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Degrees & Programs
CONCENTRATION: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
INTERESTS: South Asian Philosophy of Education, Alternative Education, Social Epistemology, Liberatory Education in Practice, Institutional Analysis, Ethnographies of Schooling
Devika Agrawal is a philosopher and anthropologist of education, focusing on the anti-colonial alternative education movement of India that continues to flourish. More specifically, she looks at pedagogies and institutions that sustain independent thinking and epistemic autonomy.
CONCENTRATION: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
INTERESTS: Measurement, Causal Inference, Program Evaluation, Accountability Policy, Equity, Fairness
CONCENTRATION: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
INTERESTS: Teaching and Learning, Reasoning and Thinking, Classroom Discourse, Multilingual Pedagogy, Curriculum Design, Bilingualism, Hindi-medium Education
Apoorv Avram's research tries to understand how adolescents develop and use reasoning in school. His doctoral work looks at how English-medium classrooms in Delhi, India use Hindi in teaching-learning practices. His work borrows methods from philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
INTERESTS: Teacher Recruitment and Retention, Teacher Quality, Program Evaluation, Policy Evaluation Causal Inference
INTERESTS: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Black, Adolescence, Intersectionality, Interventions, Relationships
Mamfatou Baldeh is a Ph.D. student in the AERID lab working with Dr. Adriana Umaña-Taylor. Her research interests center the education, identity development, and relationship/community-building experiences of Black adolescents and other students of color.
INTERESTS: Student Agency, Social Cognitive Theory, Critical and Institutional Sociology, Psychometrics and Scale Development, Mixed Methods Research, AI in Education, Post-Pandemic Student Engagement
Nick Balisciano is a veteran educator who leverages social cognitive theory, critical and institutional sociology, and mixed methods to reconceptualize and measure student agency, i.e., how students influence the nature and quality of their learning.
INTERESTS: Anthropology of Education, Immigrant Education, Ethnographic Methods, Migrant Youth
Ben Blanco is interested in how school and work experiences of high-school age, youth migrants before and after migration to the United States shape their aspirations. Ben uses ethnographic methods, including participant observation and interviews.
INTERESTS: Multilingualism, Educational Linguistics, Immigrant Education, Native Language Instruction, Language and Literacy Development
Bailey Buchanan studies multilingual language and literacy development in children and adolescents, particularly newcomers, in the U.S. context. She is interested in native language instruction and educational experiences that celebrate students’ linguistic resources.
INTERESTS: Philosophy of Education, Existentialism, Phenomenology Ethics, Philosophy with Children, Teacher and Student Agency, Teacher Education
Alex Chang is a Ph.D. student interested in studying the philosophy of education with a focus on questions of agency and ethics.
INTERESTS: Civic Education, Civic Development, Civic Discourse, Higher Education, Democratic Education College Students, Civic Pedagogy
Maya Cohen studies the civic education and civic formation of college students. Her current work explores the history of civic discourse pedagogies in higher education and the motivations and experiences of students who engage in discourse across political difference.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood Education and Care, Policy, Social and Emotional Learning, Early Learning, Emotions, Systems Thinking
INTERESTS: Adolescence, Emerging Adulthood, Cross-Cultural, Mixed Methods, Career Development
INTERESTS: Language, Developmental psychology, Cognitive Science, Parenting, Early childhood, International Development, Multilingualism
Sandra El Hadi is interested in children's language and cognitive development, parenting, and early childhood education. She is trilingual and uses both quantitative and qualitative methods in her research. Her professional experience has been primarily in international development.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood, Developmental Disabilities, Cognitive Neuroscience, Early Intervention, Special Education
Anne-Michelle Engelstad is researching neurodevelopmental trajectories of children with developmental differences and early intervention.
INTERESTS: Economics of Education, Data-Driven Decision-Making, Educational Aspirations, Higher Education Success, Education Technology, Development Economics
Joaquin Farina leverages causal inference to evaluate policies and gain insights into human behavior. His research explores the role of educational aspirations, data-driven improvement, barriers to higher education success, and AI’s potential to hyper-contextualize solutions.
INTERESTS: Applied Psychology, Social and Emotional Development, Early Childhood, Program Evaluation, Equity, Global Contexts
Sarah Farnsworth Hatch is interested in how interventions can promote children's social and emotional development. Programs and policies central to her work include poverty reduction efforts, parenting interventions, and social and emotional learning. She is particularly interested in quantitative methodologies and research based in lower and middle income countries.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood, Social-Emotional Development, Child Development, Early Education and Care Quality, Relationships, Adult-Child Interactions
Lily Fritz is a Ph.D. candidate who studies the influence of children's early environments on social-emotional development, with an emphasis on understanding early education and care settings as contexts for children's emotion socialization.
INTERESTS: Teachers and Teaching, Education Equity, Sociology of Culture and Work, Qualitative Methods
Krista Galleberg studies the intersection of cultural sociology, sociology of work and the teaching profession. I’m interested in how teachers think about themselves and their work, and how research on the teaching profession can contribute to racial equity in education.
INTERESTS: Racial Bias, Experimental Research, Instruction, Pedagogy, Math Education, Teachers, Teaching
Jeannette Garcia Coppersmith's research examines mechanisms that contribute to racial-ethnic disparities in mathematics education. Her scholarly interests are at the intersection of teacher education, social psychology, and math education.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood Education, Human Development, Public Policy, Educator Development
Madelyn Gardner is interested in exploring the environments and conditions under which early education and care consistently and equitably promotes children’s academic and social-emotional skill development.
INTERESTS: Education Policy, Anthropology of Policy, Comparative and International Education, Qualitative Methods, Policy Implementation
Abhinav Ghosh examines how teachers and mid-tier bureaucrats interpret and implement evidence-based policies in low- and middle-income countries.
INTERESTS: Data, Statistics, Quantitative, Measurement, Transfer, Simulation, Psychometrics
INTERESTS: Early Childhood, Social and Emotional Development, Classrooms, Pedagogy, Identity, Childhoods, Preschool
INTERESTS: Adolescence, Emerging Adulthood, Cross-Cultural, Mixed Methods, International Student Affairs, Higher Education
Nigel Gray’s research focuses on how social pressures shape adolescents' higher education choices based on gender differences and cultural variances and its resulting impacts on adolescents’ sense of purpose, belonging, and developmental pathways.
INTERESTS: Education Policy, Organizational Change, Economics of Education, Teacher Effectiveness, School Governance, Policy Analysis,
INTERESTS: Higher Education, College Access, Equity, Critical Theory, Writing Pedagogy
INTERESTS: Sociology of Education, Race, Ethnicity and Racism, Identity, Academic Self-Concept, Inequality, Emerging Adulthood
Zora Haque is interested in how the historical and contemporary manifestations of racial inequality shape the academic trajectories of students of color. Her research focuses broadly on how racial and ethnic identity connect to academic identity, self-concept, and achievement.
INTERESTS: Pedagogy, Philosophy, Teacher Education, Liberator, Justice, Equity
Justin Hauver hopes to surface how our pedagogies manifest our values, embody our fundamental stances towards existing in the world with others, and shape the kinds of people that students become alongside us.
INTERESTS: Economics of Education, Education Policy, Workforce Development
INTERESTS: Policy, Early Childhood Education, Teacher Labor Markets, Economics of Education, Causal Inference, Methodologies, School Finance, School Accountability
Katie Hyland is a Ph.D. student interested in the economics of education, teacher labor markets, early childhood education policy, and school finance.
INTERESTS: Sociology of Education, Institutional Reproduction, Institutional Change, Hidden Curriculum
INTERESTS: Language Development, Cognitive Development, Rural, Early Childhood, Adult-Child Interactions
Iris Jeffries is interested in how adult-child interactions in rural areas influence early childhood language and cognitive development.
INTERESTS: Education Policy, Economics of Education, Applied Econometrics, Labor Economics, Inequality Mobility, Machine Learning Methods
Sara Ji is a first year Ph.D. student and a presidential scholar at Harvard studying education policy and the economics of education. Her main research interests lie in applied econometrics, the economics of education, and labor economics, with a focus on inequality.
INTERESTS: Policy, Organizational Theory, Leadership, Principal Decision-Making, Education Data Science, Computational Text Analysis
Julie Jung studies school decision-making processes through an organizational theory lens using mixed methods and computational text analysis.
INTERESTS: Economics of Education, Education Policy, Labor Economics, Causal Inference
Samantha Kane's research interests are in the economics of education and labor economics. Her work focuses on the policies and political developments that affect student and family investments in human capital and the workforce.
INTERESTS: Philosophy of Education, Epistemology, Childhood, Philosophy of Science
Arham Kazi is interested in philosophical issues in epistemology and notions of childhood. This involves asking: How should we think about children’s epistemic abilities? And what bearing do developmental psychology and the history of childhood have on this question?
INTERESTS: Quantitative Methods, Causal Inference, Program Evaluation, Policy Evaluation, Teacher Preparation, Teacher Quality, Teacher Development
Bri Kightlinger studies the policies and programs affecting the U.S. teacher workforce. Her research seeks to understand the mechanisms behind early career teachers' returns to experience.
INTERESTS: Math Education, Remedial Math Instruction, Educational Psychology, Secondary Education, Equity
Maddie Clark is interested in the psychological processes behind math learning and the ways in which we can harness those to lessen inequity and knowledge gaps in U.S. secondary classrooms.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood Development, Measurement, Causal Inference, Low and Middle Income Countries, Approaches to Learning, Early Interventions
Kenji Kitamura's work focuses on early childhood development (ECD) measurement and intervention issues from an international perspective. He is particularly interested in children's approaches to learning and mechanisms of long-term impact of early intervention.
INTERESTS: Higher Education, Diversity, Social Mobility, Policy, Economics
Jostin Kitmang is interested in studying the effects of financial aid policies and public universities in developing countries and understanding the barriers that low-income students face in pursuing college studies and an academic career.