Joycelyn A. Wilson, Ph.D.

Joycelyn A. Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations in the Department of Learning Sciences and Technologies at Virginia Tech. She is the founding director of HipHop2020 (hiphop2020.org), a curriculum project located in VT's School of Education/Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT). She is also a Hiphop Archive Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Before joining the VT faculty, she completed post-doctoral research at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia as a Scholar of Hip-Hop Studies in the African American Studies program. She is an educational anthropologist with interests in African American Studies, hip-hop studies, ethnography, and the social foundations of education. Her current research focuses on the language of schooling in post-civil rights/hip hop narratives and its pedagogical implications for leadership development, as well as the intersections of creativity and the arts in relation to STEM development (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

Dr. Wilson began her career as a high school Algebra and Geometry teacher, and continues to make the world her classroom as a journalist, scholar, and documentary film producer. She has produced and moderated one-on-one conversations with artists such as Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco, and Clifford “TI” Harris, Jr. Along with former UN Ambassador and civil rights legend Andrew Young, she produced the Emmy-winning documentary film Walking With Guns, a story about hope, redemption, and the challenge of non-violence for the post-civil rights/millennium generation. She's written for Rap Pages, XXL, FADER, The SOURCE, wax poetics, The Root, and is the Hip-Hop Editor-at-Large for Steed Media Group. She has also contributed commentary to cnn.com and the BET Networks' My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop.

Dr. Wilson has presented her work in Nigeria, Tanzania, Italy, and throughout the United States. She has consulted for the Institute for Student Achievement (ISA), the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST) at Columbia Teacher's College, the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, the Atlanta Public Schools, and the Jane Fonda Center at Emory University School of Medicine. She holds a PhD from the University of Georgia in the Social Foundations of Education, an MA from Pepperdine University in Curriculum & Instruction, and a BS from the University of Georgia in Mathematics.

Follow Dr. Willson on Twitter @drjoycedotnet.