research

My research examines how everyday people enact social change, resist policy-driven austerity, and generate knowledge for spatial justice.

problem space

Situated at the intersections of critical education policy, spatial politics, and decolonial methodologies, my work investigates how communities reclaim public institutions and rewrite governance in complex social contexts. I specialize in community-rooted, participatory qualitative methodologies that democratize research, shift power, and contribute to the longstanding tradition of scholar-activism.

Education policy

& spatial politics

My PhD research examines the intersection of spatial politics, sociology of education, and decolonial philosophy within the Puerto Rican archipelago and its diaspora. Building on prior graduate study in sociology and education, this work investigates the Escuelas Rescatadas (Rescued Schools) movement as a "relational interruption" to the technocratic operations of state-mandated school closures (see Zambrana, 2021, on operations and interruptions).

At this stage of inquiry, I’m conceptually mapping Puerto Rico’s education policies post-PROMESA Act (see La Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico [85-2018]) and the spatial politics of school closures across the archipelago through a decolonial and Black feminist geography lens. By examining a rescued school in a Black Puerto Rican neighborhood of Carolina, I’m exploring the way in which “Black sense of place" (McKittrick 2011) is made and re-made.

My care for and approach to this project is deeply informed by my positionality as an Afro-Latina of Black and Mexican heritage, with 15+ years of kinship and political commitments to Puerto Rico, rooted in a love connection to family and place in Rincón and Cabo Rojo through my husband. This inquiry further draws on my current teaching on social-sector leadership in Puerto Rico, as well as my past consulting work with the archipelago’s premier social justice intermediary fund.

Ultimately, I see this research as a bridge between my teaching, professional practice, and lived experience, intellectualizing acts of autogestión as an exemplar of radical rootedness and resistance.

related work

  • National Panel Convening: Pryor-Ramirez, J. (Organizer), Molinari, S., Serrano-Abreu, M., Rivera Bonilla, I., & Colón Martínez, A. (2026, September). Rescued Schools as Solidarity Futures: Mapping Care and Worldmaking in the Archipelago. Panel presentation at the Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA) Biennial Conference, University of Illinois Chicago.

  • Forthcoming Manuscript: Pryor-Ramirez, J., & Serrano-Abreu, M. "Fugitive Readaptations and Relational Interruptions of Puerto Rico’s Rescued Schools Movement." (Abstract selected; in preparation).

Participatory Methodologies

& Data Justice

A major pillar of my scholarship focuses on developing and refining qualitative, anti-colonial research methodologies. Since 2019, I have grappled with a core methodological question: How can we use the dialogic practice of story circles as rigorous data collection for qualitative research?

Drawing on the rich story circle traditions developed by the Free Southern Theater during the U.S. Civil Rights movement, I developed the Story Circle Interview Method in 2020. This participatory framework enables co-researchers to gather and analyze narratives in community, generating low-tech, high-connection insights that drive organizational and policy change.

related work

  • Scholarly Publication: Authored a chapter on the method’s origin, anti-colonial ethics, and field applications in Anti-colonial Research Praxis: Methods for Knowledge Justice (ed. Caroline Lenette, Manchester University Press, 2025).

  • Applied Research & Practice: Co-led a participatory attunement process utilizing the Story Circle Interview Method and Data Labs to inform a visioning process for the University of Richmond’s Bonner Center for Civic Engagement. Presented findings at the Imagining America National Gathering.

  • Training & Capacity Building: Facilitated method trainings for staff and leaders at the Partnership for Public Service, Smith College Wurtele Center for Leadership, Sterling Network NYC, The Latinx Project, and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools.

“Collaborative research instantiates us in a world of rampant individualism.”

—Dána-Ain Davis,

professor of Urban Studies and Anthropology,
CUNY Graduate Center