Olivia Marcucci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advanced Studies in Education and core faculty at the Center for Safe and Healthy Schools at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. She is a critical qualitative social scientist dedicated to transforming American K-12 schools into communities that provide all children equal opportunity to thrive.
Dr. Marcucci’s scholarship primarily examines the organizational, socio-cultural, and psychological processes through which Black children and other students of color are hyper-disciplined and socially controlled. Her work has evolved from examining formalized discipline (referrals, suspensions, expulsions) to investigating the informal, everyday practices through which schools control and regulate students’ behaviors, bodies, and access to opportunities. She conceptualizes school discipline as ecologically situated within—and mutually constitutive with—larger systems of in/justice in society, investigating both carceral logics in schools and the anti-carceral alternatives. Her 2023 study in American Educational Research Journal (co-authored with Rowhea Elmesky), which questions the usefulness of cultural mismatch hypotheses and argues for understanding the hyper-disciplining of Black students through the specific heuristics of antiblackness, was awarded the Sociology of Education Association’s 2025 Outstanding Paper Award.
As an applied, community-engaged researcher, Dr. Marcucci maintains several additional research threads in collaboration with diverse community organizations and school systems, including work on independent schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; state takeover of school boards in predominantly Black districts; an evaluation of Touchy Topics Tuesday, an antiracist grassroots educational organization; and a research-practice partnership addressing behavioral and mental health needs in a predominantly Black district.
Dr. Marcucci has published over 30 written pieces, including 20 peer-reviewed articles in outlets such as American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, Urban Education, and Teachers College Record. She serves as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on numerous grants, including funding from the Spencer Foundation, Johns Hopkins’ Catalyst Award, and the Johns Hopkins Nexus Convening Grant.
At Johns Hopkins, she serves as Faculty Lead for the Urban Leadership area in the Education Doctorate program and teaches courses including ‘Critical Theory’, ‘Organizations & Institutions’, and ‘Partnerships & Community Organizing’. She was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award by the Johns Hopkins School of Education in 2021.
Dr. Marcucci holds a PhD and MSW from Washington University in St. Louis.
Keywords: Race; inequality; K-12 education; school discipline; restorative justice; urban education.
