Dr. Ayanna F. Brown earned her B.S. from Tuskegee University in Secondary Education Language Arts, her M.Ed in Curriculum and Instructional Leadership, and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Interdisciplinary Studies: Language, Literacy, and Sociology. Her career in education spans both public and private organizations, including teaching Middle-Level English Language Arts and leading college readiness planning for urban youth with a consortium between Vanderbilt University and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. 

Dr. Brown is an Associate Professor of Education and Cultural Studies and Coordinator for the Middle-Level English Language Arts major at Elmhurst University. Her research examines discussions of race in secondary school settings and how the discursive aspects of dialogue contribute to racial literacies in situ.  

Ayanna is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles, several book chapters and is the co-editor of Critical Consciousness in Curricular Research: Evidence from the Field and has presented her research nationally and internationally. She is the editor of Racial Literacies Informed by the Sociopolitical and Sociocultural Contexts for Youth, a special issue book published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).  

She is actively involved in several national grants, and the Co-Principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation grant, RESULT, which works to increase the number of STEM majors to become teachers using literacy and culturally responsive education as a catalyst for thinking about teaching in everyday life. Brown along with her colleagues have recently been awarded a 1.3 million dollar NSF Grant, PRIDE, to continue to work toward increasing diverse teachers of STEM focusing on literacies and culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies.

Dr. Ayanna F. Brown engages in research and advocacy nationwide and has presented her scholarship on four continents.