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Welcome!
Current Appointments
My name is Tyler Denmead. I prefer being called Ty. I serve as an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. I also serve as the Dean of College, Official Fellow, and Director of Studies in Education at Queens' College. I am the founder of New Urban Arts in Providence, USA. This nationally-recognised arts and youth development organisation has had a major influence on my teaching and scholarship. I am the Executive Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Education and I serve as the co-Chair of the Art Education Research Institute. I formerly served as the first Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Lead Fellow at Queens' College.
Scholarship
My scholarship examines how education maintains and contests 'race' and racism as a global system of power, particularly through arts and humanities education. I am currently working on a global critical race theory of education framework with Dr. Amina Shareef, as well as a critical arts pedagogy of racialised emotions with Dr. Allison Rowe. I am the author of The Creative Underclass: Youth, Race and the Gentrifying City (Duke, 2019). This book can be read for free as an open access book.
Teaching
I pride myself as a teacher who builds meaningful and transformative learning communities with students. My core values centre on mutual respect, collaboration, and the pursuit of knowledge that challenges social inequities. I have won several teaching awards, including: 'the best doctoral supervisor' in the UK (2023); the University of Cambridge's 'best lecturer' (2019); and, I was the recipient of the Cambridge Faculty of Education's Teaching Award (2024). The University of Cambridge Student Union recognised me with a 'Student Partnership and Empowerment Award' (2023). I lead the Queens' College Education Society and oversee the Joan Whitehead Subject Fund for Education students at Queens' College.
Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (Queens’). 2012
Master of Philosophy, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (Queens’). 2008
Bachelor of Arts, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University (USA). 1998
Honours
Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow (2021)
United States Congressional Proclamation (29 April 2007)
Echoing Green Fellowship (1998)
Royce Fellowship, Brown University (1997)
Doctoral Education
Prospective Students
I welcome doctoral students whose scholarship focuses on 'race' and racism in education from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective. I also welcome applications from students who are working on critical debates in arts and humanities education. My prior students have employed a wide range of critical perspectives on their projects: cultural studies, decolonial and postcolonial thought, critical Muslim studies, Black studies, women of colour feminist thought, Black feminist thought, and critical race theory. Their scholarship has been based in various national contexts, including US, Palestine, India, China, US, and Britain. I provide a robust doctoral education for students, including: individual supervision, fortnightly seminars, thematic symposia, and writing weeks. I frequently publish with my doctoral students.
Prior Students
Dr. Damiola Folayan (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2025). Of, but not in: A poetic exploration of how Black women students respond to the coloniality of Oxbridge. Submitted.
Dr. Ranjini Nair (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2025).Undoing Angashuddhi: Interrogating Indian Classical Dance and the nation.
Dr. Deborah Yeboah (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2025). Healing the colonial wound: Decolonising Ghanaian art education through reparative art praxis.
Dr. Alice McNeil (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2024). Troubling creativity discourses: A Foucauldian feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis of the idea of ‘creative subjects’ in public texts and in the context of A-level decision.
Dr. Shuling Wang (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2024). Racism in China's English language teaching industry: English as a race-making technology.
Dr. Amina Shareef (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2024). Besieged life: Subjecting liberal Muslim women in the War on Terror. Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Education.
Dr. Allison Rowe (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate College, 2021). The social throughout: A multi-sited ethnographic case study of socially engaged art at the gallery.
Dr. Fiona Peacocke (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2023). What did I do? I don’t know. Generating fiction to examine the tacit maternal knowing I bring to my Theraplay® practice with children who are experiencing relational and developmental trauma.
Dr. Heather Harris (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate College, 2017). The collaboration conundrum: Negotiating educator priorities in an intensive museum-school partnership.
Dr. Hong-An Wu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate College, 2017). Critical play: An action research investigation.
Current Students
Lily Stone (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). Making sense: A qualitative study of the pedagogy of tactile picture books for children with vision impairments. Expected graduation term: Easter Term 2025.
Victoria Xiao (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2024).
Maryambibi Bham (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). 'Critical nuslim theory and the re-imagining of identity, power, and resistance among early career Muslim teachers in British schools.’
Duaa Karim (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). Impartiality at the end of the world: A critical discourse analysis of regulations and guidance.
Feifan Lou (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). Investigating participatory decolonial pedagogy in museum exhibitions for Chinese Pprticipants in China and UK.
Tasnim Ali (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education).
Nicola Tagoe (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). Pedagogical encounters: Relational interactions between Black teachers and Black students in one-to-one lessons in Western classical music education.
Select Publications
Denmead, T., & Rowe, A. (in press). Reckoning with White empathy: Towards a critical affective arts-based pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review.
Wang, S., & Denmead, T. (2025). White profitability: An intersectional critique of Chinese women’s reckoning with the English Language Teaching (ELT) Industry in China. Race, Ethnicity and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2025.2474951.
Denmead, T., Shareef, A., & Karim, D. (2024). White educability: Lessons from the terror trial of a far-right nationalist in England. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2396906.
Denmead, T. (2024). Visual Art as a Racemaking Technology: Implications for Education. Studies in Art Education, 65(1), 48–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2023.2285210.
Denmead, T. (2021). Time after whiteness: Performative pedagogy and temporal subjectivities in art education. Studies in Art Education, 62(2), 130–141.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2021.1896252.
Denmead, T. (2019). The Creative Underclass: Youth, Race, and the Gentrifying City (Duke University Press). Open Access
Denmead, T. (2019). Tier two worker remote office: Resisting the marketization of higher education. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 16(1), 6–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2018.1500325.
Denmead, T. (2018). On the concept of youth in art education: A review of the literature. Studies in Art Education, 59(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2017.1401866.