Vannessa Siddle WalkerSamuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Educational Studies
Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies Emerita at Emory University. For over three decades, she has explored the segregated schooling of African American children, considering sequentially the climate that permeated southern schools (Their Highest Potential), the network of professional collaborations that explains the similarity of these schools (Hello Professor), and the hidden systems of advocacy that sought equality and justice (The Lost Education of Horace Tate).
Her historical research has appeared in every top-tiered education journal, including the Harvard Educational Review, Review of Education Research, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Research, and Teachers College Record, and her assessment of the implications of this history of segregated schooling for contemporary settings appear in numerous journal articles, including the Atlantic and Phi Delta Kappan, as well as in three other co-authored books: Facing Racism in Education, Racing Moral Formation, and Living the Legacy.
Walker is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). She is also the recipient of the Grawmeyer Award in Education, the AERA Early Career Award, three AERA SIG awards, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and awards from other professional associations. She was the 104th president of AERA and has lectured widely in a variety of community, national, collegiate, and international settings, including delivering the 2012 annual AERA Brown v. Board of Education Lecture and the 2020 Presidential Address, which was simultaneously viewed in 77 countries. She has been featured in a variety of media outlets, among them CSPAN3 and the PBS Special, SCHOOL. Walker received her training in education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
