Catalina Tang Yan
Assistant Professor, Department of Counseling and Psychology, Lesley University
Catalina Tang Yan 趙嘉蓮 is a transdisciplinary scholar who uses a decolonial and racial equity lens to study the narratives that create epistemic justice at the intersection of health, language, disability, and education. Her research focuses on the ways critical youth and community-based participatory action research approaches can create equitable social policy, unsettling pedagogy, and applied research.
As an educator, she approaches her teaching as a continuous praxis to humanize the classroom with students and integrate defiant pedagogies shaped by decolonial, critical race, and feminist theories. She is committed to co-creating anti-oppressive and brave communities of learning inside and outside the classroom to facilitate critical reflection, challenge individual worldviews, and embody systemic and liberatory approaches to justice.
As a former immigrant youth leader, organizer, and youth worker in various Out of School Time youth programs in the Greater Boston Area, she seeks to partner with community stakeholders locally and transnationally to support their community organizing efforts in achieving social change and transformation.