Ashley Y. Lipscomb is a PhD Candidate in Education at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Her research sits at the intersections of faith and education. Lipscomb has worked in education for more than a decade, dedicated to fostering growth, learning, and leadership in the next generation. Her research interests emerge from her work as an educator, youth pastor, and community organizer. She hopes that her research on 19th-century educational activism might (re)cover a blueprint for current educational activists to envision new possibilities for the future.

Learning In the Spirit: Reading 19th Century Abolitionist Theology as an Education Philosophy

This project investigates a critical moment in American history when Black Americans, legally denied access to full citizenship and the democratic functions of America, utilized community-based efforts to organize churches and schools to help develop fully engaged democratic citizens. My project seeks to understand the democratic innovation of local churches operating schools in the 19th Century in the United States. It challenges the idea that schools or religious institutions were divorced from the democratic process, and centralizes them as laboratories of democratic experiments. The proposed project, more specifically, is distinctive in that it explores the philosophy undergirding these experiments.

Ashley Y. Lipscomb was selected to receive the Democracy Catalyst Fellowship.