Dr. Erin L. Castro is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Utah, and Director and Co-Founder of the University of Utah Prison Education Project. She directs the Research Collaborative on Higher Education in Prison, an evidence-based approach to expand the field of quality higher education in prison.
Erin received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, with a Graduate Minor in Gender Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Doctorate in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researching educational pilot programs through the lens of Critical Race Theory.
Her current research traces nationwide postsecondary education in prisons throughout the U.S. and analyzes prison-university partnerships and she recently received the University of Utah’s Early Career Teaching Award.