Cristina Santamaría Graff

Cristina Santamaría Graff (biracial Mexicana) is an Assistant Professor of Special Education, Urban Teacher Education at Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis (IUPUI) (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2009). She has expertise in bilingual/multicultural special education and applies her skills in working with Latinx immigrant families of children with dis/abilities in family-centered and -driven projects. Her scholarship focuses on the ways community-engaged partnerships with families and other stakeholders can transform inequitable practices impacting youth with dis/abilities at the intersections of race, language, and other identity markers of difference.

She is one of the Editors for the journal Multiple Voices: Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education, the AERA SIG Program Chair for Spirituality and Education and a Board Member of IN*SOURCE (Indiana Resource Center for Families with Special Needs). Her scholarship has been nationally recognized through The Ernest A. Lynton Scholarship of Engagement Award (2019) and AERA’s award for Exemplary Contributions to Practice-Engaged Research (2019).

Selected publications include: Co-investigation and co-education in ‘Family as Faculty’ approaches: A repositioning of power (2021), Examining preservice special education teachers’ biases and evolving understandings about families through a Family as Faculty approach (2020), and Models of School-Family Relations (with Dr. Brandon Sherman) (2020).