Kahdeidra M. Martin

Born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Dr. Kahdeidra Monét Martin is a priestess in the asson lineage of Haitian Vodou and a transdisciplinary scholar of language and literacy. Through the lenses of critical race theory, intersectionality, and translanguaging, Dr. Martin uses qualitative and community-participatory methods to examine raciolinguistics and the co-naturalization of language, race, and spirituality in the lives of African descendant people globally.

Her narrative case study on Black students in independent schools received the 2022 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Qualitative Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Martin received two grants funded by the Henry Luce Foundation to document religious racism and conduct oral history research on members of African Diasporic religious communities, resulting in the Embodied Memories podcast available on YouTube and Spotify. Before coming to Vassar, Dr. Martin was a Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric and Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, for which she received a 2023 Stanford Postdoc JEDI Champion Award.

Dr. Martin received her Ph.D. in Urban Education at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in June 2021. Dr. Martin holds an M.S.Ed. in Teaching Urban Adolescents with Disabilities, from Long Island University, and a B.A. in African & African American Studies with a minor in Linguistics from Stanford University.

Dr. Martin uses her lived experience, qualitative, and community participatory methods to examine linguistic variation, discourses of deviance, and the intersectional experiences of underrepresented groups in P-12 education research—namely youth in elite, independent schools, and youth who are members of African diasporic religions.

With Dr. Melissa Schieble and Dr. Amy Vetter, Dr. Martin has co-authored Classroom Talk for Social Change: Critical Conversations in English Language Arts (Teachers College Press, 2020), which received a 2021 Divergent Book Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies Research. In recognition of her commitment to pedagogical excellence, she was one of three graduate student recipients of the 2020 Teaching Award.

Dr. Martin’s scholarship has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including a Fellowship by the Community Project to Prevent Discrimination and Violence Against Black and African Religions, Princeton University Crossroads Project Community Stories Fellowship, CUNY Mellon Humanities Alliance Teaching Fellowship, the Edwidge Danticat Society Graduate Research Award, and a two year Scholar in Residence at The Chapin School, her alma mater.

Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Cahiers internationaux de sociolinguistique, Linguistics and Education, English in Education, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, and Oxford University Press.