Patriann Smith

Researcher, University of South Florida

Associate Professor Patriann Smith is a well-known researcher in the fields of language and literacy at the University of South Florida (USF). As a former teacher of ELA/literacy in St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States, her research considers how literacy teaching, research, assessment, and policy are influenced by the intersection of race, language, and (im)migration. She draws from the Black Englishes, Black literacies, and languaging of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, other Black immigrants in the United States (i.e., African), and Black American students (i.e., African American) to propose solutions that advance transraciolinguistic justice in literacy. She also explores the Englishes of Black populations in their English-speaking Caribbean locales to make recommendations for advancing literacy teaching across local, national, and international boundaries. She has proposed solutions such as “a transraciolinguistic approach,” “raciosemiotic architecture,” “translanguaging with Englishes,” “racialized entanglements of Englishes and peoples,” and the framework for “Black immigrant literacies” to clarify how literacy can be reenvisioned and taught to all students (e.g., monolingual, bilingual, multilingual students) in and beyond classrooms. Her expansive body of research has been published in journals such as The Reading Teacher, Reading Research Quarterly, American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Black Studies, International Multilingual Research Journal, and Policy Insights From the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She has served as guest editor for the 2020 special issue of Teachers College Record, “Clarifying the Role of Race in the Literacies of Black Immigrant Youth,” and is coauthor of the book Affirming Black Students’ Lives and Literacies: Bearing Witness, published by Teachers College Press. She currently serves as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association (LRA) and as a member of several editorial review boards including those of The Reading Teacher and Reading Research Quarterly (International Literacy Association [ILA]), Journal of Literacy Research, and the International Multilingual Research Journal. She is associate editor of the international journal Linguistics and Education and of the Caribbean Educational Research Journal. Dr. Smith serves as coprincipal investigator of the USAID-funded “RISE Caribbean” initiative designed to establish an educational research center that enhances research-based decision making in the Caribbean. She is an ILA 2013 Reading Hall of Fame Emerging Scholar Fellow, LRA 2017 STAR Fellow, and a recipient of the 2015 American Educational Research Association Language and Social Processes SIG Emerging Scholar Award. She is the recipient of numerous university awards in research and teaching, including USF’s 2022 Global Excellence Research Award and USF’s 2021 Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award in Research and Innovation.