University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Education, University of California, Los Angeles
PhD., Urban Education Policy, University of Southern California
MA, Higher Education, University of Michigan
Dr. Deborah E. Southern is a University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and Higher Education & Organizational Change program at UCLA. As a postdoc working with Dr. Mitchell Chang, she builds upon her dissertation findings to further learn how leaders notice and disrupt whiteness within their graduate schools and programs. Formerly she was a research assistant at the Pullias Center for Higher Education and a Rossier Dean’s Fellow in the Urban Education Policy PhD program at USC Rossier School of Education.
Dr. Southern was advised by Julie Posselt. Her research interests include racialized inequities and whiteness in organizational policy, practices, and routines, and dismantling white supremacy in higher education
Originally from Rochester, N.Y., Dr. Southern earned a master’s in higher education at the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s in Asian studies and history at Occidental College.
