Briana M. Hinga, (she/her)

Dr. Briana Hinga (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Clinical Education in the Rossier School of Education, at the University of Southern California. Dr. Hinga earned a Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Irvine. She specialized in Educational Policy and Social Context as well as Learning Cognition and Development. Her teaching, writing, and actions center educational justice, intersectional racial justice, transformative justice, and prison abolition.

As a White woman, she comes to the work through a continual journey of unlearning oppressive systems, including Whiteness. She works to be accountable to those most impacted by systemic inequities. In her teaching, she aims to hold space for the wisdom of the collective. Her teaching is informed by Bell Hooks (1994) concept of transgression “a movement against and beyond boundaries… which makes education the practice of freedom.” She draws from Vanessa De Oliveira’s (2012) teaching that “every knowing is also a not knowing” and works to teach in a way that holds space for diversity in perspectives. At the same time, she recognizes how power operates within the classroom space. She keeps James Baldwin note: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Her work is syncreticly informed by Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) led grassroots movements for justice, relationships rooted in radical love, Quare Theory, Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory, Afropessimism, Emergent Strategy, Scyborgs, and continually generative classroom conversations.

She works with The People’s Education Movement in Los Angeles, a collective of educators that recognizes miseducation as a vehicle of oppression and seeks to create sustainable spaces inside and beyond the classroom, to promote growth, healing, and transformation. She also works with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) in Long Beach. Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, SURJ Long Beach moves White people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability to the Black Lives Matter, Long Beach chapter. Lastly, she works with Community Action Team – 911 (CAT 911) which is based on a framework of Transformative Justice. CAT 911 aims to create a world governed on principles of mutual respect, interrelatedness and reciprocity rather than violence, domination and disposability.

She writes about a) the complex role of policy and research play in disrupting and/or perpetuating educational inequity and b) spaces of hope, healing, and transformation in education. She is a student of healing justice, yoga, and practices that support remembering interconnectedness.  She is also professional beach volleyball player and high school volleyball coach.