My research asks what studies of space and movement can bring to bear on our understanding of schools. I locate my scholarship at the intersections of education studies, Black and critical geographies, and abolition and carceral studies. My current study, Mapping Escape: Articulations of Agency Within Educational Enclosure, examines schools as sites of ongoing carceral and colonial logics and how racially marked youth navigate school space as a practice of escape and fugitivity.
work & research
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Agency Through Movement
What can we learn from the way young people navigate restrictive school environments? How do they exercise agency through their everyday spatial decision-making?
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Infrastructure of Schools
How do carceral and colonial logics emerge in the built environment of schools? How is enclosure embodied in the physical? How do young people interact with and make sense of these structures?
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Imagining an Otherwise
How do youth imagine schools otherwise? How can we design educational institutions inspired by the freedom practices of racially marked youth?
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Stanford University
PhD Candidate in Race, Inequality and Language in Education
Minor: Critical Studies of SpaceUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison
B.S. Education Studies
Dean’s High Honors -
Yudawanti, A. (2024) “'Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere’ Together: Inter/Intra-Generational Freedom Dreaming in the Classroom” In Robillard, S.M., Mirra, N., Garcia, A. (Eds.) Practicing Civic Futures: Lessons from the Classroom. Routledge.
Yudawanti. A. & Madison East High School Class of 2025. (2022). What does it mean to tell the truth? Abolitionist Teaching Network. ISBN 979-8-218-02423-9. -
Yudawanti, A. (November 2025). If these walls could talk: negotiating the echoes of carcerality and coloniality in school infrastructure. Accepted at the American Association of Anthropology Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA.
Yudawanti, A. (April 2025). Schools as terrains of struggle: re(mapping) youth of color’s navigational practices. Accepted at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
Yudawanti, A. (May 2024). On space and place: mapping school navigational practices of young people of color. Presented at Center for Comparative Research in Race and Ethnicity Research Institute, Stanford, CA.
Yudawanti, A., Vue, K., Hong, D., Bates, L. Abrajan-Rojas, M., Smith, J. (June 2023). PEOPLE first: a framework for uplifting underrepresented students. Presented at Annual National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, New Orleans, LA.
Yudawanti, A. & Wilson, A. (May 2023). What does it mean to tell the truth: a case study of student authorship and cross-generational learning. Presented at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Teaching and Learning Symposium, Madison, WI.
Yudawanti, A., & Naputi, V. (May 2021). The way we show up. Presented at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Diversity, Equity & Educational Achievement and School of Education - Hip Hop in the Heartland Educator Institute, Madison, WI.
Yudawanti, A., & Behnke, N. (April 2021). Beyond transactional relationships with students. Presented at Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, Madison, WI.
Yudawanti, A., Naputi. V., Adeetuk, K., Martinez, C. (September 2020). Decolonizing social emotional learning standards (sels). Presented at Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison, WI.
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Current Projects
Mapping Escape: Articulations of Agency Within Educational Enclosure (forthcoming)
This paper attempts to map the practice of escape, the articulations of agency that racially marked youth engage in through movement, at Northport High School, in a mid-sized city in the Midwest. Drawing on spatial mapping and walk-along interviews with six racially marked youth, I trace the many ways they traverse school space despite institutional attempts to rob them of their agency. Using ethnographic methods centered on youth’s embodied spatial practices, this study contributes to scholarship on how schools function as sites of educational enclosure (Sojoyner, 2016; Gilmore, 2022; Woods, 1998) and how the dynamics of enclosure are experienced on an everyday, moment-to-moment basis.
Upholding the Thawabet (الثوابت): Staying Principled in Education, Solidarity, and Resistance : Theory, Research and Action in Urban Education Special Issue - Guest Editor
With Palestine as our moral compass, how might we reclaim the tool of education as a tool of epistemological liberation rather than as a tool of oppression? Situated in the West, how can we build solidarity with Palestine in the context of schools and schooling? In other words, how do we, as people who commit to the care of children, remain principled and steadfast in our resistance against colonization, imperialism, and violence in all of its manifestations?
Past Projects
What Does it Mean to Tell the Truth?
To study history is to engage in the critical act of storytelling. Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, 9th-grade students at Madison East High School interrogated what it means to be truthful about the history of the United States. Through the lens of freedom dreaming, students also looked into the future to imagine what liberation could look like, and how we get there together. Through the combined work of students at East High and John Muir Elementary, we begin to illuminate the importance of honesty, community, and connection in social studies classes and beyond. This project was generously funded by the Abolitionist Teaching Network and Room of One’s Own Books. -
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Emerging Scholars Fellowship (2023 - 2026)
Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Fellowship (2023)
Abolitionist Teaching Network Grant (2021)
Madison Metropolitan School District Excellence with Equity Award (2020)
Morgridge Center for Public Service Engaged Alumni Award (2020)
Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice Excellence in Research Award (2019)
Full CV available upon request.