Kayla Boisvert

Kayla Boisvert, Ph.D., is an independent research consultant at the intersection of aid, philanthropy, education, and social services within the US and globally. Her aim is to shift the ecosystems around young people using a reparative justice lens.

She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation, entitled “COVID-19: A Global Education Crisis or a Crisis of Global Education? A Critical Analysis of the COVID-19 Education Response” questioned the colonial and racial logics of the global humanitarian and development architecture and how that impacts young people in emergency contexts. Her current research looks at the role of community organizing groups and direct-service nonprofits in catalyzing systems and policy change that better reflects the lived experiences of children and families in the US. Prior to that, she conducted research and developed tools and guidance on accelerated education programming to reach out-of-school children and youth in emergency contexts.

In her research, she uses comics and other arts-based methods to generate data, share findings, and reach wider audiences. See some of her comics on reparations in the US, her reflections on being a reparative scholar-practitioner, and more on her Medium page! 

Select Publications

Boisvert, K. (2025). A scholar-practitioner’s reparative journey: Lessons from the global COVID-19 education response. https://medium.com/@kaylajustine/a-scholar-practitioners-reparative-journey-c6f749d40bee 

Shah, R., Boisvert, K., Restrepo Saenz, A. M., Egbujuo, C., & Nasrallah, M. (2023). Education in emergencies research partnerships through the looking glass. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 22(3), 505–521.

Boisvert, K. (2022). Education for what? Human capital, human rights, and protection discourses in the COVID-19 response. Frontiers in Education, 7:1008260.