2022 Summer Residency Cohort

Shanell Bailey

Project Manager and Program Lead, University of West Indies — Mona, Prison-to-College Pipeline Initiative

Shanell Bailey is a 2021 Fulbright Scholar to Jamaica and is following the development of prison university education programs on the island. Her research examines the impact of university prison education on the social and economic mobility of formerly incarcerated people in Jamaica including deported migrants. Shanell graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Forensic Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She has several years of experience working in reentry and reintegration providing direct services to currently and formerly incarcerated people, participating in research and consulting on various social justice projects.

Adam Bloom ’20

Lead Tutor, Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership

Adam Bloom is currently the lead tutor at the Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership in Harlem, NYC. He is also a BPI alumnus, with an AA from Bard College, working on his senior project to complete his Bard BA, while managing rental property for the company he created. He lives in Queens where he is a community board member for the 5th district and serves on the education and park committees. While engaging in public health courses for his degree, he discovered a passion for rebuilding social infrastructure.

Reggie Bullock

Justice Education Ambassador, Justice Education Initiative
Claremont Colleges

Reggie Bullock is the Justice Education Ambassador with the Justice Education Initiative at the Claremont Colleges. A recent graduate of the Inside-Out BA degree pathway program at Pitzer College, Reggie is working to alleviate all forms of inequities in his community and in extended communities. Since re-entering society after 17 years of incarceration, he has immersed himself in organizational transformation, liberatory pedagogies, and sharing his story of the injustices rendered by the prison industrial complex. Reggie is a Capital Assembly Fellow 2022-2023 working with legislators in Sacramento on policy that has affected most of his life.

Emma Chaput

Associate Professor of Biology
Central Oregon Community College

Emma is an Associate Professor of Biology at Central Oregon Community College (COCC), with a discipline focus on infectious diseases and human physiology. Beyond classroom instruction, Emma works to actively promote education and health equity, particularly in STEM fields. Emma seeks to expand this work into new spaces, including building expanded higher education opportunities for adults impacted by the criminal legal system. Collaborating with partners throughout the state of Oregon and at COCC, Emma is working to initiate an Associate’s degree program at the Deer Ridge Correctional Institute. Further, as a part of the Oregon Coalition for Higher Education in Prison, there is a push to develop a statewide structure for students in custody to pursue higher education and pathways for completion after reentry. Emma holds a BA in Biology from Johns Hopkins University and a MPH in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases from Yale University.

Laura Ciolkowski

Senior Lecturer, University of Massachusetts – Amherst

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.

Ramiro Gual

BPI Global Research Fellow. PhD Candidate,
University of Buenos Aires, Programa UBA XXII
(University of Buenos Aires) Argentina

Ramiro Gaul is the inaugural BPI Global Research Fellow and a professor and researcher with a focus on prisons and human rights in Argentina. He studied Law at University of Buenos Aires and holds a M.S. in Criminology. He is a professor in several universities in Argentina, including University of Buenos Aires’ college-in-prison program (UBA XXII). He is a Ph.D. candidate at National University of Litoral. Ramiro is currently conducting an ethnography at a federal prison in Argentina, focused on everyday social life and interactions between incarcerated people and with prison officers. As a new BPI Global Fellowship, for the next year, Ramiro will conduct comparative research between different college-in-prison programs in Argentina. This empirical research wonders about its developments, its impact in everyday social life in prison and as an empowerment tool by the time of reentry.

Jule Hall ’11

BPI Alumnus 2011

Jule Hall graduated from Bard College in 2011 with an undergraduate degree in German Studies. Since his release in 2015, Jule has worked in both the private and non-profit sectors. He was a campaign coordinator, with Picture Motion, LLC and worked on award-winning documentaries examining prison reentry, gun violence and racial inequality in the U.S. In 2017 he became the first, formerly-incarcerated person to work full-time at the Ford Foundation, where he provided data analysis and strategy development for its work on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice. In 2019, Jule worked as a program officer for the Ascendium Education Group, Inc., where he funded post secondary education programs across the U.S. Currently, Jule works independently, advising on documentary film, college in prison, and criminal justice reform.

Sayra Havranek

Assistant Director of Institutional Advancement at BPI

Sayra Havranek is the Assistant Director of Institutional Advancement at the Bard Prison Initiative. A creative copywriter and development professional with a knack for decoding a brand’s DNA to identify and amplify its voice and image across platforms, Sayra has more than a decade of experience across a range of nonprofits and corporate business models. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Administration with a concentration in Ethical Leadership through Marist College, where she completed a bachelor’s of professional studies and graduated summa cum laude. Sayra is an active volunteer with numerous New York City-based social justice and grassroots organizations.

Holly Honig

Policy Director for Empower Missouri

Holly is Policy Director for Empower Missouri where, through coalition-building and advocacy, she works to secure basic human needs and equal justice for every person in the state. This work necessarily requires a reimagining possibility, much like the BPI program asks of us. In 2022, she relocated to Missouri from Michigan where she continues to remotely support the efforts of Grand Valley State University (GVSU) to launch a program built around the same values and guiding principles as Bard. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a Masters of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership from GVSU.

AbdulKariym Muhaymin IbnBrodie ’19

Learning Commons Lead Tutor, Bard at Brooklyn Public Library

AbdulKariym Muhaymin IbnBrodie is originally from North Carolina, was raised in Brooklyn, and is now living in Queens, New York. He joined the Bard Family at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, one of six correctional facilities where he served 27 years  of incarceration. He received his associates degree in 2019 and is now working on his bachelor’s degree, which is in humanities with a concentration in math. For the last year, he has been tutoring at the Bard at Brooklyn Public Library microcollege, and recently, he’s been promoted to Lead Tutor at the same Bard Microcollege.

Demetrius James ’17

Program Director at the Bard Microcollege in Harlem

Demetrius James is an actor, writer, and educator who was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. After studying literature and the humanities, his interest in agriculture in urban areas was piqued after working in the Bard garden at Fishkill Correctional Facility. Demetrius is currently the Program Director at the Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership in Harlem.

Jen Jenkins

Policy Advocate, Legal Aid Society

Jen Jenkins is a Policy Advocate with the Legal Aid Society of Washington DC. Following their incarceration in Hawai’i, they decided they wanted to become an attorney and are now admitted to the New York bar and reside in DC. Their previous work in Hawai‘i focused on criminal legal reform, housing, and LGBTQ health issues. Hawai‘i has an established college-in-prison program that needs to be expanded. Jen is committed to supporting those efforts until incarceration is no longer viewed as a solution for socially and economically constructed problems that can be addressed in many non-violent ways.

James Kim ’21

Program Director, Bard at Brooklyn Public Library

Having previously worked as Lead Tutor and Student Recruitment Specialist and Program Coordinator, James is currently Program Director with the Bard Microcollege at the Brooklyn Public Library. After serving a twenty year sentence in prisons throughout New York State, James was released from incarceration in 2020. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2021 through the Bard Prison Initiative upon successful completion of his senior project titled: The Myth of Immigrant America and the Federalization of Immigration Control. Inspired by his experience with education in carceral settings, James believes in expanding access to quality education to overlooked and marginalized populations, and is deeply committed to addressing inequality and inequity in the current landscape of higher education in the United States.

Flora Laszlo

Central European University, CEU Prison Initiative
Director, Community Engagement Office>

Project leader and sociologist, Flora Laszlo, participated in the development and management of RadioC, Roma Radio station in Budapest, Hungary in the early 2000s, which was followed by her founding and running Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation. The experiences she gained during these community- and minority-empowerment projects will be beneficial when establishing and developing the prison program in Austria. Laszlo joined CEU in 2015 as Civic Engagement Officer with the goal of setting up the Civic Engagement Office and strengthening social responsibility and civic engagement at the university. In her current role, as Director of the Community Engagement Office, she is responsible for civic engagement, arts and culture, human rights, student leadership development and public outreach activities. ​Laszlo teaches civic engagement at the CEU Summer University. The Community Engagement Office at Central European University (CEU) is aiming to develop a new higher education project in Vienna – UNIVERSITY-PRISON PARTNERSHIPS. The mission of our university is to contribute to an open society, through research and teaching, but also through civic engagement projects. In line with this mission, we have formed a working group at the university including faculty, staff and students, interested in prison education, and we are working on a project to bring academic workshops and lectures to incarcerated people in Viennese/Austrian facilities.

Justin McDevitt

Director, Women’s College Partnership at the Indiana Women’s Prison with Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison (NDPEP), University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Justin McDevitt is director of the Women’s College Partnership at the Indiana Women’s Prison that brings AA and BA degree opportunities to incarcerated women in Indiana through a cross-institutional partnership between Marian University, the University of Notre Dame, and BPI. He was formerly the Assistant Regional Director, Alumni and Reentry Services for Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison (NDPEP), where he also teaches the Career Internship class. Justin holds a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago (‘12), an M.A. in political science from the University of Notre Dame (‘14), and is currently finishing his Ph.D. at Notre Dame, researching the political development of collateral consequences for felony convictions. As part of NDPEP, Justin and his colleagues are working to build a statewide consortium in Indiana, and a larger umbrella organization at Notre Dame.

He is also currently co-editing an upcoming volume for Brandeis University Press (Jan. ’24) on education in prison globally.

Mary Nel

Founder, Ubuntu Learning Community
Senior lecturer: Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Dr. Mary Nel is a senior lecturer in Public Law at Stellenbosch University, Western Cape, South Africa, where she lectures Criminal Law to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. She holds (inter alia) a Doctorate in Law from Stellenbosch University and a Masters degree in Criminology from Cambridge University. She is the co-founder and director of the Ubuntu Learning Community (with Prison-to-College-SA). As part of the ULC initiative, in 2019 Dr.Nel started the Ubuntu Learning short course, whereby students from Stellenbosch University  and incarcerated students from Brandvlei Correctional Institute study an accredited interdisciplinary short course together in prison. ULC also champions the cause of education not incarceration more widely, supporting ULC participants who have been released from prison  and educating the wider community to challenge societal stigma against those who have  criminal records. Leading ULC brings together her twin passions, namely transformative  pedagogy/education DV creating a more socially just and equal society.

Caroline Parker

Presidential Fellow of Medical Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Caroline M. Parker is a Presidential Fellow of Medical Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester. Dr Parker’s work combines approaches in medical anthropology and carceral studies with a geographical focus on the Caribbean and the United States. She has published over twenty articles in journals including American Ethnologist, The New England Journal of Medicine, Science Technology and Human Values, The American Journal of Public Health, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly (among others). Her first book — Carceral Citizens: Labor, Confinement, and Self-help in Puerto Rico — examines the coalescence of the carceral state and the voluntary sector in Puerto Rico and is currently under review. Dr Parker’s research has been funded by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Open Society Foundation, the Foundation for Opioid Research Efforts, the US National Science Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, the US National Institute of Drug Abuse, the US Social Science Research Council. A small capacity-building grant from BPI  will support the development of a  university-in-prison pilot, at the University of Manchester, beginning September 2023.

Andrea Y. Simpson

Associate Dean of Thriving, Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity & Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Richmond, Virginia

Andrea Simpson is the Associate Dean of Thriving, Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Richmond. She is also an associate professor in the Department of Political Science. Simpson has expertise in the politics of race, environmental justice, intersectionality, and social movements. Her most recent publications appeared in the International Journal of Humanities, Arts, and Computing on spatial analysis and in The North Meridian Review: A Journal of Culture and Scholarship on the depiction of Black political ideology and identity in the film “One Night in Miami.”

The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association named her first book, The Tie that Binds (New York University Press, 1998), the “Best Book of 1998 on Racial Identity.”  In 2009, the Women’s Caucus of the American Political Science Association awarded her the “Woman of Color Professional Achievement Award.”

Sasha Smith

Graduate Student
UMass Amherst, Massachusetts

Sasha Smith is a graduate student in the M.Ed/MPPA program at UMass Amherst, where she studies access and equity for ‘non-traditional’ college students. Her interests include increasing access to quality liberal arts education for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, first-generation, and aspiring community college transfer students. She was first introduced to college-in-prison work as a TA for the Inside-Out Program at Amherst College, where she received a BA in English. She is also a very proud recipient of an AA in Liberal Arts from Greenfield Community College, and a GED before that. Currently employed as a graduate assistant for Student Success Outreach at UMass, Sasha works to build community and community support for transfer and first-generation students on campus. Beginning in the fall of 2022, she will also serve as an education intern for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, where she hopes to collaborate with local academic communities and education practitioners to build college pathways for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students in Western MA. She was humbled and honored to join the BPI Summer Residency 2022 cohort, and looks forward to putting everything she’s learned into practice.

Tracy Westmoreland

Site Director, Yale Prison Education Initiative

Tracy Westmoreland is a long time resident of New Haven, CT and the current Site Director for the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI). Currently, all his energy is being put towards building new programming for an incoming cohort of students at Danbury Federal Correctional Institute. This will be YPEI’s first female cohort and second site overall. Previously, Tracy worked for the Missouri Department of Higher Education expanding prison education programming in the Midwest, and is part of the Vera Correctional Education Leadership Academy.