Realizing Radical Hope Speaker Series: Dr. Tiera Tanksley

Welcome to the Realizing Radical Hope Speaker Series at the Earl Center for Learning and Innovation! Join us for our series in which educators and designers share their insights on creating positive change and fostering hope in our communities.

Thursday, April 16, Dr. Tiera Tanksley

A Senior Researcher in education and information studies at UCLA’s Center for Internet Inquiry and founder of the Race, Abolition and Artifical Intelligence program that prepares young people to have more critical, agentic and algorithmically-conscious relationships with digital technologies within and beyond the classroom, Dr. Tanksley applies a critical race technology theory (CRTT) in education, extending conventional education research to include socio-technical and techno-structural analyses of AI and EdTech. Specifically, her research examines anti-Blackness as “the default setting” and “organizing logic” of schools and school-based technologies and analyzes the socio-emotional and academic ramifications of algorithmic racism in the experiences of Black youth while recognizing their agency as digital activists and civic agitators that subvert and resist algorithmically biased technologies in order to produce more just and joyous digital experiences for Communities of Color.

In 2023, Dr. Tanksley was inducted into the inaugural cohort of Public Voices in Technology fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation, and subsequently named one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI. In 2025, she was awarded a competitive grant in AI and Education from the Spencer Foundation, and was subsequently inducted into the inaugural cohort of Spencer AI Fellows. Most recently, Dr. Tanksley was featured in a critical AI documentary, Ghost in the Machine, that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

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