Antonia Darder, international specialist in the work of Paulo Freire, is a public intellectual, educator, writer, activist and artist. She has the Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership of Leavey at the University of Loyola Marymount, Los Angeles and is a professor emeritus of educational policies, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbano Champaign. She is also a distinguished visiting professor at Johannesburg University in South Africa. Antonia is a member of the American Educational Research Association (Aera) and has been awarded the Paulo Freire of Social Justice Award. She has worked tirelessly for more than three decades to combat the enormous social and material inequalities that exist in schools and in communities. Antonia's work has focused on matters of racism, political economy, social justice and education. The work of her critically involves Paulo Freire's contributions to our understanding of inequalities in schools and society. Darder's critical theory about biker links issues of culture, power and pedagogy with social justice concerns in education. Through her scholarship in ethical and moral issues, she articulates a critical theory of leadership for justice, with an approach focused on the empowerment of subaltern communities. Antonia Darder is the author of numerous books and articles, including:
Culture and Power in the Classroom: Educational Foundations for the Schooling of Bicultural Students (20th anniversary edition); Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love; A Dissident Voice: Essays on Culture, Pedagogy, and Power and Freire and Education (Morata, 2017). She is also co-author of After Race: Racism Ate multiculturalism and co-editor of The Critical Pedagogy Reader; Culture and Difference: Critical Perspectives on The Buultural Experience in the United States, and The Critical Pedagogy Reader, which won the 2016 Alpha Book Alpha Book Prize.
The quality and rigor of her work, her research and publications leads him to travel around everyone claiming more economic justice, human rights and cultural democracy. In 2015, Antonia was nominated for the prestigious Brock International Prize in Education.