Castel Sweet, PhD is a practitioner-scholar whose work lives at the intersection of race, culture, and place. Rooted in sociology and shaped by lived experience, her approach blends critical inquiry with hands-on community work using research not only to understand the world, but to help transform it. For Castel, scholarship is not an abstract exercise. It is a relational and participatory practice grounded in bell hooks’ belief that education should be a practice of freedom. She engages in the continuous negotiation of theory and practice, recognizing that knowledge is most powerful when it is applied in ways that honor lived experiences and drive meaningful change. Her work exists in the hyphen of practitioner-scholar — an active, fluid space that demands both critical reflection and responsive action.
Central to her practice is place-based engagement: the understanding that place is not just context, but a collaborator in the work. Castel sees communities not as sites of intervention, but as sources of wisdom where knowledge is co-created, stories matter, and transformation begins with relationship. Whether collaborating with artists, students, or grassroots leaders, she seeks to make visible the insights already present in community, and to support their amplification through research, storytelling, and solidarity. Castel’s scholarship is about learning, doing, and making a real impact. She strives to build bridges between academic spaces and everyday life — using research to inform action and action to refine theory. Her goal is to leverage scholarship as a tool for empowerment, ensuring that it serves communities in ways that foster resilience, justice, and transformation — echoing a vision of engaged pedagogy that turns knowledge into liberatory practice.
Publications
Peer Review Article
“Virtual and In-Person Community-
Engaged Learning: Is Student Learning Virtually the Same?”
Book Chapter
“Leveraging Experiential Learning to Create
Inclusive Community at Predominantly White Institutions.”
Book Chapter
“A Journey Approach to Vocation: Contextualizing Immersion Experiences for Vocation Exploration.”
Blog Post
“Demands for Racial Justice Necessitate an Examination of Current Community-University Partnerships.”
Peer Reviewed Article
“What Would I Look Like?”: How Concentrated Disadvantage Impacts Hip-Hop Artists’ Connections to Community.”
Encyclopedia Entries
“Afrika Bambaataa”, “DJ Kool Herc”, “Dungeon Family”, “Outkast”, and “Universal Zulu Nation”.
Book Chapter
“The Effects of Hurricane Katrina on Black Women: Understanding Women’s Fear through an Intersectional Lens.”
Peer Reviewed Article
“Trying to build the community up”: An Exploration of the Social Impacts of Louisiana Urban Community Gardens.”