Michael V. Singh

Education

• Ph.D. Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender Program, Berkeley School of Education, University of California, Berkeley
• M.A. Social and Cultural Studies, Berkeley School of Education, University of California, Berkeley 
• B.A. Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Research areas and interests

Urban schooling, the political economy of race and education, neoliberal multiculturalism,
Latino masculinity, intersectionality, Latino men teachers, critical and abolitionist pedagogy

About

Michael V. Singh is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies, where he teaches courses on race, gender, and education. He received his Ph.D. in Education from UC Berkeley in 2019 and was later a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Singh’s research is guided by questions of racial and gender justice in schools, with a focus on Latino men and boys. He has three primary areas of focus: (1) Ethnographic portraits of the educational lives of Latino men and boys in school-day and after-school programming, (2) Life-history narratives exploring the experiences of K-12 Latino men teachers, and (3) Conceptual research on race, power, and schooling.

Singh’s book, Good Boys, Bad Hombres: The Racial Politics of Mentoring Latino Boys in Schools (University of Minnesota Press), comes from two years of ethnographic research with a school-based mentorship program for Latino boys. It tells the story of educational empowerment in the era of neoliberal multiculturalism. An insightful gender and race analysis, Good Boys, Bad Hombres sheds light on how approaches to school-based mentorship often react to the alleged crisis of Latino boys and are governed by the perceived remedies of the neoliberal state. Singh works to deconstruct male empowerment, arguing that new narratives and practices—beyond racial respectability and patriarchal redemption—are necessary for a reimagining of Latino manhood in schools and beyond.

Dr. Singh is also currently working on his second large-scale research project, which examines the ways race, gender, and sexuality shape the lives and teaching practices of Latino men who are K-12 teachers. Overall, Dr. Singh’s work provides a timely addition to the growing research on boys and young men of color and calls for intersectional and justice-centered approaches to Latino male education.

Recent Publications

Singh, M. V. (2024). Toxic masculinity masking as cultural relevancy: Latino men navigating 
heteropatriarchal expectations of manhood in the teaching profession. Harvard Educational Review, 94(2), 165–186. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-94.2.165

Singh, M. V. (2023). Negotiating antiblackness as non-Black Latino men teachers: 
Relational race politics in the discourse on men of color teachers. Urban Education, 
00420859231162901. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859231162901

Singh, M. V., & Leonardo, Z. (2023). Educators as decolonial intellectuals: Revolutionary 
thought from Gramsci to Fanon. Critical Studies in Education, 64(4), 374–391. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2022.2146150

Singh, M. V. (2023). Neoliberal influence on Latino male identity: Power and resistance in a 
school-based mentorship program for Latino boys. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(4), 573–589. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2020.1829739

Leonardo, Z., Singh, M.V., & Delgado Noguera, Z. (2023). Education and colonialism: 
Three frameworks. In M.D. Young & S. Diem (Eds.) Handbook of Critical Education Research Theory and Methodology. Routledge

Singh, M. V. (2021). Resisting the neoliberal role model: Latino male mentors’ perspectives on 
the intersectional politics of role modeling. American Educational Research Journal, 58(2), 283-314. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220954861

Singh, M. V. (2019). Refusing the performance: Disrupting popular discourses surrounding 
Latino male teachers and the possibility of disidentification. Educational Studies, 55(1), 28–45. 
    
Singh, M. V. (2018). Role models without guarantees: Corrective representations and the 
cultural politics of a Latino male teacher in the borderlands. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(3), 288–305.

Selected Awards and Grants

Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, 2023-24

Hellman Fellowship, UC Davis, 2022.

Postdoctoral Fellowship, UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, 2019-20.