Amanda Anastasia Paniagua

Critical Scholar. Partner. Parent. Advocate for Public Education. Current Ph.D. student in Higher Education Administration at Bowling Green State University. Born and raised in Northwest Ohio, I am a proud first-generation college graduate from rural poverty. My ancestors are both from the lands now called Mexico and from the once colonial power of Spain. As a Latinx individual, I bring an intersectional lens to anything I do or study and try to center the voices from the margins as a way to interrogate systems of power and privilege. My research interests center around the history of higher education law and institutional policies, equity, organizational development, student of color development, and student of color activism in higher education spaces. My current dissertation project is using historical case study to examine the socio-political context in which the Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program was created in 1986 and subsequently renamed after the late Dr. Ronald E. McNair who died tragically aboard the Challenger. Prior to pursuing higher education as an academic discipline/field, I completed both a Bachelors (2012) and Masters (2016) in Art History at Kent State University and try to hone the skills obtained from the humanities to bridge my public scholarship with the social sciences.