About

Michael V. Singh is an educator, qualitative social scientist, and associate professor in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. from the Berkeley School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Singh’s scholarship is guided by questions of racial and gender justice in schools, with a focus on Latino men and boys. His research is published in journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, American Educational Research Journal, Race Ethnicity and Education, Urban Education, and Review of Educational Research. 

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’s second book project is tentatively titled, Deconstructing Mr. Macho: How Latino men teachers challenge patriarchy and racism in schools (under contract, SUNY Press). It examines the ways race, gender, and sexuality shape the lives and teaching practices of Latino men who are K-12 teachers. 

Singh is also co-editor of a 2026 special issue of Race Ethnicity and Education that showcases critical and unruly dialogues in Latinx education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2026.2622751

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 

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

Publications

Singh, M. V., & Rodriguez Vega, S. (2026). Who Are Chicanas/os/x, and Why Does the Field of Education Study Them? A Critical Scoping Review of the Literature, 2008–2023. Review of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543261418041

Gamez, R., Monreal, T., & Singh, M. V. (2026). Toward (more critical, more unruly) Diálogos. Race Ethnicity and Education, 0(0), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2026.2622751 

Blanco, M. Y., Rusoja, A., & Singh, M. V. (2026). A broad politics of justice: A practitioner inquiry study into Latinidad & Latine/x education at a college education symposium. Race Ethnicity and Education, 0(0), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2026.2622752 

Singh, M. V. (2025). What is this ‘Latinx’ in Latinx education? (Re)articulating Latinx education against hegemony and towards a politics of antiracism and justice. Equity & Excellence in Education, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2025.250643 

Singh, M. V. (2025). Negotiating antiblackness as non-Black Latino men teachers: Relational race politics in the discourse on men of color teachers. Urban Education, 60(4), 1028–1056. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859231162901 

Singh, M.V. (2024). Good Boys, Bad Hombres: The Racial Politics of Mentoring Latino Boys in Schools. University of Minnesota Press

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., & 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 

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. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1545654    

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. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1395330 

Selected Awards and Grants

Critics’ Choice Book Award (Good Boys, Bad Hombres), AESA, 2025

Faculty Advocate for Community Retention Award. El Centro, UC Davis, 2025

Faculty Award for Mentoring Students, College of Letters & Science, UC Davis, 2025 

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.

Dissertation Fellowship, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, 2018-19.

Graduate Fellow, Faculty First-Look Program, NYU Steinhardt, 2017-18.

McNair Scholar, Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, UC Berkeley, 2011.

Courses

CHI 10: Introduction to Chicana/o/x Studies

CHI 102B: Grassroots Community Activism & Mobilization Efforts Challenging Educational Inequity 

CHI 102C: Policy and Law Challenging Segregation and Educational Inequity 

CHI 136: Critical & Abolitionist Pedagogies

CHI 298: Critical Race Frameworks in Educational Research