As the pandemic continues to reshape the landscape of schools across the globe, Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) will host a free, five-day virtual research conference on Oct. 4-8 to explore persistent educational inequalities in a new hybrid world. 

The event, “Beyond Barriers,” is the sixth annual conference organized by the GSE’s program in Race, Inequality and Language in Education (RILE), a doctoral program launched in 2012 to focus on issues of educational inequality. RILE is consistently one of the GSE’s most popular and competitive programs, drawing 30 to 40 times as many applications as the program can admit.  

This year’s conference will explore topics including stereotypes and racism in schools, school-induced trauma for students of color, misconceptions of critical race theory, considerations in the use of data to make sense of inequality, and issues of race and education in Latin America.  

“Our theme this year is ‘Beyond Barriers,’ because we want to push past the boundaries schools are facing today and raise our standards for education across the board,” said GSE Professor Bryan A. Brown, director of RILE. “By rethinking our boundaries, we’ll be exploring how we think about cultures beyond traditional categories of race, how we can improve education by reconsidering how we view research methods – and how we can grow together to deeply question what we assume about all people.”

The conference, which is open to the public, will take place from 3-4pm PT daily throughout the week. 

Learn more and register at the conference website.