Name: Imani Wilson
Email: imani.wilson@nyu.edu
Program: Sociology of Education
Research Interests: Histories of Black education, youth and community organizing, school policing and abolition, liberatory education
Principal Advisor(s): Dr. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy
Research Description/Bio: Imani is a PhD candidate in the Sociology of Education program at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019.
Imani’s research lives at the intersections of Black studies, sociology, education, and history, shaped by abolitionist praxis and sustained by a deep commitment to the Black Radical Tradition. She is particularly interested in movements for liberatory, community-based education that center youth as political agents and respond to their demands, needs, and visions for transformative change. Her dissertation draws on archival, ethnographic, and community-engaged methodologies to examine how young people involved in New York City’s education justice movement are interrogating and organizing for safe, police-free schools and communities.
Additionally, Imani is a researcher at the NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and coordinates the Race and Public Space Working Group through NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge.
Selected Awards, Publications, and Presentations: Imani is a recipient of the 2025-26 Doctoral Fellowship in Urban Practice awarded by The Urban Democracy Lab at NYU Gallatin. She has published writing in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Theory, Action, and Research in Urban Education (TRAUE) Journal.