About Dr. Nightengale-Lee

A proud Detroit native, Dr. Bianca Nightengale-Lee brings a lived understanding of how race, identity, and systemic inequities shape educational experiences. Labeled with a learning disability in early elementary school and tracked in the lowest reading group by second grade, she knows what it means to feel voiceless in a system that was never designed with her in mind. Growing up as a Black girl navigating a Eurocentric curriculum in the 1980s, Dr. Nightengale-Lee's early encounters with schooling were marked by exclusion—not potential. Yet, those experiences became the catalyst for her life’s work: disrupting dominant educational paradigms and amplifying the cultural and linguistic brilliance of marginalized students.

Today, she serves as Director of the Lewis Walker Institute for Race and Ethnic Relations at Western Michigan University, where her leadership centers racial justice, equity, and community engagement. With over 15 years of experience as an elementary teacher and literacy specialist, Dr. Nightengale-Lee is a nationally recognized scholar whose research explores the intersections of race, literacy, and culturally responsive pedagogy.

Her work draws from critical literacy, Afro-Indigenous frameworks, and liberatory pedagogies to co-create curricula that are responsive, humanizing, and transformative. She is particularly known for using Hip Hop-based educational modules to center Black and Brown youth voices, integrating music, movement, storytelling, and resistance into literacy instruction that reflects students’ lived realities.

Dr. Nightengale-Lee’s scholarship is featured in publications such as Multicultural Perspectives, The Journal of Literacy Research, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Research, and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy. Her contributions have been honored by leading organizations including the National Council of Teachers of English, the Literacy Research Association, the Journal of Literacy Innovation, and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Beyond the university, Dr. Nightengale-Lee is a commited community-based educator. She partners with schools, youth organizations, and educators to co-design spaces where students of color are seen, valued, and equipped to thrive. Whether facilitating pre-service teacher training or working alongside youth in urban classrooms, she invites learners to interrogate systems, reimagine possibilities, and participate in the urgent work of educational justice.