Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is pleased to announce the addition of new co-editor. Rhiannon M. Maton, PhD is Associate Professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department at the State University of New York at Cortland. Dr. Maton will join Workplace as co-editor in January 2026.
Dr. Maton’s scholarship examines the intersections of teachers’ work, labor activism, and educational inequality across Canada and the U.S. Trained as a critical scholar of education with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Maton’s work brings together labor studies, educational leadership, and critical educational foundations to illuminate how educators understand, resist, and transform the social and material conditions of their work.
Her research has appeared in leading international journals including Teachers College Record; Curriculum Inquiry; History of Education Quarterly; Critical Studies in Education; Journal of Educational Change; and Gender, Work & Organization. She regularly publishes in Critical Education, Workplace, and Spectre journals, and strives to reach a practitioner and public audience through the creative use of multigenre communication methods. Across these publications and others, she advances critical and foresightful analyses of teachers’ work, educators’ grassroots organizing and unions, and the ongoing tensions between a common good ethic and the structural and institutional constraints of public schooling. Her scholarship consistently foregrounds the voices of educator practitioners, organizers, and activists, while drawing attention to their collective potency in challenging structural inequities and expanding the democratic possibilities of schooling. Maton’s research contributions have been recognized through several recent honors, including the Waring & DiNardo Outstanding Achievement in Research Award, which acknowledges her sustained impact on critical scholarship on teachers’ work and labor justice.
In addition to her research, Maton brings extensive editorial experience to her new role as Co-Editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. She currently serves as Managing Editor of Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, where she supports feminist, anti-colonial, and gender justice-oriented scholarship through collaborative editorial processes. She views editorial work as a necessary space for elevating the intellectual strength and contributions of the radical left, and is committed to providing one-on-one mentorship and developmental writing support to new and emerging scholars—particularly those historically marginalized in academia.
Maton also plays a significant role in curating and advancing themed scholarship in the fields of labor organizing and teachers’ work. She is a co-editor of the Routledge series Critical Perspectives on Teaching and Teachers’ Work, alongside Denisha Jones and Arlo Kempf. This series brings together scholarship that examines teachers’ labor, professionalism, activism, and the broader social, political, and economic contexts that shape educators’ work globally. Through this role, Maton supports book projects that push the field in new theoretical and political directions, deepening scholarly engagement with issues of justice, labor, and educational transformation.
Her editorial experience also includes guest-editing four special issues of Critical Education with Erin Dyke and Lauren Ware Stark, which highlight interdisciplinary work on educator activism, transformative pedagogies, and the political economies of schooling. Most recently, she co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Teachers’ Work: International Perspectives on Research and Practice with Nina Bascia, a landmark volume mapping the global terrain of educators’ labor, professionalism, and collective action.
Across her research and editorial leadership, Maton remains committed to cultivating rigorous, accessible, and socially engaged scholarship. She looks forward to supporting authors in developing contributions that deepen critical conversations about K-12 and higher education, academic labor, and radical equity-oriented social transformation.
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Workplace published its first issue in1998. Closely connected to activism emerging from the Graduate Student Caucus of the Modern Language Association, the journal’s founding editors were Marc Bousquet (then of the University of Louisville) and Kent Puckett (then of Columbia University, currently UC Berkeley). The journal was originally hosted by the University of Louisville and moved to the University of British Columbia in 2012 with the archive of past issues republished in 2014 on the Open Journal System platform and hosted by the UBC Library.
Previous editors of Workplace include Stephen Petrina (University of British Columbia), Chris Carter (University of Oklahoma), Gordon Lafer (University of Oregon), Gary Rhoades (University of Arizona), Bruce Simon (State University of New York at Fredonia), Bill Vaughn (Central Missouri State University) and
Katherine Wills (then of University of Louisville, currently Indiana University Purdue University Columbus).
Workplace: A Journal of Academic Labor is a refereed, diamond open access journal published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES) and a collective of scholars in critical university studies, or critical higher education, promoting dignity and integrity in academic work. Contributions are aimed at higher education workplace scholar-activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labor.
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