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Introduction

My name is Tyler (Ty) Denmead. I serve as a Professor of Education (as of October 2026) 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 was 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 the cultural politics of race in education.

I am the author of two books:

Rethinking Critical Race Theory: Education Against Elimination in a Time of Genocide (w/ Amina Shareef; Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) (open access);
The Creative Underclass: Youth, Race and the Gentrifying City (Duke, 2019) (open access).

My current book project is tentatively titled:

The White Rage Curriculum: The Reactionary Politics Against Humanities Education “After Man” at Stanford in the Reagan Eighties.

I am also the author of the journal articles and book chapters listed here.

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, 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.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (Queens’). 2012

Master of Philosophy, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (Queens’). 2008 (distinction)

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

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.

Current Doctoral Students

Maryam Bham. ‘Critical Muslim theory and the re-imagining of identity, power, and resistance among early career Muslim teachers in British schools.’
Duaa Karim. Impartiality at the end of the world: A critical discourse analysis of regulations and guidance.
Feifan Lou. Investigating participatory decolonial pedagogy in museum exhibitions for Chinese Pprticipants in China and UK.
Tasnim Ali. Sacred Spaces in Secular Settings: A Critical Study of Islamic Prayer Rooms in British Universities.
Nicola Tagoe. Pedagogical encounters: Relational interactions between Black teachers and Black students in one-to-one lessons in Western classical music education.
Dalya Saleh. Sanctuary in UK Higher Education: Conceptualisations, Institutional Practices, and Lived Expereinces of Refugee and Migrant Students.
Betsy Zaubler. Building a Black World: The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School and Radical Possibilities of Education

Completed Doctoral Students

Dr. Victoria Xiao (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education 2026). Fractured Fantasies: Counternarratives of Chinese International Students Amidst Intensifying U.S.–China Tensions After the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Dr. Lily Stone (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education 2026). Making sense: A qualitative study of the pedagogy of tactile picture books for children with vision impairments.
Dr. Dami 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.
Dr. Ranjini Nair (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, 2025).Undoing Angashuddhi: Interrogating Indian Classical Dance and the nation.
Dr. Debbie 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.

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