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 and the son of Mexican immigrants from the state of Sinaloa. Carrillo was a high school social studies teacher in south Phoenix, Arizona and east Austin, Texas. His work in K-12 schools also extends into the realms of mentoring, chairing departments, and curriculum design, always with the aim of reaching students in-context. 

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. His work looks at the role of agency in historically marginalized communities, with a particular focus on Latinx students. One of his focus areas is on the schooling trajectories of academically successful Latino males that come from working-class origins. Within this research strand, he covers issues of language, identity, intelligences, and agency in traditional gateway regions and cities and in rural and semi-rural spaces in the "New" Latinx south. Some of his current qualitative research looks at social movements in education and examines the role of basketball as a metaphorical and literal tool for exploring themes such as decoloniality, identity, fugitivity, and “borderlands play.”  Part of this work centers the role of Latinx educators and community members in Arizona as they engage in various forms of collective action all while documenting critical takes on history, memory, language, civics, and public pedagogies. Further, his basketball related scholarship delves into how informal learning spaces (i.e. pickup hoops) may serve as pedagogical and philosophical sites of reimagination, community building, and learning for minoritized communities.  

Carrillo's research has been funded by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation and his publications include the books, "Barrio Nerds: Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle" and "Mentoring Students of Color: Naming the Politics of Race, Social Class, Gender, and Power" (lead editor) and various articles in journals such as The High School Journal, Harvard Educational Review, and Educational Policy.

Beyond traditional journal articles, Dr. Carrillo's work and schooling journey have been cited by USA Today and The Texas Observer. 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. This work has been produced in ways that are accessible across the world, offering long-term opportunities for collaborations across borders. Also, as a cultural studies in education scholar and as a passionate basketball fan, Dr. Carrillo has put together a column on his substack ("On Writing and Basketball"): https://juanfcarrillo.substack.com. Further, Carrillo's commitment to social embeddedness and his passion for engaging learning and learners across diverse settings and communities is a key part of his inspiration as he engages his role as the co-director of 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.