DR. APRIL BAKER-BELL is an award-winning transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and Associate Professor of Language, Culture, and Justice in Education at the University of Michigan in the Marsal Family School of Education. She is faculty in Educational Studies and the Joint Program in English and Education (JPEE). Dr. Baker-Bell was formerly an Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education at Michigan State University (MSU) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at MSU’s Center for Bioethics and Social Justice in the College of Human Medicine. Before joining the professoriate, Dr. Baker-Bell was a high school English Language Arts Teacher in Detroit. She also served as adjunct faculty at Wayne State University and Oakland Community College.
Dr. Baker- Bell is an international leader in conversations on Black Language education, and her research interrogates the intersections of Black Language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies. Dr. Baker-Bell's latest research project involves collaborating with healthcare scholars and researchers to develop, implement and study antiracist medical curriculum interventions that support healthcare professionals with developing an antiracist praxis for confronting and reducing racial bias and anti-Black racism in medical and healthcare institutions.
Baker-Bell’s award- winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism (a term Baker-Bell coined) and white linguistic supremacy. The book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and it captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in community with Black youth. Linguistic Justice features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.
Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the AERA Division K’s 2024 Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award, the 2023 Michigan Council of Teachers of English’s Charles Carpenter Fries Award ,the 2021 Coalition for Community Writing Outstanding Book Award, the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Michigan State University’s Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the 2021 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity, the 2020 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, the 2020 Theory Into Practice Article of the Year Award, the 2019 Michigan State University Alumni Award for Innovation & Leadership in Teaching and Learning, the 2018 AERA Language and Social Processes Early Career Scholar Award, and many more.
