2019-2020) Vanessa Siddle Walker will deliver the AERA Distinguished Lecture at the 2025 Annual Meeting, to be held April 23–27 in Denver. Her lecture is titled “Erasures and Mappings in African American Education: Tag, You Are It.”

Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies Emerita at Emory University. Her scholarship has explored sequentially the school-level characteristics that allowed African American children to believe they could succeed in a segregated world; the leadership practices, beliefs, and networks that African American educators used to build similar segregated school practices across the South; and the hidden advocacy collaborations that sought to create full access to all schools for African American children.

“Dr. Siddle Walker, as one of our most celebrated scholars in African American educational studies, will inspire and challenge 2025 Annual Meeting attendees with her distinguished lecture,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine.

Siddle Walker is an AERA Fellow, delivered the 2012 AERA Brown Lecture in Education Research, and received the AERA Early Career Award. She is also a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education.

Her research has appeared in every major education journal, and she is the author of several books, most recently The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools (New Press). She has been featured in a variety of media outlets, including CSPAN3 and the PBS Special, SCHOOL.

The AERA Distinguished Lecture is one of the major events at the annual meetings. Additional information about prominent sessions will be announced in future issues of Highlights.