Education & Affiliations
Biography
Originally from Oakland, California, Annie has lived in New Orleans since 2011. Annie received her B.A. from Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she double majored in Psychology and Theater. In college, she spent her time teaching writing and theater in correctional facilities for women and children and developing college preparatory courses for her former high school. She also completed and received honors for two senior thesis projects. In theater, Annie directed a version of Othello in a juvenile hall. In psychology, she used quantitative and qualitative methods to research transgender students' experiences of coeducational and single-sex universities. Her psychology thesis was awarded the Lois Langland Award for Excellence in Psychological Research of Gender. Upon graduation, Annie moved to New Orleans and worked for four years as a teacher in Orleans and Jefferson Parish. As a teacher, she was particularly interested in the intersections of prison and schools, especially the ways in which education reform in New Orleans mirrors the institutionalization of juvenile prisons. She decided to pursue a Ph.D. to explore the intersections of the education and incarceration systems in order to develop programs that support rehabilitation and expanded opportunities upon release. Her current research focuses on higher education in prison and she is interested in developing and evaluating accredited college programs for prisons in Louisiana. She is also interested in juvenile incarceration, arts education in prison and gender and sexuality in institutional settings.
Annie is also a founding member of the Louisiana Prison Education Coalition(LPEC), which was launched in 2016 and works to develop partnerships between colleges and prisons to ensure that every person who is incarcerated in Louisiana has access to higher education.
To learn more about LPEC, please visit our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaPrisonEducationCoalition/).
Research Interests
Post-Secondary Correctional Education, Juvenile Incarceration, Program Development and Evaluation, Arts Education in Prison and Gender and Sexuality in Institutional Settings.
