#  Darien Dey 

 

 



   ![Darien Dey GSA](/sites/g/files/omnuum12451/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-07/Darien%20Dey.jpg?h=4d4dd277&itok=LoMbfnKw) 

 



 





 

Darien Dey is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research explores the history of Black education in the British West Indies, particularly in Guyana, where she grew up. She examines how African-Guyanese educational practices, especially those embedded in free villages (i.e. lands first purchased by formerly enslaved people upon emancipation) both overlapped with and challenged missionary-led schooling during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on archival materials and oral histories, Darien recovers the experiences and perspectives of African-Guyanese teachers and students often absent from the colonial record. She also treats the built environments where schooling occurred, and their relationship to the surrounding landscape, as carriers of educational histories that written sources alone cannot tell. Before coming to Harvard, she taught first grade in Harlem, New York, where she developed writing curricula centered on Black resistance movements. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and an M.A. in Teaching from the University of Chicago.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Academic Year
    
     [2026-2027](/academic-year/2026-2027)
- ## Location
    
     [Cambridge](/locations/cambridge-office)
- ## People
    
     [Graduate Student Associate](/people/graduate-student-associate)