Pharren Miller

/in /by

Pharren Miller

Graduate Student

Email: pharrenmiller@ucla.edu


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Degrees

  • C.Phil., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2024
  • M.A., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2023
  • B.A., Political Science and Afro-American Studies, Howard University, 2021

Fields of Study

Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Ethnography, Education, Black Girlhood Studies, Black Feminisms, Carcerality, Abolition

Research

Pharren Miller (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology department whose research interests include: Black feminist theory, Black girlhood studies, education, carcerality, abolition ethnography, and comparative history. Pharren currently uses qualitative research methods to examine the ways gendered antiBlackness impacts Black girlhood in schools.

Publications

  • Miller, Pharren. Critical Contradictions: How Black Girlhood in Schools Complicates Controlling Images. Gender & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177_08912432251375114
  • Murray, Bethany Jo, Pharren Miller, Shan Missouri, and David C. Turner III. “(Abolitionist) Care, Not Cops: How Police Free School Organizers Redefine Safety as Care” Forthcoming. Youth Justice.

Awards & Grants

  • 2025-2026 AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research Award
  • 2025-2026 Semi-Finalist, NA/Ed Spencer Dissertation Fellowship
  • 2024-2025 Jean Stone Dissertation Research Fellowship
  • 2024  Summer UCLA/Keck Humanistic Inquiry Graduate Research Award
  • 2023-2024 UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship
  • 2023 UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Fellowship
  • 2022-2023 Mariame Kaba Black Feminism Initiative Graduate Fellowship
  • 2022 Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
  • 2022  UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Fellowship
  • 2021-Present UC-HBCU Fellowship
  • 2021-2025 Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship
  • 2021-2022 Susan Kellogg Endowed Student Award in the Sociology of Gender
  • 2021 UCLA Competitive Edge

Conference Presentations

  • “Chaotic Spaces: School, Space, Place, and the Criminalization of Black Students.”American Sociological Association, Chicago, Illinois. August 2025.
  • Taking Stock of
MeToo to Consider its Future. Invited Panelist. American Sociological Association, Montreal, Québec. August 2024.
  • “ m.A.A.d City: Chaotic Spaces as Carcerality in the Afterlives of Slavery.” Association of Black Sociologists Annual Conference, Montreal, Québec. August 2024.
  • “Black Girl Abolition: Safe Spaces and Acts of Refusal as Resisting Carcerality” Association of Black Sociologists Annual Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. August 2023
  • “We Got the Right to be Mad: Controlling Images, AntiBlackness, Carcerality, and Black Girlhood in Schools”  2023 SSSP Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. August 2023
  • “We Won’t Stop Until It’s Done”: A Study of the LA Police-Free Schools Campaign.”  Abolitions Conference at UCDC, Washington, D.C. May 2023
  •  “Reclaiming OUR Time: Centering Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales in the Black Feminist Tradition of Safe Spaces.” Thinking Gender 2023: Transforming Research: Feminist Methods for Times of Crisis and Possibility, Los Angeles, California. February 2023.
  • “Are The (Black) Girls Alright? The Policing of Black Girls in Schools and The Ways We Resist.” Association of Black Sociologists Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois. October 2022
  • “Crown Under Siege: The Policing of Black Girls’ Hair in School.” Tuskegee University History Research Symposium, Tuskegee, AL. February 2021.

Advisors

  • Vilma Ortiz and Jasmine Hill