Amy Swain, PhD

Dr. Amy Swain is a builder, dreamer, and storyteller. She is a Teaching Assistant Professor at East Carolina University, where she teaches courses in the social foundations of education. She also proudly serves as a faculty associate with the Rural Education Institute in the College of Education at ECU. Her research focuses on the enduring legacies of racial capitalism and settler colonialism on rural education in the Black Belt, particularly in eastern North Carolina, and she specializes in rural education, racial equity, and transformative justice. Her work has been published in The Rural Educator, Theory and Practice in Education, Educational Studies, Qualitative Inquiry, and The Urban Review.

Over the last two decades, Swain has worked in and with public schools in beloved community where love and justice are centralized as living practices. A former elementary, middle, and high school teacher, Swain’s experiences in the classroom have taught her that our students must have an opportunity to learn in schools where human dignity is magnified and protected if we are to live free. It is toward this end that Swain works to build beloved community for all.

She holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from East Carolina University, an M.A. in Culture, Curriculum, and Change from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a PhD in Culture, Curriculum, and Change from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a native of eastern North Carolina and lives in Martin County, North Carolina. Faith is the foundation of her life, and on that she is raising two beautifully strong and tender young men. She loves to draw and eat jellybeans.