Mia Shaw

My name is Mia Shaw, and I am a doctoral candidate in the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Growing up around the Monterey Bay/Salinas Valley area, I graduated from Stanford University, where I received a BA with honors in Human Biology (with a focus on adolescent development). Before my doctoral program, I was a middle school science teacher in Las Vegas, NV, and a STEM maker educator for Techbridge Girls in Oakland, CA. My research and educational interests center designing STEAM-rich, making environments where Black and Brown youth can draw from their multiple social identities to design physical and digital projects that imagine a more liberatory futures for all. My dissertation research currently focuses on examining the (re)storying practices of marginalized youth who designed interactive quilt patches using electronic textiles in a workshop I codeveloped for an informal STEM program. In addition to research, I am an illustrator who creates comic strips transforming academic research into accessible formats. Outside of my professional life, I love all things music (alternative hip hop and neo soul are my jam), cats, and analyzing pop culture.