Rita Kohli, Ph.D.

UC Riverside
rita.kohli@ucr.edu

Rita Kohli is an Assistant Professor in the Education, Society and Culture Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). She has a Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis on Race and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. As an Oakland Unified School District teacher, teacher educator, and educational researcher, Kohli has spent 20 years in urban public schools across the country. Her research interests include critical race theory, the racial climate of teacher education and schools, critical teacher development, and the struggles, assets and possibilities of teachers of Color across the pipeline. She is the former chair for the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice, and currently serves on the editorial board of the international journal Race, Ethnicity and Education. Kohli is the co-editor of the book, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Narratives from Teacher Educators and has published in journals such as Journal of Teacher Education, the Review of Research in Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, and Urban Education. She was the recipient of the UCR Innovator for Social Change Award (2016), the Scholar Activist and Community Advocacy Award from the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group of AERA (2017), and the Early Career Award of the Division G: Social Context of Education Division of AERA (2018).