First Impressions: A Look at the School’s New Faculty

Natasha Kumar Warikoo, Ed.M.’97, assistant professor of education
Focus: incorporation of children of immigrants into U.S and British societies and their educational systems
Pre-Ed School: assistant professor in U.S. studies, University of London
Grew up: Johnstown, Pa.
Favorite book: White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Inspiration: My office in London overlooked Tavistock Square, which has a statue of Gandhi in the center. His image and thinking about satyagraha [the philosophy of nonviolent resistance] inspired me every morning.
Historical figure you would like to take to lunch: [Brazilian educator and theorist] Paolo Friere

Deborah Jewell-Sherman, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D.’95, senior lecturer
Focus: educational leadership
Pre-Ed School: superintendent, Richmond (Va.) City Public Schools
Grew up: Bronx, N.Y.
Favorite book: The Measure of Our Success, Marian Wright Edelman
Inspiration: my mother, Jeanne Jewell Bryan, M.A.T.’72
Historical figure you would like to take to lunch: [civil rights activist] Fannie Lou Hamer, symbol of courage in the face of danger and overwhelming odds

Christina Collins, Harvard postdoctoral fellow on education
Focus: history of American education, with particular interests in urban schooling and issues of racial and ethnic equity
Pre-Ed School: postdoctoral fellow, Rutgers University
Grew up: Gibbstown, N.J.
Favorite book: The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin
Inspiration: Alan Dawley, my undergraduate thesis advisor at the College of New Jersey, who inspired me to combine scholarship with social justice activism
Historical figure you would like to take to lunch: Martin Luther King Jr.

Diana Leyva, Harvard postdoctoral fellow on education
Focus: how adult-child interactions support the development of preschool children’s development of symbolic understanding in
Latino and European-American communities
Pre-Ed School: visiting assistant professor, Mount Holyoke College
Grew up: Bogota, Colombia
Favorite book: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Inspiration: Professors Elaine Reese and Marianne Wiser; and many Colombians, like [entertainers] Juanes and Shakira, and current president Alvaro Uribe
Historical figure you would like to take to lunch: Martin Luther King Jr.

Paola Uccelli, Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’03, assistant professor of education
Focus: sociocultural and individual differences in early language development and in academic literacy
Pre-Ed School: postdoctoral fellow, Ed School
Grew up: Lima, Peru
Favorite book: Los Rios Profundos [Deep Rivers], Jose Maria Arguedas
Inspiration: My grandfather passed on his passionate love for life. He, however, was conservative and did not allow my mother to go to college. When I was born, my mother held me in her arms, and the first thing she ever told me was, “You will go to college.”

Jal Metha, assistant professor of education
Focus: relationship between educational reform and broader social, economic, cultural, and intellectual currents
Pre-Ed School: postdoctoral fellow, Ed School
Grew up: Baltimore, Md.
Favorite books: On Beauty, Zadie Smith, and Fast Man on a Pivot, Duane Decker
Inspiration: My passion for justice comes from growing up in a highly segregated and unequal city. My inspiration for what it might mean to be do education well comes from my K–12 school, the Park School.
Historical figure you would like to take to lunch: Immanuel Kant

About the Article

A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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