Jackie Pedota

Jackie Pedota is a 2025-2026 Mellon/Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Fellow and an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She earned a Ph.D. and M.Ed. from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. from the University of Florida. Her research examines how educational access and opportunity are shaped within racialized institutional context and constrained by restrictive policy environments. Dr. Pedota’s scholarship has received national recognition, including the prestigious Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Postsecondary Education Division of the American Educational Research Association. Before pursuing an academic career, she worked for over a decade across the P-20 educational pipeline, including roles in K-12 instruction, non-profit management, educational technology, and higher education administration.