Javier Cardona Otero has won the 2025 Arts & Inquiry Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Education Research Association.

Cardona Otero’s dissertation, Taxonomía of a Spicy Espécimen: A Public Performative Pedagogy, is an autoethnographic research project in which the performance art of Taxonomía of a Spicy Espécimen is contextualized within reflexive self-criticality: “Through this study, I inquire into Taxonomía as a praxis that crafts a public site of engagement to gather people as “spect-actors” to co-operate in a collective and collaborative pedagogy that is embodied and performative.”

Cardona Otero, an adjunct professor of art education, characterized his dissertation as non-traditional, and said he was surprised when he won the award from AERA. His work has also been recognized by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, who recently awarded him the prestigious and non-restrictive 2025 Robert Rauschenberg Award for artistic achievement.

Cardona Otero is currently working on a new research project and performance art, “Ancestral Flights,” will research notions of dreaming, flight, diasporic thoughts, and migration.