Faisal Abdu'Allah, Gloria Ladson Billings

press release: The October Research Showcase will feature two notable UW faculty, Faisal Abdu'Allah and Gloria Ladson-Billings. It will consist of one lecture by each running approximately 30 minutes followed by a panel discussion.

faisal abdu'Allah- "Mirror to my Thoughts & The Duppy Conquerer"

Faisal Abdu’Allah is an internationally acclaimed British artist who creates iconographic imagery of power, race, masculinity, violence, and faith to challenge the values and ideologies we attach to those images and to interrogate the historic and cultural contexts in which they originate.

Trained as a printmaker, his work evolved out of the interface of photography, printed media, film, installation, and performance. His debut exhibition upon graduating from the Royal College of Art ‘I Wanna Kill Sam…’ (1993) quickly established his interest in confrontation and displacement through provocative installation pieces. He brokers disparate worlds through his practice, best exemplified in ‘The Garden of Eden’ (2003) with architect David Adjaye, ‘Gold Finger’ (2007) with the late Joey Pyle from the British Mafia and more recently ‘Double Pendulum’ (2011), an exploration of breathing through training rituals of sports athletes featuring British Olympian sprinter, Jeanette Kwakye.

Abdu’Allah was born in England to Jamaican immigrant parents, and was inspired to revert to Islam as an adult after spending time in the United States.

Abdu’Allah has participated in the Sharjah, Torino, and Tallinn Biennales and has been the recipient of the Decibel Artist Award 2005, Tallinn Print Triennial 2007, and IDA award 2010. He was a professor and artist in residence at Stanford in 2010, where he launched the touring exhibition 'The Art of Dislocation,' the largest retrospective of his work to date. In 2012 the exhibition traveled to the CAAM in Spain along with Magnolia Editions’ book of the same name.

gloria ladson-billings- "Facts...just the Facts: Restoring Context to Achievement Disparities"

Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and is Faculty Affiliate in the Departments of Educational Policy Studies, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis and Afro American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was the 2005--2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education.

Ladson-Billings is the author of the critically acclaimed books, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, Crossing over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education. She is editor of 6 other books and author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards, including the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. She is the 2015 winner of the Social Justice in Education Award given by the American Educational Research Association. She was named the 2012 winner of the Brock International Prize in education. In 2012 she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts – Lowell. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. During

In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. During the 2003--2004 academic year she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. In fall 2004 she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology. In spring 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Education and the National Society for the Study of Education. In 2007 she was awarded the Hilldale Award, the highest faculty honor given to a professor at the University of Wisconsin for outstanding research, teaching, and service. She is a 2008 recipient of the state of Wisconsin’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Heritage Award and the Teachers College, Columbia University 2008 Distinguished Service Medal. In 2009 she was elected to Kappa Delta Pi International Education Honor Society’s Laureate Chapter—comprised of 60 living distinguished scholars. Former laureate members include notables such as Albert Einstein, John Dewey and Eleanor Roosevelt. Ladson-Billings is currently one of the NEA Foundation Fellows charged with providing advice on its “Achievement Gap Initiative.” In 2014 she was a panelist on the White House’s African American Educational Excellence Initiative’s Essence Festival, “Smart Starts at Home” panel. In 2015 she received the Distinguished LifetimeAchievement Award from the Literacy Research Association. In 2016 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Benjamin Banneker Association of the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics.