Laura Ciolkowski

Laura Ciolkowski is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. She received her B.A. with honors in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in English from Brown University. Laura is an active member of the Massachusetts Prison Education Consortium, a statewide initiative focused on promoting postsecondary education in prison, and Co-Chair of a Five College Faculty Seminar on Prison Education.

At UMass, Laura has been working to build a broad, university-wide community in support of prison education, scholarship, and teaching. Drawing on her previous work at the Center for Justice at Columbia University and her teaching experience in prisons in New York State, she continues to work with others to create new opportunities at UMass-Amherst and in Western Massachusetts A for incarcerated students to access higher education and to clear pathways for formerly incarcerated students to continue their education.