Elianny Edwards

Assistant Professor

Areas of Expertise

Community-Engaged Research; Education Equity, Policy & Practice; School Climate & Safety; Black Youth in Schools; Race, Class & Gender in U.S Education; Adolescent Development, Purpose & Identity; Pedagogy & Instruction; Psychosocial Outcomes of Schooling; Structural Inequity & Social Oppression

Education

Ph.D., UCLA
Headshot of Elianny Edwards.

Biography

Dr. Edwards is an Educational and Community Psychologist. She joined the faculty at Holy Cross in 2022 as an Assistant Professor of Critical and Decolonial Perspectives in Psychology. An interdisciplinary scholar, her research sits at the intersection of education, human development and psychology and applies a critical lens to understand schools as ecological contexts for youth and community development. Dr. Edwards's work centers on racially and economically marginalized communities in urban cities to examine how school safety is conceptualized and experienced, and how educational policies and practices can better foster youth wellness, achievement and identity.

Sample Courses

Course Catalog
  • PSYC200: Statistics
  • PSYC285: Social Oppression & Change
  • PSYC398: Development in Context: The Impact of Race, Class & Gender on Youth Development

Select Publications

Edwards, E.C. (2025). Applying a racial lens to measures of school safety to examine Black youth perceptions and outcomes, Journal for Multicultural Education, 19 (4), 479-512.
DOI: 10.1108/JME-11-2023-0123

Edwards, E.C. & Edwards, E.J. (2024). Beyond policing: Understanding threats to school safety and who can really help. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 21(4), 1-21. DOI:10.1080/15700763.2024.2315559

Edwards, E.C. (2021). Centering race to move toward an intersectional ecological framework for defining school safety for Black students. School Psychology Review, 50 (2-3), 1-19. DOI:10.1080/2372966X.2021.1930580


Clubs & Organizations

The Housing & Educational Equity Lab (HEEL at Holy Cross), Principal Investigator

The Psychology Department, Dr. Ogretta McNeil Emerging Scholar Lecture, Committee Chair