Jackie Pedota

Jackie is a Postdoctoral Associate within the Educational Leadership and Policy department at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Dr. Liliana Garces. She is currently a Co-PI with Dr. Garces and Dr. Eliza Epstein on a research project, funded by the Sloan and Trellis Foundation, examining how enacted legislation restricting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts shapes how faculty and administrators implement racial inclusion policies and practices within higher education. Prior to completing her PhD, Jackie received her M.Ed. from the University of Texas at Austin and her B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida. She has had a wealth of professional experiences across the P-20 educational pipeline including roles in K-12 instruction, non-profit management, educational technology, and higher education administration.

Jackie's research agenda explores issues within higher education at the intersection of race, power, and organizational change to understand how racialized organizational dynamics perpetuate systemic inequities for minoritized communities. In her work, she examines how DEI efforts function within racialized organizations like Predominantly White Institutions. As a multi-disciplinary scholar, Jackie utilizes participatory methods, like oral history, to produce public scholarship that democratizes knowledge and disrupts power structures historically present within knowledge production and dissemination. Her research has been funded by the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, the Center for Mexican American Studies, and the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jackie is the Managing Editor for the US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal and serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. Her work has been recognized at national conferences such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Sociological Association (ASA), the Oral History Association (OHA), the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). Her scholarship has also been publish in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, the Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity, Educational Researcher, and the US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal.