Molly Shea

Dr. Shea brings together ethnographic study of informal learning environments with theories of learning that focus on the social, cultural, and historical interactions. Drawing on historical and political roots of educational inequity, Dr. Shea focuses on design interventions that people undertake to interrupt social and environmental injustices. She studies the design and organization of collective group efforts that seek social change. This involves understanding how people attempt to shift valued knowledge within infrastructures and how learning takes place through these efforts. Dr. Shea has studied local organizing and learning in collective movements that include: the Food Justice Movement, business school reform during Occupy Wall Street, and the Maker Movement. Each of these efforts examine how power, race, gender and class intersect with notions of knowledge creation, expertise, and learning. Her interest is in understanding how communities actively work against infrastructures of power in order to design for more just futures.