Ryan Evely Gildersleeve's (RyanEG) research investigates the philosophical foundations of American higher education in relationship to the social and political contexts of educational opportunity for historically marginalized communities. He has a particular interest in supporting Latinx (im)migrant families. A critical qualitative methodologist, he is interested in theorizing a materialist inquiry that informs social policy for more democratic postsecondary institutions. These lines of research connect in their contributions to understanding what it means to seek social opportunities as democratic participants in an increasingly global society.

He is the author of Fracturing Opportunity: Mexican Migrant Students and College-Going Literacy (Peter Lang Publishers). From 2018-2020, he was a Visiting Senior Fellow with the Spencer Foundation. In 2019, he was a Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for Equity and Inclusion at Colorado Mountain College. In 2018, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Higher Education Futures at Aarhus University in Denmark. He was a 2012-2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Fellows, supporting his project Discourses of Opportunity: Undocumented Students and Higher Education Policy.

Alongside colleagues from the Disruptive Dialogue Project, RyanEG co-authored the 2012 volume, Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Implications, Negotiations, and Responsibilities (Jossey-Bass Publishers) as part of the ASHE Higher Education Report Series. His methodological theorizing has appeared in journals such as Qualitative Inquiry and the International Review for Qualitative Research. RyanEG received the 2011 Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Division D—Research Methodology.

RyanEG previously served as the inaugural Director of the Center for K-16 Education Policy and Research at the University of Texas at Arlington. His practical experience ranges across P-20 education, having worked primarily in out-of-classroom learning environments in K-12 schools as well as in transition/outreach, undergraduate, and graduate education contexts.  He received his Ph.D. in Education and M.A. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA. RyanEG is a graduate of Occidental College.

Just a beginning ... 

1. Diffractive Ethnography by Jessica Smartt Gullion
2. Art and Objects by Graham Harmon
3. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
4. Salt Seller by Marcel Duchamp

CV - RyanEG Nov 2020.pdf

The neoliberal academy of the Anthropocene and the retaliation of the lazy academic

Producing (im)Possible Peoples: Policy Discourse Analysis, In-State Resident Tuition, and Undocumented Students in American Higher Education

Access Between and Beyond Borders: A Life History of an Undocumented College Applicant

Dangerously Important Moment(s) in Reflexive Research Practices with Immigrant Youth

Toward a Neo-Critical Validation Theory: Participatory Action Research and Mexican Migrant College Student Success

The Role of Critical Inquiry in (Re)Constructing the Public Agenda for Higher Education: Confronting the Conservative Modernization of the Academy

Crafting Critical Space: The Disruptive Dialogue Project

Obama's American Graduation Initiative: Race, Conservative Modernization, and a Logic of Abstraction

Disrupting the Ethical Imperatives of "Junior" Critical Qualitative Scholars in the Era of Conservative Modernization

A Dialogue on Space and Method in Qualitative Research on Education

"Am I going crazy?": A Critical Race Analysis of African American and Latino Doctoral Student Experiences

Organizing Learning for Transformation in College Outreach Programs

Working Bakhtin's Body: A Dialogue on Critical Qualitative Research in Education

RyanEG's research takes form across three domains:

1. Critical Policy Studies
2. Cultural Analyses of Higher Education
3. Philosophical Foundations of Higher Education

You can find more about RyanEG's current work in these areas under the RESEARCH AGENDA tab. 

Ryan Gildersleeve.jpeg