Subini Ancy Annamma

Subbini Annamma is an American academic who is a professor of education, and sociologist. She is Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

She is a pioneering researcher in Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit).

Her areas of research include sociology of education, critical race theory, disability studies, intersectional justice in education, ethnic studies, carceral logics, school-to-prison pipeline, restorative justice, Black feminist sociology, educational inequality, and special education in the United States.

Annamma worked as an assistant professor from 2013-2014 at Indiana University-Indianapolis. Also in 2014, she began working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Denver. After leaving the University of Denver in 2015, Annamma became an assistant professor at the University of Kansas where she worked until 2019.

In 2024, she was a Scholar in Service for the Stanford Impact Labs and was awarded a Research and Innovation Grant from the Stanford Accelerator for Learning for her project "Whose expertise matters? Centering Youth Voice to (Re)Conceptualize and Expand Accessibility in Ethnic Studies." Annamma designed an accessible ethnic studies curriculum for the San Francisco Unified School District. She co-leads the Roses Talk Project – a project designed to include student voices in equitable education policy – with the Center.

Annamma is a co-director of the Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Walk Out! Lab For Youth Justice with Law Professor Ralph Richard Banks. According to the lab's website, the intersectional project "targets the most entrenched inequities in education by centering those most impacted, multiply-marginalized Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color, through innovative thinking and creative partnerships" and "seeks to dismantle the criminalization of youth across education geographies and reimagine p-20 liberatory education."

In 2024, Annamma developed the Formerly Incarcerated Research Experts (FIRE) Fellowship. The six-month fellowship allows formerly incarcerated researchers to work with Annamma in researching the races and disabilities of incarcerated youth or developing their own research project.

Writing Annamma has edited and written five books. Her book The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus was awarded the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award and the National Women's Studies Association Alison Piepmeier Book Prize.

Annamma has had journal articles published in the Educational Researcher, Race Ethnicity and Education, NYU Review of Law & Social Change's The Harbinger, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Teachers College Record, and more. Annamma has also been featured on Disability Visibility Project. The article tied into Rep. Pressley's Ending PUSHOUT Act. She has also written articles for Insider Higher Ed, Los Angeles Times, and The Imprint.

Publications

Books

Selected chapters

Selected articles

Awards