- Ph.D. The Graduate Center, CUNY (2023, Urban Education)
- MPhil., The Graduate Center, CUNY (2019, Urban Education)
- M.A., New York University, (2011, Literacy Education)
- NY Teaching Certification (2011, Common Branch & Literacy Education Birth - Grade 6)
- CA Teaching Credential (2010, Multiple Subjects)
- B.A., California State University, Los Angeles (2010, Urban Learning)
Wendy Barrales, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay College, CUNY. Her research as a sociocultural scholar explores embodied theory, critical race feminism, and decolonial pedagogies. Specifically, Dr. Barrales traces how her lived experience as the daughter of formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate shapes expertise and informs social justice praxis. Forever a teacher, her pedagogy emphasizes community-engaged scholarship and collaborative, justice-oriented methods.
Dr. Barrales is the founder of the award-winning Women of Color Archive (WOCArchive), an intergenerational oral history arts-based project that documents, preserves, and amplifies the stories of women of color. Previously, she served as founding Advisor of Curriculum and Design and inaugural chair of Ethnic Studies at Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy (BELA), an all-girls STEM school. As an NSF Postdoctoral Associate at NYU, she co-designed learning spaces with BioBus to support positive self-identities for historically marginalized science students. She continues to advance educational equity through NYC’s Equity in Computer Science & AI and by leading political education workshops with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).
Rooted in the work of bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa, her research highlights how women of color utilize intergenerational oral histories and art to promote just futures through a praxis of giving flowers and PAR-chiving. Her contributions have been recognized by organizations including the AAUW, NSF, and the National Women’s Studies Association.
- American Educational Research Association
- American Studies Association
- International Society of the Learning Sciences
- Latin American Studies Association
- National Women's Studies Association
Barrales, W., (accepted). The Urban Review. From Sí Se Puede to Pa’lante: Exploring Women and Girls Experiences in K-12 Ethnic Studies Contexts.
Mangual Figueroa, A., & Barrales, W. (in press). Ethics of Departure. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia on Social Justice in Education. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Talley, L., Vogel, S., James, S., Ray, M.J., Crawford, C., Vogelstein, L., Hoadley, C., & Barrales, W. (2025) Advancing Educational Equity in Computer Science. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. https://aeecs.pressbooks.sunycreate.cloud/
Barrales, W., Hunt, V., Martinez-Alvarez, P., Sanchez, M.T., Klein, T., (2024). 10 years at Dos Puentes. University Collaborations: Service and Research Projects.
Barrales, W. (2023) Nuancing Latinidad Through Visual Testimonios in a Women of Color Archive: Latina Girls and Matriarchs as Knowledge Producers. Latinx Interdisciplinary Perspectives SAGE Publishing.
Mangual Figueroa, A., & Barrales, W. (2021) Testimonio and Counterstorytelling by Immigrant-Origin Children and Youth: Insights That Amplify Immigrant Subjectivities. Societies,11(2), 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11020038
Badhey K., Barrales, W., Guerrero, N., (2020) Connecting Through Time: Intergenerational Family Storytelling. Photoville. https://photoville.com/projects/connecting-through-time/
- Social Justice Award, New Media Lab, 2023
- Equity Centered Learning Environments Collaborative- George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2022
- American Dissertation Award, American Association of University Women, 2022
- Arte Público Press, The US Latino Digital Humanities, University of Houston, Finalist, 2021
- Counter Histories Initiative, Short List; Finalist, Giving Them Their Flowers: Archiving, Documenting, & Sharing the Experiences of Our Matriarchs of Color, Magnum Foundation, 2021
- Lost & Found Archival Fellowship Grant--Center for the Humanities, 2020 & 2021
- Fund For Teachers Grant Recipient, Brooklyn to Blantyre: Fostering Girl Empowerment in New York, Malawi, and South Africa, 2015
Wendy Barrales' research program integrates Ethnic Studies, Black and Chicana feminisms, and community engagement to create decolonial learning spaces focused on collective liberation. Her work utilizes arts-based, participatory methods, inviting youth and community as co-participants. Informed by her lived experience as a working-class Chicana and daughter of immigrants, her scholarship, art practice, and academic interests are at the nexus of collage, photography, and film, employing critical/youth participatory action research with ethnographic and multimodal methodologies. Barrales' research highlights the invisibilization of racially minoritized women of color in Ethnic Studies and art, demonstrating how documenting their stories through arts-based methods can reimagine historical gaps. Her praxis extends beyond academia, focusing on politicized care, relationality, and valuing lived experience and art as expertise across interdisciplinary fields, structured around methodological interventions through relationality, re-historicizing the archive by centering invisibilized stories, and validating lived experience as expertise through arts-based methodologies.