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Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy

  • Dean, Carlos Montezuma Professor of Education and Social Policy

Biography

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, the Carlos Montezuma Professor, is Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy.

Brayboy, Northwestern's first Native American dean and a citizen of the Lumbee tribe, studies how Indigenous people learn, teach, and see themselves within larger systems of power — work that has been recognized and cited by scholars around the world.

An anthropologist of education, he is well known for his rich theoretical grounding and rigorous research methods, as well as his humor, humility, and genuine enthusiasm for his work.

His most influential scholarship is Tribal Critical Race Theory, or TribalCrit, a groundbreaking framework he developed in 2005 that examines how race, power and Indigenous tribal sovereignty intersect.

Brayboy recently delivered the American Educational Research Association Distinguished Lecture, one of the signature events of the 2026 AERA annual meeting.

In 2023, Brayboy received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for a lifetime of work shaping the educational anthropology field, K-12 schools, and higher education.

A member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association — where he was elected to the Council and Executive Board in 2024 — Brayboy is the author of more than 110 scholarly works, including 10 edited or authored volumes, articles, book chapters, and policy briefs for the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences.

He co-authored the study “Ethnographic Methods: Training Norms and Practices and the Future of American Anthropology," which was the most-read article of 2024 in American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association.

Over the course of his career, he and his team have prepared more than 165 Native teachers to work in American Indian communities and mentored 43 American Indian Ph.D. recipients.

Brayboy earned his bachelor's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his master's and Ph.D. — awarded with distinction — at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the father of two sons.


Education

  • PhD with Distinction, University of Pennsylvania, 1999
  • Intercultural Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 1995
  • Political Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1990

Selected Awards and Honors

  • 2026 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 2024 Elected to the American Educational Research Association's Council and Executive Board
  • 2023 George and Louise Spindler Award from the American Anthropological Association’s Council on Anthropology and Education
  • 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Servant-Leadership Award, Arizona State University
  • 2021 Co-Chair, Indigenous Education Initiative, Spencer Foundation 
  • 2021 Panel Member, National Academy of Education, Civic Education Report Committee 
  • 2020 Fellow, PLuS Alliance 
  • 2018 Member, National Academy of Education
  • 2018 Fellow, American Educational Research Association 
  • 2017 Rosa Parks Award, American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity 
  • 2017 G. Mike Charleston Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Indigenous Education, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association 

Selected Publications

Vaught, S.E., Brayboy, B. McK. J., & Chin, J.A. (2022). The School Prison Trust. University of Minnesota Press.

Blackhawk, N., Brayboy, B. McK., J, Deloria, P.J., Ghilglione, L., Lomawaima, K.T., Medin, D., and Trahant, M. (2018). The American Indian: Obstacles and Opportunities. Daedalus.

Brayboy, B. McK. J. (2023). Through My Body and In My Heart: A Primer. Bank Street College Occasional Paper Series. Manuscript 1482. 

Brayboy, B. McK. J. (2022). A New Day Must Begin: Tribal Nation Building and Higher Education. Journal of American Indian Education. 60(3): 95-113.

Brayboy, B.McK.J & Tachine, A.R. (2021). Myths, Erasure, and Violence: The Immoral Triad of the Morrill Act. NAIS. 8(1): 139-144.  

Litts, B.K., Searle, K.A., Brayboy, B.McK.J, Kafai, Y.B. (2020). Computing for All?: Examining critical biases in computational tools for learning. British Journal of Educational Technology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13059

Brayboy, B. McK. J. & Chin, J.A. (2020). Being and Indigenousness: An Essay on the Development of Terrortory. Contexts. 19(3): 22-27. 

Brayboy, B. McK. J. & Maughan, E. (2009).  Indigenous Epistemologies and Teacher Education:  The Story of the Bean. Harvard Educational Review. 79(1), 1-21. 

Anderson, J. D. Bang, M. Brayboy, B.McK.J, de los Rios, C.V., Guitiérrez, K.D., Hicks, D., Ho, L, Lee, C.D., Lee, S. J., Santiago, M., Walker, V.D., Williamson-Lott, J.A. (2021). Agency and resilience in the face of challenge as civil action: Lessons learned across ethnic communities. In C.D. Lee, G. White, and D. Dong (Eds.) Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse. Washington DC: National Academy of Education.

Brayboy, B. McK. J. (2015).  Views on Indigenous Leadership.  In R. Minthorn & A. Chavez (Eds.). Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education (pp 49-58).  New York: Routledge.