Dr. Maya Dimant

Biography

Maya Dimant is a Lecturer and Clinical Law Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Policy at Princeton University. Her work focuses on racial justice and deconstructing the modern carceral state. She sits at the intersection of experiential pedagogy, law, and alternative dispute resolution, aiming to re-envision justice systems. Maya is passionate about developing creative pedagogical models that empower students to utilize advocacy and extrajudicial tools, striving to become bold decarceration visionaries. She teaches an experiential class titled “Making Exoneree” and collaborates with Georgetown University to research and produce documentaries about the injustices faced by wrongfully convicted individuals. Previously, she served as a Friedman Fellow and co-director of the Prisoner Reentry Clinic at George Washington University Law School, where she supervised students representing incarcerated individuals and co-taught a seminar on the institutionalized white supremacy that has contributed to the prison-industrial complex. Additionally, Maya worked as an Assistant Public Defender in Maryland, representing over 1,000 clients in misdemeanor and felony proceedings after completing Gideon’s Promise training. She was also an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy in Evanston, Illinois, where she trained as a mediator and restorative justice circle keeper, focusing on breaking the school-to-prison pipeline for students from low-income families through community-based criminal defense representation and workshops.

Research Interests