I am a project scientist in the EcoGovLab working on environmental injustice, climate change and case study research curriculum for California’s 11th and 12th grade students. My research focuses on K-16 education, feminist science studies, epistemic justice, experimental research design and methods, and transformational pedagogy. 

Working at the intersection of participatory research, visual ethnography, youth studies and disability studies, I have been interested in innovating the boundaries of educational media. Before returning to academia, I was an independent television producer working on educational programming for PBS and The Science Channel.  I use those skills to teach documentary filmmaking in UCLA’s Disability Studies program when possible. 

My research examines how youth learn and produce expertise about science, medicine and their own bodies and lives. As a graduate student I produced a short film entitled “Children’s Voices and Agency in Math Learning.” My dissertation, Coming of Age in High-Tech Medicine: Heart Transplantation, Collaborative Visual Storytelling and Transformational Pedagogy (2020), examines how young people learn to care for themselves in the context of modern medicine and disability. This research produced two short films that have been screened for transplant patients and their families, medical practitioners, and caregivers; undergraduate students and researchers and scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies.  

My written publications include “Gendering the History of Science,” Nuncius (1991); “Photographier Bali: la vision, la réflexivité et le réel ethnographique,” Xoana (1994); “From Theory to Practice: How Pre-service Science Teachers Learn to Become Social Justice Educators,” ISLS (2018); Next Generation Radiation Governance (2021), and An Exquisite Corpse: Experiments in Practicing Better Relations as Scholars During Uncertain Times (2021). 

My collaborative projects include Three Iris, a documentary film and research collaborative with Jade Vu Henry that creates and curates feminist stories about science, technology, and society; as well as a longitudinal ethnographic study with Fred Ariel Hernandez examining K-12 schools in the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) of Southern California respond to complex and compounded crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, racism and persistent educational, health, environmental, and economic disparities.  

I earned my Ph.D. from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education in Social Science and Comparative Education in 2020. My work has been supported by the National Academy of Education (NAED)—Spencer Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). 

 Learn more about Nadine Tanio here.