Doctor of Philosophy: Urban Education (2012) 
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department 
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.

Dr. Royal 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. She returned to Maryland in 2014 when she joined the faculty of Loyola University Maryland. There, she co-directed the Center for Innovation in Urban Education and led the urban education minor.

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 and recently earned the 2024 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. 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 directs doctoral studies in Urban Educational Leadership and is an Associate Professor.

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

Selected Publications

Backer, D. I. and Royal, C. (2024). Toxic Finance: Underinvestment in Philadelphia’s school buildings, 1993- 2021. Journal of Educational Administration and History special issue, Critical School Finance, pp. 1-18. 

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).