Faculty in Residence
Parkside International Residential College
Associate Professor
Rossier School of Education
Email: brendesha.tynes@gmail.com
Phone: 213.740.9567
Education:
PhD, Human Development and Psychology, UCLA
Bio + Fun Facts:
Brendesha Tynes is an associate professor of education and psychology and founding director of the Center for Empowered Learning and Development with Technology at the University of Southern California. She is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on the racial landscape adolescents navigate in online settings, online racial discrimination, digital equity in schools, digital literacy and the design of digital tools that empower students. Recently, she was awarded the Lyle Spencer Award to Transform Education, a $1 million grant to study adolescents’ critical media literacy skills, including their ability to evaluate race-related misinformation online. Tynes is co-editor of The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, & Culture Online (2016). Her work has been published widely and appears in top journals that include the Journal of Adolescent Health, Child Development, and Developmental Psychology. Tynes is the recipient of numerous awards including Ford Pre-doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships, the American Educational Research Association’s 2012 Early Career Contribution Award for scholars who have made significant scholarly contributions to communities of color, the AERA Early Career Award, and the Spencer Foundation Midcareer Award. She was also an honoree in the American Psychological Association’s Thank-a-Scientist Campaign for 2017, named one of Diverse Magazine’s Emerging Scholars under 40 and her article in the Journal of Adolescent Research was #1 (or the top 10) in the 50 most-frequently read articles for several years. She is also serving on the National Academy of Education’s Civic Reasoning and Discourse Digital Literacy Panel. Tynes is a former high school history and global studies teacher. She has a master’s in learning sciences from Northwestern and a doctorate in human development and psychology from UCLA. Before USC, she was an associate professor of educational psychology and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.