Brynn Welch PhD

Brynn Welch raised in northeast Tennessee and attended Davidson College in North Carolina before pursuing graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. she earned her MA there in 2008 — the same year her beloved Davidson Wildcats handily defeated the UW Badgers in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament — and her Ph.D. in 2012. While there, she was awarded a College of Letters & Sciences Teaching Fellowship, recognizing outstanding undergraduate teachers.

In 2012 she moved to Abingdon, Virginia, to teach at Emory & Henry College, where she taught a wide range of classes, including courses focusing on the family, synthetic biology, contemporary problems of justice, health care ethics, and the role of social media in social justice movements around the world. she served on the Women's and Gender Studies Collective, chaired a task force to improve diversity and inclusion within the Honors Program, and served as an advisor to Sigma Upsilon Nu, a local social sorority. In 2016 she received the Outstanding Faculty Award, given to the faculty member students select as exhibiting outstanding teaching and mentorship, both in and out of the classroom.

In 2016 she joined the faculty at UAB. her current research focuses on the ethics of children's literature. In particular, she is concerned about the lack of multidimensional people of color in children's literature, as well as the lack of diverse family structures, physical and mental abilities, religions, etc.