Jamiella N. Brooks, PhD

Jamiella brings over 10 years of professional experience at the intersection of higher education and advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice through training, outreach, scholarship programs, and affinity groups. Jamiella joins us from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Penn, where, since 2019, she has collaborated with faculty and students across all 12 of Penn’s schools to develop more robust inclusive and equitable teaching practices. Through CTL, Jamiella has developed a series of workshops for the Law School’s Littleton Fellows, covering topics such as belonging, microaggressions, talking about race in the classroom, inclusive mentorship. Prior to Penn, Jamiella was founding director of the Teaching Assistant Program at Berea College, where bell hooks’ institute was established.

Jamiella earned her Ph.D. at University of California, Davis, and her B.A. at Oberlin College. She has served as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in France and was a scholar in both McNair and Mellon Fellows programs.

Brooks is the author of several articles, including “Dissertating While Parenting: Not a Contradiction” and “Generatives from a First-Gen Low-Income PhD Mother of Color,” in the 2020 second edition of Presumed Incompetent: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia. Her current projects include researching linguistic equity and justice focusing on African American Language, and Rigor as Inclusive Practice, re-defining rigor around principles of equity and inclusivity.