Dr. Tasha Austin earned her PhD in learning, cognition, instruction and development at Rutgers University. She founded Premise Ed(ucation) in 2018 to co-create solutions that address the roots of educational inequity.

Her research explores Blackness and language education, particularly in the U.S. context, with a focus on the under-explored linguistic brilliance of Black language learners. She has been a licensed Spanish teacher-turned-teacher educator for nineteen years, and her work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education, among others.

Her autobiographical bilingual children’s book, El Barrio Mío (2012—published under pseudonym Tori Leggard), depicts her experience as an African American learning Spanish while growing up in a large U.S. city. This journey underscores the rootwork of partnering with Premise Ed— chronicling each partner’s education journey and how it informs their expectations and practices.

As an associate professor of teacher education, language education, and multilingualism, Dr. Austin’s research has received numerous awards, including from the American Education Research Association and the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

She prides herself on, “impressing upon the field of education research a need to ask different questions – ones that do not assume Black deficiency but Black humanity as a rich extension of the longstanding cultural contributions Black peoples and their languaging ways have gifted the world.’

Follow Dr. Austin on Instagram @ProfeAustin