Stephanie Virginia Reist is a Lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education at Stanford University. Prior to coming to Stanford, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Education Department at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, financed by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. She completed a PhD in Romance Studies with a focus on Latin American Cultural Studies as well as a Master's in Public Policy at Duke University in 2018. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Williams College.

An interdisciplinary ethnographer, Stephanie’s research and writing focus on issues of race, public policy, Black feminisms, cultural production, youth, and urban belonging in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Specifically, she is interested in the relationship between youth movements and access to higher education in Rio's predominately Black, working-class urban peripheries. As part of her commitment to public scholarship, her writing has been featured in RioOnWatch, Times Higher Education, The Independent, Baffler Magazine, and Jacobin Magazine.

She also co-directed a short documentary on expanded access to higher education in Brazil that can be seen here: https://youtu.be/Q_60CIxvLHY