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Degrees & Programs
CONCENTRATION: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
INTERESTS: Early Childhood Education, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Causal Inference, Epistemic Curiosity, Measurement
Kenji Kitamura studies children’s approaches to learning, focusing on curiosity and executive functions. Kenji explores how the expression and function of these constructs vary across contexts to identify contextually grounded forms of effective learning and their implications for interventions.
CONCENTRATION: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
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.
INTERESTS: Infancy, Neurodevelopment, Early Life Stress, Physiology, Resilience, Caregiving, Translational Science
Molly Lazarus is a Ph.D. student in the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience studying how infant experiences shape neural, physiological, and behavioral trajectories. She aims to harness early neuroplasticity to reduce risks and foster resilience from the earliest stages of life.
INTERESTS: International Education, Philanthropy, Education Finance, Inequity, Organization Theory, Global Governance
CONCENTRATION: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
INTERESTS: Immigration, Critical Theory, Higher Education, College Access, Sociology of the Family, Sociology of Food and Agriculture
Emma Lezberg is an interdisciplinary migration scholar investigating the effects of immigration law and immigration status on families and young people in the United States.
INTERESTS: Development Economics, Causal Inference, Mixed Methods, Teaching Practices, Community Engagement
Yoly Liu is interested in how education policies and locally co-designed programs improve teaching practices, build learning capacity in basic education, and foster sustainable community development across sub-Saharan Africa.
INTERESTS: Learning Science, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Augmented Reality, Media Studies, Journalism, Human Computer Interaction, Wearable Computing
Max Lu is harnessing technology and learning science to enhance human learning efficiency.
Currently on the Job Market
INTERESTS: Teachers, Peer Learning, Social Networks, Collaboration, Secondary Education
Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo focuses on teacher learning in the workplace through collaboration with peers. She aims to understand the features of teacher-to-teacher relations that allow transfer of expertise between them, as well as the programs and policies to promote them.
INTERESTS: Early Childhood, Program Evaluation, Global Contexts, Early Learning, Measurement, Nurturing Care
Juliet McCann is interested in how parents’ wellbeing and family relationships influence children’s early learning and socio-emotional growth. Her research seeks to strengthen measurement and intervention approaches that promote nurturing care across diverse cultural settings.
INTERESTS: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Adult Learning and Development, Race, Culture, Equity, Education
Emily Meland's research aims to bridge silos between social and emotional learning (SEL) and culturally sustaining, asset-based pedagogies. Her work centers on building adult capacities and supporting culturally responsive, developmental interactions between educators and students.
INTERESTS: Educator Resistance and Organizing, Youth Resistance and Organizing, Ethnic Studies, Education, Place-Based Research
Melina Melgoza studies how place shapes educator and youth resistance and organizing in Los Angeles, California. She examines the tensions they confront and the strategies they use to resist injustice while navigating contemporary risks.
INTERESTS: Developmental Psychology, Psychological Anthropology, Social Development, Moral Development, Parenting, Socialization, Cross-Cultural Research
Michał Miąskiewicz uses naturalistic and experimental methods to study young children’s cognition and behavior in situations when their desires conflict with those of others. His research traces children’s concern for the welfare of others and its socialization across cultures.
INTERESTS: Quantitative Methods, Equity, Math Education, Statistics, Race
INTERESTS: Errors, Mistakes, Math Education, Learning, Teaching, Secondary Education, Mixed-Methods
A former math teacher and instructional coach, Jerry Nelluvelil is curious about how students learn from mistakes in math and how teachers help them internalize that process, using mixed methods to study the sociocultural factors that shape learning.
INTERESTS: Refugee Education, Peace Education, Decolonial Education, Palestine, Equity, Social Justice Education, Qualitative Methods
Catherine Pitcher is interested in understanding how young people in Palestine engage in future-building and the connections between education and peaceful futures.
INTERESTS: Organizational Culture, Professional Socialization, Organizational Learning, Peer Learning, Teacher Socialization
Santiago Pulido-Gomez's research sits at the intersection of OB, public management, and education. His work explores how organizational culture in schools influences how teachers learn and develop professionally, with a particular focus on low-income schools in Global South cities.
INTERESTS: International Student Mobility, Higher Education, Shadow Education
Swati Puri’s research explores the relationship between international student mobility and the reproduction of social advantage, examining how upper-class students in India pursue overseas higher education and the role of educational consultants in shaping these pathways.
INTERESTS: Liberatory Pedagogies, Racial Justice, Equity, Histories of Education, Teacher Education, Teacher Professional Learning, Teacher Activism
Ivelisse Ramos studies the holistic lives of urban educators who work for racial justice in public schools. Her research examines justice-driven educators’ pedagogies as well as the sources of support from which they draw and the challenges they face inside and outside of schools.
INTERESTS: Bureaucracy, Community, Justice, Policy, Public Education, Urban
Malcolm Rivers' research examines teachers’ and administrators’ work as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980) impacting policy through implementation and their roles as interlocutors between communities and bureaucracies with sometimes different attitudes towards, and goals for, schooling.
INTERESTS: YPAR/CPAR/Youth Activism, Poverty/Class Race, Community-Engaged Research, Community-Embedded Educators, Critical Pedagogy/Research, Culturally Relevant/Sustaining Pedagogy
Through community-engaged research, Georgina Rivers is interested in examining the pedagogical practices teachers and youth workers from low-income communities employ to cultivate young peoples’ political engagement.
INTERESTS: Economics of Education, Program Evaluation, Learning Outcomes, Tutoring, RCTs
Rony Rodriguez-Ramirez specializes in conducting program evaluations of education policies in conflict-affected regions to assess their impact on learning outcomes and students' well-being.
INTERESTS: College Affordability, Higher Education, State Policy, Equity, Student Success, Social Mobility
INTERESTS: Language Environments, Literacy Development, Early Childhood, Cognition
Lauren Schilling is interested in how children’s early language and literacy environments support their word learning and reading skills. Her research lies at the intersection of psycholinguistic theory, cognitive science, and everyday practices in the home and classroom.
INTERESTS: Assessment, Cognitive Development, Early Education, Learning Differences and Accessibility, Social Emotional Learning, Families and Community, Human Development
Kathryn Sevier's research focuses on how self-perception and disability identity shape learning and mental health outcomes in children.
INTERESTS: Infant/Toddlers, Caregivers, Relationships, Observational Tools, Childrearing, Parenting
Megan Shahnooshi's research aims to broaden our understanding of quality in early childhood, especially when it comes to relationships between caregivers and children. Her work is grounded in the notion that rich and reciprocal relationships are the foundation that lead to learning and growth.
INTERESTS: Educational Ethics, Political Education, Education and Religion, Conservative Education, Moral Development
Allison Mee Stevens’s research connects philosophy and politics through the lens of conservative education. She is interested in moral formation, faith, and tradition as an epistemic resource.
INTERESTS: Policy, K-12, School Choice, Vouchers, Education Savings Accounts, Accountability, Funding
David Struhs studies U.S. education policy, school choice, accountability, and funding.
INTERESTS: Biculturalism, Cognitive Flexibility, Social Adjustment, Cross-Cultural Context on Development, Identity Development
Guicheng “Ariel” Tan is interested in studying how people integrate different cultures, and what are the cognitive and developmental implications of cultural integration.
INTERESTS: Literacy, Multilingualism, K-12, Mixed Methods, Intervention, Technology-Enhanced
Sining Tao is interested in practice-embedded mixed-methods research on multilingual learners’ language and literacy development across school and home contexts, and on interventions leveraging evidence-based strategies and emerging technologies.
INTERESTS: Policy, Justice, Organizational Theory, Qualitative Methods, K-12 Education, Sociology of Education
Helen Wajda is interested in the politics of K-12 education policymaking and implementation amid organizational, political, and economic pressures.
INTERESTS: Black Studies, Educational Policy, History
INTERESTS: Creative Computing, Computer Science Education, Identity, Agency, Youth Participatory Design, Human-Computer Interaction
Jacob Wolf's research explores how young people learn about computing in formal and informal learning settings and how this learning shapes the relationships young people have with technology in their everyday lives.
INTERESTS: Applied Developmental Science, Explanations, Intuitions, Metaphors
INTERESTS: Arts Education, Equity, Civic Education, Immigrants, Transnationalism, Aesthetics, Ethnography
Hwa Pyung is a mixed-methods researcher specializing in multicultural education. Prior to Harvard, Pyung has worked as a language teacher, non-profit director, and analyst for large-scale policy evaluations.
INTERESTS: Literacy, Language, Intervention, Reading, Multilingualism, Education, Psychometrics
William Young studies how literacy interventions can better support struggling readers and multilingual learners, using quantitative and psychometric approaches to reveal what works, for whom, and why.
INTERESTS: Higher Education, Postsecondary Education, Economics of Education, Impact Evaluation
Maria Luisa Zeta studies post-secondary education access and success for low-income students.
INTERESTS: Parent-Child Long-Distance Interaction, Chinese Rural Stay-Behind Children, Family Separation, Parent Education, SEL Programs in Low-Resource Communities
Yuhan Zhong's research focuses on understanding Chinese rural separated families' experiences of connection and disconnection. She wants her work to promote the wellbeing of Chinese rural stay-behind children by engaging and collaborating with important adults in their lives.
INTERESTS: Higher Education, Workforce Development, Economics of Education
Arkādijs Zvaigzne studies the economics of education and how education can help people succeed in the labor market.