Joey Dickinson is interested in how people form attitudes about immigrants and immigration, including how families and schools talk about the issue. They’re particularly interested in how native-born people respond to new information to construct immigrants as a threat in their minds and how a collective public imagination has become hyperfixated on the issue. Additionally, she’s interested in how teachers comply with or resist restrictions on what they can talk about in the classroom, including topics such as DEI, critical race theory, and U.S. history of colonialism and racial oppression.