Juan Carrillo

Juan F. Carrillo is an Associate Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and a recipient of the 2020 American Educational Research Association's Division G Early Career Award (Social Context of Education). He is a native of working-class communities in south Los Angeles, California. Carrillo was a high school social studies teacher in south Phoenix, Arizona and east Austin, Texas. 

Prior to joining ASU, Carrillo was an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Education (UNC). At UNC, he was the founding director of the Latin@/x Education Research Hub, the Chiron Award recipient for teaching excellence and service, a board member with the Scholars’ Latino Initiative (SLI), and a Thorp Faculty Engaged Fellow.

Carrillo's research draws from critical frameworks and qualitative methodologies such as narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and testimonios. A leading scholar of research that focuses on males of color in education, Dr. Carrillo's work includes the book, Barrio Nerds: Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle and publications in top-tier journals such as Urban Education and Equity and Excellence in Education. His work in this area has been funded by multiple grants from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. Further, his innovative  scholarship includes contributions towards addressing the intersections of basketball, males of color, and education and he is the lead editor for the Special Issue, Pedagogies of the Court: Basketball, Education, and Worldmaking for The Urban Review journal. 

Dr. Carrillo's research also centers a focus on Latinx education. This work includes a focus on teachers and the ways of knowing of culturally and linguistically diverse students and communities. This scholarship has been published in journals such as Harvard Educational Review and the Journal of Latinos and Education. Further, this area of research has received external funding, including a 2026 National Academy of Education/Spencer Grant.

Dr. Carrillo's commitment to public and community impact  includes his scholarship getting cited by  USA Today, The Texas Observer, and being used for the Netflix Show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. Further, drawing from his scholarship and in collaboration with Dr. Jason Mendez, he merged public media and community engagement to develop the national level web-based series and online magazine, “Block Chronicles" (www.blockchronicles.com). The work related to BC has been presented at national level conferences and BC has profiled individuals and communities in places such as Puerto Rico, California, New Mexico,  New York, and Pennsylvania. Similarly, emphasizing his long history of narrative-based community and scholarly work, Dr. Carrillo is also the co-lead for ASU's Storytelling Learning Futures Collaborative. He currently serves as an Associate Editor with The Urban Review journal and he is on the Educational Studies and Journal of Latinos and Education editorial advisory board.