Doctor of Philosophy: Urban Education (2012)
Temple University

Master of Arts in Teaching: English Education (2001)
Johns Hopkins University

Bachelor of Arts: English Literature (1999)
North Carolina Central University

Dr. Camika Royal is an incisive scholar-warrior, a critical race theorist, an urban education expert with more
than 20 years of experience, and a fierce defender of our collective humanity. 
She uses her teaching, speaking, and writing to oppose anglonormativity, antiblack racism, cultural oppression, patriarchy, and transphobia.
Her work focuses on the intersections of race, politics, history, and urban school reform. After teaching,
coaching teachers, and helping to lead a charter high school in the public schools of Baltimore City and
Washington, D.C., Dr. Royal returned to her hometown—Philadelphia—and transitioned to higher
education. She taught pre-service teachers at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania other colleges and
universities in the Philadelphia and Baltimore regions, while she continued to coach and support urban 
school leaders and teacher educators. Dr. Royal’s debut book, Not Paved For Us: Black Educators and
Public School Reform in Philadelphia, was released in 2022 from Harvard Education Press. 
She is a highly requested speaker, consultant, and professional developer on issues of school 
context-based racism and other forms of oppression through ideologies, policies, and practices. 
In 2024, Dr. Royal joined the faculty of Morgan State University, where she is currently Program Director and Associate Professor of Urban Education Leadership.

Research Interests
Black educators; The racism of American schooling; Historical and sociopolitical context of urban school
reform; The politics of schooling

Selected Publications
Royal, C. (2022). Not paved for us: Black educators and public school reform in Philadelphia. Cambridge: Harvard
Education Press.
Royal, C. and Cothorne, A. (2021). School closures and urban education. In Handbook of Urban Education,
Second Edition, Kofi Lomotey and H. Richard Milner (Eds.). Routledge
Royal, C. and Dodo Seriki, V. (2018). Overkill: Black lives and the spectacle of the Atlanta cheating scandal.
Urban Education special issue, Urban Youth, Schooling, and Education in the Era of Black Lives Matter, 53(2) 196-211.
Royal, C. and Gibson, S. (2017). “They schools”: Culturally relevant pedagogy under siege. Teachers College
Record special issue, A dream deferred: A retrospective view of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, 119(1).

Royal, C. and Davis, J. E. (2010). Leaders of the new school: Teachers as leaders in the future of school
reform. New perspectives in educational leadership: Exploring social, political, and community contexts in meaning, Sonya
Horsford (Ed.). New York: Peter Lang.