Dr. Thais Council joined the University of Kentucky as an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the College of Education and a Faculty Affiliate of African American and Africana Studies in 2021 after nearly two decades as a reading specialist, literacy advocate, and teacher educator. Her scholarship focuses on how literacy policy and Black-led community-based practices can repair structural inequities and harm imposed upon historically marginalized urban schools and disenfranchised communities. She employs the Black Intellectual Tradition as a theoretical lens to privilege the lives and wisdom of Black people and participatory research methods as a methodological alternative to academic research conducted through a hegemonic gaze.