Dr. LeAnna T. Luney is an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Berea College, and Project Director of The FREE Zion Project (Freedom-Dreaming Rural Education Empowerment in Zion). Her scholarship centralizes Black girls’, womxn’s, and femmes’ lived experiences in educational institutions using theoretical and praxis-driven frameworks of Black feminism and decolonization. Dr. Luney specifically focuses on Black girls’, womxn’s, and femmes’ practices of coping and care using intersectional ethnographic research methodologies to create and implement equitable policy in educational systems. Her other scholarship includes educational activism, and supporting students, families, and communities in re-creating and implementing equitable policy in education systems. She has led workshops on combatting anti-Blackness in higher education; provided cost-free Ethnic Studies reading groups to marginalized communities; mentored undergraduate students on research methodologies; facilitated culturally relevant coping courses to high school students; and has been an invited discussant in numerous campus, departmental, and community talks. Dr. Luney's work has been published in The Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies, Research Issues in Contemporary Education, and various book volumes.
Outside of her academic work, Dr. Luney finds joy caring for her dogs and garden, and being in community with loved ones.
- Dr. Luney earned a PhD in Comparative Ethnic Studies, with a specialization in Africana Studies, and Certificate in College Teaching from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2021; a M.A. in Pan-African Studies from the University of Louisville in 2018; and a B.A. in African and African American Studies and Psychology from Berea College in 2016. In 2021, Dr. Luney trained a Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Kentucky in the College of Education where she worked with the Civil Rights Initiative.
Luney, L.T., & Luney-Ballew, M.T. (2023). Musings on school communities, information evasion, and the children of incarcerated parents. Mass Incarceration in the 21st Century: Realities and Reflections. Routledge.
Luney, L. T., & Gonzalez, C. (2023). Misogynoir, Ethnic Studies, and Mundanity: Institutionality and the Quotidian Life of Anti-Black Womxn-ness in Ethnic Studies Policy and Procedure.
(When) Will the Joy Come: Black Womxn in the Ivory Tower. University of Massachusetts Press.
Luney, L.T. (2022). Like our foremothers survived: Confrontation, humor, and self-education as resistance coping in Black womxn and femme college student Being. Frontiers in Education: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Matias, C.E., Thompson, F., & Luney, L.T. (2022). When white dwarfs burn our color:
Whiteness, emotionality, and the will to thrive. Research Issues in Contemporary Education.
LaCour, S.E., Vincent, G., Luney, L.T., Parsons, J.R.M, & Sampson, S. (2021). Equity audit report: Findings and recommendations for improved opportunity (Technical Report).
Luney, L. T. (2021). Surviving the Wild West: A critical race feminist analysis of African American women students’ experiences with gendered racism at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Critical Race Studies Across Disciplines: Resisting Racism through Scholactivism. Lexington Books.
Byrd, W. C., Luney, L. T., Marie, J., Sanders, K. N. (2019). Demanding attention: An exploration of the institutional characteristics of student demands, 2015-2016. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(1), 25-36.
Luney, L. (2016). Working for the Canaan land: The relationship between work ethic and happiness in African and Caucasian Americans. The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies, 35(2), 188-202.