Ashley Zhou is a student of the Joint Doctoral program in special education with UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Her research focuses on structures of race, class, gender, and disability in special education through the role of the paraprofessional. Analyzing historical archives, she examines the labor formation of paraprofessionals and special education teachers in the aftermath of Brown. Her work also incorporates ethnography to examine the consequences of this labor formation for contemporary challenges in special education. Through this investigation of educational labor, Ashley’s research interrogates the ontological and epistemological claims to power of special education, a system that shapes notions of disability and capability within a racialized, abelist, capitalist society.
Ashley has also served as the Head Editor of the Berkeley Review of Education.
