About

Subini Ancy Annamma is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a special education teacher in both public schools and youth prisons. Her research critically examines the ways students are criminalized and resist that criminalization through the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how these intersections impact youth education trajectories in urban schools and youth prisons. She positions students as knowledge generators, exploring how their narratives can inform teacher and special education. Dr. Annamma authored the book The Pedagogy of Pathologization, which focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color and has received multiple awards. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, and she has been recognized with several awards and fellowships, including being a past Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and an AERA Division G Early Career Awardee.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Gender studies
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Pedagogy
• Geography
• Aesthetics
• Law

Selected publications

• Too Intersectional

  2026-04-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter explores cases of Black Disabled girls who had been harassed, arrested, or assaulted in schools, to understand why some Black feminists either ignored the incidents or erased their disability when fighting for them. Annamma argues that no Black girl or Black woman is “too” intersectional; this myriad of “bad” social characteristics is defined through systemic commitments to ableism rooted in white supremacy and fueled by anti-Blackness. Given that these are the very projects they work against, DisCrit and Black feminist sociology scholars must reflect on how we uphold notions of normalcy that ultimately (re)produce the very systems we seek to tear down. This reflection allows scholars to follow Audre Lorde's words, evolving by returning to the Black Disabled girls’ stories and reimagining the ways we can listen to and support them, so they can be brought into and lead coalitions, and we can all move toward justice.

  PublisherDOI

• ‘Ain't nobody about to trap me’: The Violence of Multi-System Collusion and Entrapment for Incarcerated Disabled Girls of Color

  2025-04-24

  book-chapter

  Incarcerated disabled Girls of Color reside and exist within a nexus of systems that continually entrap them through the ongoing use of carceral logics. Utilizing interviews from a larger qualitative study, this article centers the lived experiences of disabled Girls of Color by interrogating the collusive partnerships between schools, child “welfare,” and other related systems in entrapping and criminalizing them. The narratives shared by the incarcerated disabled Girls of Color highlight the role of schools in perpetuating state induced entrapment, how multi-system collusion makes carceral and state-sanctioned protection systems indistinguishable, and showcase the creative ways that Girls of Color resist and subvert confinement and entrapment within carceral apparatuses. Ultimately, this article recognizes how multiple systems are set up to trap incarcerated disabled Girls of Color through collusive relations. However, through forged connections, economies, and the girls’ savvy and ingenuity, their experiences remind us that ‘nobody about to trap’ them fully.

  PublisherDOI

• Between Bridges: Black Male Genius and Educational Imagination in the Shadow of Incarceration

  The Educational Forum · 2025-09-11

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• DisCrit Mothering: Epilogue

  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education · 2024-08-20 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  What this special issue on disCrit Mothering cultivates is a path through breathtaking and breath making.the articles in this special issue were breathtaking in the description of violence and heartbreak endured by Black and Brown disabled children and their mothers. 1at times, reading the stories, particularly by the young people featured in this special issue including Emmy, Enrique, Giorgio, Kai, and Knox and also by the mothers, i felt a pressure bearing down on my chest.as someone with a respiratory chronic illness, i know what it feels like to not be able to breathe, and that pressure on my chest is so familiar.as i read stories of accommodations and services withheld (Chen & Yeh), classrooms segregated, seclusion and restraints wielded against Black and Brown disabled students (torres & torres), the weight on my chest increased.the pressure on my chest surged when Black and Brown disabled students traced how each time they asked for help in the ways children do, they were dehumanized, dismissed, and diagnosed-their needs used as evidence of deficiency (White Johnson).When i read about motherhood being put on trial, mothers positioned as problems (Cio-Pea), mothers being told they were broken, as were their children, by the very people who were supposed to offer educational support (Migliarini), the pressure on my chest intensified.When i read the memories of mothers of their own experiences as children themselves being unloved, underserved, and uncared for, the pressure on my chest became almost unbearable.these instances of every day and direct violence described in the education trajectories of Black and Brown disabled students and their mothers were truly breathtaking.Concurrently, the resistance displayed by the Black and Brown disabled children and mothers in this special issue relieved the weight on my chest.i found myself breathing more easily with each description of resistance, and then found joy in those spaces of possibility when Black and Brown ancestors were called on (ocasio-Stoutenburg & Boveda).i took deep breaths and smiled, as some of the mothers told us their keys to survival in these dark times (torres).i cackled when the disabled Black and Brown children told us what they really thought of the adults that positioned them as deficit (torres & torres).i reveled in the art made by mothers in defense of themselves (Gabriel) and their children (White Johnson).i marveled at the wonder that Black and Brown disabled children are as they refused perfection and embraced "what is not normal" (Chen & Yeh).i could breathe again as the pieces in this special issue were also breath making.and breath making spaces are never to be taken for granted in a world where those in power are polluting the air, water, and land, making it harder for Black and Brown disabled folks to breathe.Breath making spaces are especially important for Black and Brown disabled folks who face a myriad of violences, particularly those created by policing forces who seek to choke the breath out of us.Breath making spaces are essential for Black and Brown disabled folks who are being killed at higher rates from CoVid in these pandemic times.Breath making spaces are necessary for Black and Brown disabled folks must live with the knowledge that when white people found out the fact that we were being killed by CoVid at higher rates, they chose to downplay the dangers and push back against community precautions to keep us safe (Skinner-dorkenoo et al., 2022).Breathmaking spaces are essential when empires are creating and funding genocide

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Ain’t Nobody About to Trap me”: The Violence of Multi-System Collusion and Entrapment for Incarcerated Disabled Girls of Color

  Journal of School Violence · 2024-02-18 · 7 citations

  article

  Incarcerated disabled Girls of Color reside and exist within a nexus of systems that continually entrap them through the ongoing use of carceral logics. Utilizing interviews from a larger qualitative study, this article centers the lived experiences of disabled Girls of Color by interrogating the collusive partnerships between schools, child "welfare," and other related systems in entrapping and criminalizing them. The narratives shared by the incarcerated disabled Girls of Color highlight the role of schools in perpetuating state induced entrapment, how multi-system collusion makes carceral and state-sanctioned protection systems indistinguishable, and showcase the creative ways that Girls of Color resist and subvert confinement and entrapment within carceral apparatuses. Ultimately, this article recognizes how multiple systems are set up to trap incarcerated disabled Girls of Color through collusive relations. However, through forged connections, economies, and the girls' savvy and ingenuity, their experiences remind us that 'nobody about to trap' them fully.

  PublisherDOI

• Disability critical race theory (DisCrit)

  2024-10-30 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  In this chapter, we discuss disability critical race theory (DisCrit) as an analytic lens to better understand the ways in which race and disability are mutually constituted in education and other aspects of society within the USA, such as public health and law. The chapter is purposefully broad in scope, explicating DisCrit in three realms – past, present, and future – to highlight its expansive possibilities in foregrounding and seeking to dismantle collusive forms of oppression. First, we narrate the origins of DisCrit forged, in part, from our own experiences teaching in public schools and educational facilities, and our discontent with the professional field of special education with its deficit-based conceptualisations of disability and race, and general race evasiveness. Second, we discuss the myriad ways DisCrit has been taken up as a theoretical tool by researchers and practitioners within educational research, illustrating examples of its expansive and nuanced uses. Third, we use a DisCrit lens to take a nuanced look at two recent forms of social inequality as evidenced by: (1) the Covid-19 pandemic and, (2) the murders of African-Americans by police. The pandemic has clearly illustrated the fault lines of race, disability, and social class in how communities of colour are impacted in disproportionate ways via various disabling conditions and access to healthcare. At the same time, the death of George Floyd in 2020, an African-American man murdered in plain sight by police, was an act that came to symbolise “the last straw” in the normalisation of systemic police violence against Black and Brown bodies. In contemplating both phenomena, we highlight how examples of historical and contemporary violence – directly and indirectly – are perpetrated against African-Americans (and people of colour in general) within the USA, currently manifest in many structural and systemic practices within education, including the juvenile justice system and school-to-prison pipeline. Finally, building upon the numerous issues raised by, and use of DisCrit to date, we discuss future ways this intersectional theoretical framework can be utilised to interanimate concurrent issues of race and disability, with view to envisioning and creating an anti-racist, anti-ableist, more socially just world.

  PublisherDOI

• Disrupting Cartographies of Inequity

  2023-06-26 · 8 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Education inequities are often both a social and spatial phenomenon. This notion of a sociospatial dialectic, wherein geography impacts social relations while, simultaneously, social processes shape spatiality, is an essential dimension of understanding systemic injustices. In this chapter, the author addresses a qualitative methodology for equity-focused educational research from a sociospatial dialectic: the creation and application of education journey maps. She begins by situating their work within an explicitly critical conceptual framing, one that addresses racism and its intersections with other systemic inequities, disability critical race theory. Next, the author explores education journey mapping as a qualitative methodology. Finally, she also discusses the potential for using education journey mapping in future research. Critical race theory and disability critical race theory allowed for an intersectional framing and therefore a more comprehensive analysis of educational inequities than unidimensional perspectives provided.

  PublisherDOI

• Critical Race Spatial Analysis

  2023-06-26 · 2 citations

  bookSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2023-04-17 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Searching for Educational Equity Through Criticals Patial Analysis

  2023-06-26 · 6 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines racial inequities in education through a critical spatial lens, situating the spatial temporally and socially. It extends author's call for a critical spatial analysis by rooting it deeply in critical race theory, thereby developing critical race spatial analysis. The book then provides examples of innovative ways to critically engage with spatial research. It also shares how education journey mapping was created and utilized to explore the education trajectories of historically oppressed students, including the physical spaces of schools they encountered, the ways internal spaces of students were impacted by structural violence, and the spaces between the physical and internal. The book reclaims the tools of geospatial analysis, which have often been used in positivist and problematic ways, and reappropriate them within an explicitly critical framework.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David J. Connor

  27 shared

• Beth A. Ferri

  27 shared

• Deb Morrison

  University of Washington

  9 shared

• Janette K. Klingner

  7 shared

• Elizabeth Jackson

  6 shared

• Amy L. Boelé

  6 shared

• Jamelia Morgan

  Northwestern University

  6 shared

• Jennifer M. Wilmot

  University of Kansas

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Education

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• 2019 AESA Critic’s Choice Book Award
• 2018 NWSA Alison Piepmeier Book Prize
• Ford Postdoctoral Fellow
• AERA Division G Early Career Awardee
• Critical Race Studies in Education Associate Emerging Schola…