Diversity Research in Action

Professor Emerita, Denny Taylor is the co-founder of Garn Press, and a global scholar and activist. She was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2019 she received Columbia University's Distinguished Alumni Award and also the NCRLL Distinguished Scholar Award.James Paul Gee writes, Denny is, in my view, one of the most brilliant and important scholars of sociocultural approaches to literacy in the 20th century-a field to which I contributed as well. Her work on literacy combines technical sophistication about language and a deep commitment to human dignity and social change. She has always worked at the intersection of human development both in terms of the development of language, literacy, and learning in children, but also in the sense of the development of more humane people, institutions, and societies.Since 1977 Denny has been continuously engaged in research with families living in extreme poverty, and in regions of armed conflict and weather related catastrophes. The concept of family literacy originates in her doctoral research at TC, Columbia University. Today, there are family literacy initiatives in most UN Member States established to build more just, peaceful and inclusive societies. Family literacy has become a conduit for many local and regional initiatives to address poverty and hunger, public health emergencies, gender inequality, and strengthen partnerships to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.Most recently Denny has used her evidence-based research on family, literacy and learning to focus on existential risks and science based macrostrategies for achieving the SDGs and human survival. Her many books span the sciences, and include novels and children's books as well as research texts. Accounts of her research on families, literacy and catastrophic events are available on her website together with many of her publications on family literacy in global contexts.