Khrysta A. Evans

PhD Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Policy Studies program with a Social Sciences concentration and a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies

Khrysta A. Evans is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Policy Studies program with a Social Sciences concentration and a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. She is born and raised in the Bronx, NY and earned her BA in sociology from the University of Maryland, and her MA in educational studies from the University of Michigan. Before coming back to the academy for her PhD, Khrysta spent several years working in student support roles in schools and non-profit organizations. As a scholar, Khrysta is excited to learn about Black girls’ knowledge production and placemaking within schools. Situated in sociology of education, Black studies, gender and women’s studies, and cultural geography, Khrysta’s teaching, research, and mentoring are all concerned with how race, ethnicity, gender, and place shape students’ educational experiences, with specific attention to how Black girls develop and employ spatial strategies and social networks to navigate their schools.

Using Black feminist geographies to animate her scholarship, Khrysta’s research (1) attends to the influence of ethnicity in Black girls racialized and gendered socialization within schools; (2) interrogates the role of peer groups in Black girls’ schooling; and (3) explores how the relationship between Black girls’ spatial strategies and their schools’ organizational routines differs across organizational contexts. In her current study, a 10-month multi-site ethnography at two New York City public high schools, she centers the experiences of Black West Indian girls. Khrysta uses social network analysis, walking interviews, and education journey mapping to understand how Black girls negotiate their own understanding of their schools and peer networks. Complemented by document analysis and interviews with school staff, this research seeks to understand the policies and actors shaping these girls’ school landscape. Her study positions Black girls’ articulations of their lived experiences as critical insight for education stakeholders seeking to improve the inequitable racialized and gendered school experiences of marginalized youth.