The following is a directory of students currently enrolled in an Ed.D. or Ph.D. program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Note: This is an opt-in directory, and does not represent every student enrolled in the doctoral programs.
Doctoral Student Directory: Ed.L.D. Students | Ed.D. / Ph.D. Students
Frannie Abernethy
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Literacy Development, Discussion-Based Learning, Teacher Training, The Minority Teacher Pipeline, Academic Language, Early Childhood, Adolescent Literacy
Frannie Abernethy's research focuses on language and literacy development, and mitigating barriers to high-quality language environments.
Gladys Aguilar
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Biliteracy, Bilingual Language Development, Socio-Emotional Development, Language Minority Children, Adult-Child Interactions, Immigrant Families, Race and Ethnicity
Gladys Aguilar's research focuses on the bilingual language, biliteracy and socio-emotional development of language minority children and the role of parents/caregivers and teachers in shaping this development.
Carlos Aguilar
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Undocumented Students, Undocumented Critical Theory, DACA, TPS (Tepesianos), Mixed-Status Families, Higher Education, Spatial Mobility
Carlos Aguilar is a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research centers on issues related to undocumented communities benefitting from programs such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
Catherine Armstrong
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Literacy, Treatment Effect Heterogeneity, Causal Inference, Policy
Catherine Armstrong's research focuses on the impacts of large-scale literacy programs and policies and the methodological investigation of impact heterogeneity in literacy interventions.
Pooja Bakhai
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race, Equity, Policy, K-12, Institutions, Teachers of Color, Teacher Activists
Pooja Bakhai studies how educators of color navigate working in white supremacist institutions; in particular, the institution of K-12 schooling.
Andreas de Barros
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Causal Inference, Development Economics, Economics, Educational Technology, Program Evaluation, Teacher Effectiveness
Andy de Barros is a Ph.D. Candidate at HGSE and a Principal Investigator at J-PAL South Asia. His research specializes in program evaluation and evidence-based education policy, in less-developed countries.
Becca Bassett
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: First-Generation College Students, Higher Education, Equity, Student Success, Culture, Sociology, Organizational Change
Becca Bassett is a Ph.D. student who studies how colleges and universities can shift their priorities, practices, and power structures to better serve low-income and first-generation students. She also serves as the director of college success for the Sunflower County Freedom Project.
Masha Bertling
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Psychometrics, Policy, Heterogeneity, Causal Inference
Masha Bertling's focus is on advancing psychometric and statistical models to better inform educational policies and practices; and improving the measurement of learning outcomes and effect sizes to enable scientifically valid comparisons across countries and contexts.
Lucian Bessmer
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Higher Education, History of Knowledge Production, History of Science, History Of 20th Century U.S., Data-Informed Higher Ed Decision-Making, Professionalization of Education
Lucian Bessmer is a historian of education. He is particularly interested in the history of professional schools, the relationship between society, corporations, and the production of knowledge, and higher education governance.
Tiffany Brown
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Quality Teaching, Social-Organizational Psychology, Low-Income and Minority Students, Immigrant and First-Generation Students, Organizational Effectiveness
Tiffany Brown studies organizational and psychological dimensions of quality teaching in schools serving low-income and minority students. She also works as a Research Consultant for NYU's Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity & the Transformation of Schools.
Sarah Bruhn
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Immigration, Gender, Schools, Belonging, Latino Families
Sarah Bruhn studies how immigrant mothers develop a sense of belonging in their communities, the role schools play in facilitating experiences of inclusion and exclusion; and the ways in which current politics and discourse around immigration shapes relationships between mothers and schools.
Shelby Carvalho
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Education, Policy, Political Economy, Gender, Sub-Saharan Africa, International Aid, Development
Shelby Carvalho studies the political economy of education in developing countries with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Key areas of interest include policy reform; international aid; gender; equity; school-to-work transitions; and cross-sectoral approaches to improving health and education.
Amy Cheung
Concentration: Culture, Communities, and Education (CCE)
Interests: Identity Development, Civics, Youth, Illness, Inclusion, Higher Education, Graduate Study
Amy Cheung studies identity development across contexts and the relation of identity(ies) to the experience of education and civic inclusion. Her current work has two separate strands: Asian American adolescent identity development and impact of chronic illness on academic identity.
Olivia Chi
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics, Teacher Labor Markets, Teacher Quality
Olivia Chi is a Ph.D. candidate in education at HGSE and a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She studies the economics of education, with a focus on teacher quality and teacher labor markets.
Mark Chin
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Race, Equity, Neighborhoods, Segregation, Integration, Peer Effects, Social Networks
Mark Chin's research centers on evaluating policies affecting the school and neighborhood factors (e.g., exposure to crime, peer groups) that matter for student outcomes and racial and socioeconomic equity.
Edwin Chng
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Multimodal Learning Analytics, Educational Data Mining
Edwin Chng is a Ph.D. student at Harvard. His research interest lies in the application of data analytics to education. He is interested in identifying data proxies within the classroom to capture the learning process so as to support evidence-based intervention strategies.
April Boin Choi
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Early Childhood Education, Language Development, Parent-Child Interactions, Developmental Science
April Boin Choi is a Ph.D. candidate and a Djokovic Science and Innovation Fellow at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Her research examines early development of infants at risk for autism, with the goal of promoting optimal child and family outcomes.
Christopher Cleveland
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Special Education, Finance, Social Emotional Learning, Budget
Christopher Cleveland's research interests are issues of school governance, finance, and special education services.
Jorge Cuartas
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Early Childhood, Parenting, Corporal Punishment, Exposure to Violence, Poverty, Causal Inference, Ecological Environment
Jorge Cuartas' research focuses on the analysis of human development and parenting in contexts of adversity (i.e., poverty and violence), the developmental consequences of exposure to corporal punishment in early childhood, and policy and program evaluation in low- and- middle-income-countries.
Megan Cuzzolino
Concentration: Human Development and Education (HDE)
Interests: Science Education, Awe, Emotions, Cognition, Conceptual Change, Development, Pedagogy
Megan Cuzzolino's research explores the emotion of awe and its role in scientific learning and discovery. She also investigates the ways in which the study of science informs how learners understand their position within complex, and often quite vast, natural systems.
Pierre de Galbert
Concentration: Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice (EPLIP)
Interests: Multilingual, Literacy, Equity, International Development, Quantitative Methods, Assessment
Pierre de Galbert's research focuses on the language of instruction policies in low- and middle- income countries, especially in the early grades. He is particularly interested in the multi-dimensional set of factors that influence policy decisions and implementation.
Emma Dwight
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Statistics, Data Science, Psychometrics, Causal Inference, Statistics Education, Program Evaluation, New Zealand Education Policy
Emma Dwight is a doctoral student excited to use her statistics and computer science expertise to study the difficult questions in Education. Her current projects research statistics education, test score reliability, IRT and misconceptions on tests, and new users on Reddit.
Brandon Neal Edwards
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Religious Studies, Higher Education, Democracy, Politics, American Religion, Civics
A Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Brandon Edwards studies religion, democracy, and education. Specifically, his research examines how religious beliefs among conservative populations impact views of higher education and the resultant political outcomes.
Jorge Encinas
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics, Higher Education Policy, College Access, College Affordability, Labor Market Outcomes, Undocumented Students, Immigration
Jorge Encinas researches policies that affect postsecondary access and affordability, as well as the labor market outcomes of college through an economic lens. He focuses on how these policies affect underrepresented minorities and undocumented students.
Avriel Epps
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Adolescent Development, Racial and Ethnic Identity, Gender Identity, Computational Social Science, Machine Learning, Algorithmic Bias, Human Computer Interaction
At the intersection of human development and computer science, Avriel Epps' work examines how adolescent identity development is influenced by algorithmic bias in digital products, environments, and "autonomous" technologies that learn, adapt, and fulfill short-term needs.
Nadirah Farah Foley
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race, Inequality, Culture, Suburbs, Higher Education, Merit and Meritocracy, College Admissions
Nadirah Farah Foley's work, situated at the nexus of sociology and education, explores issues of culture and inequality, focusing on how race and class shape cultural processes and students' experiences across diverse contexts including suburban public schools and elite higher education.
Janelle Fouche
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy Analysis, Program Evaluation, Prison Education, Higher Education, Equity, Race, Economics
Janelle Fouche is a Ph.D. student at HGSE and a Wiener Ph.D. Scholar in Poverty & Justice in the Inequality & Social Policy Program at HKS. Her research interests lie at the intersection of education policy and the penal system, as she believes the two are inextricably linked to issues of race, inequality, and opportunity.
Martha C. Franco
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Unaccompanied Minors, Adolescents, Immigration, Refugees, Central American Students, Transnational Ties, Citizenship
Martha C. Franco is a Ph.D. student. Her research focuses on how Central American unaccompanied minors are incorporated into U.S. public schools and the U.S. more broadly.
Simone Fried
Concentration: Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice (EPLIP)
Interests: Policy, Organizations, Reform, Social Politics, Turnaround, Takeover, State Education Agencies
Simone Fried's research examines the role and capacity of state education agencies in school reform, particularly in the implementation of school district takeovers.
Lily Fritz
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Adult-Child Interactions, Child Development, Early Childhood Education, Parenting
Lily Fritz is a doctoral student at HGSE. Her research interests include the ways in which children’s early interactions with their social world shape their learning and development.
Kim Frumin
Concentration: Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice (EPLIP)
Interests: Research-Practice Partnerships, Co-Design, STEM, Online Teacher Professional Development, Human-Centered Systems Design
Kim Frumin is an educator, researcher, and system leader, working to strengthen deeper learning towards equitable access and improved outcomes for all students. Her current work focuses on research-practice partnerships. She is co-editor of Teacher Learning in the Digital Age (HEP, 2016).
Alexis Gable
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Higher Education, Economics, Community Colleges, College Access, Career and Technical Education, Career Readiness
Alexis Gable's work lies at the intersection of economics and higher education, with a focus on college- and career-readiness, community colleges, and labor market outcomes. She is also interested in studying expectations around and barriers to college access.
Charles Gale
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Education policy, Economics, Teacher Policies, Education Finance, Political Economy
Charles Gale's research interests are in education policy and program evaluation. His research experience is in early literacy programs and education policies in low- and middle-income countries, and he is currently studying policies related to service delivery, teacher hiring and training, and education finance.
Alejandro Garcia Fernandez
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Higher Education, Social Inequality, Social Mobility, Sociology of Education, College Admissions, Higher Education Policy
Alejandro Garcia Fernandez researches social inequality and higher education. He studies social (im)mobility, admissions processes, higher education policy, and the educational/occupational outcomes of vulnerable populations.
Tatiana Geron
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Philosophy of Education, Educational Justice, Decision-Making, Ethics, Case Study Method, Non-Ideal Theory, Teaching Practice
Tatiana Geron's research intersects political theory, philosophy of education, and teaching practice to examine ethical decision-making in education and the classroom as non-ideal space. Prior to the doctoral program, she taught middle-school English and social studies in Boston and New York.
Kathryn Gonzalez
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Early Childhood, Policy, Economics, Program Evaluation, Teacher Quality
Kathryn Gonzalez's research focuses on quantitative policy analysis and program evaluation in early childhood education, including examining how classroom contexts affect early development, and the impacts of large-scale, systems-level efforts to support access and quality improvement.
Rosa Guzman
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Literacy, Digital Media, Language, Equity, Early Childhood
Rosa Guzman is a Ph.D. student whose research interests lie in the intersection between language, literacy, and technology. She is interested in how technology is shaping children's literacy and language development and finding tools that can help children be better prepared for kindergarten.
Paulina Haduong
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Design Based Research, Participatory Action Research, Constructionism, Computer Science, Civics, Connected Learning, Learner Identity
Paulina Haduong's research supports K-12 students and teachers in building learning communities in computer science and civic education.
Emily Hanno
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Early Childhood Education, Teacher Quality, Policy Analysis, Teacher Preparation, Quantitative Methods, Teacher Development
Emily Hanno's research stands at the intersection of quantitative policy analysis and the study of human development. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of teachers in early education and care settings.
Shirin Hashim
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics, Technology, Program Evaluation, Policy
Reid Higginson
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Higher Education, First-Generation Students, Sociology of Education, Liberal Arts, Student Motivation, Academic Advising, Regional Comprehensive Universities
Reid Higginson studies how college students understand the purpose of their education, and how this understanding is shaped by their backgrounds and institutional context. Along with research, he works as an academic advisor at a regional public university.
Rebecca Horwitz-Willis
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race and Equity, Law, Education, and Society, Implicit Bias, Institutional Theory, Socio-Legal Studies
Rebecca Horwitz-Willis' research takes a socio-legal and institutional approach to analyzing racial equity in schools. Specifically, she is interested in the relationship between macro-level social structures and individual perceptions of school quality and belonging in schools.
Julia Jeffries
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race, Identity, Civic Education, Whiteness
Julia Jeffries studies the racial identity development of both teachers and adolescent students and seeks to understand how an exploration of identity more broadly connects students to the broader sociopolitical climate.
Liu Jiang
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Ethnography, Civic Education, Moral Education, Anthropology, Peer Culture, Student Government, China
Liu Jiang's research focuses on practices of peer governance in Chinese classrooms. As an ethnographer, she is interested in understanding how Chinese youth negotiate their civic roles as well as ethical judgment through these everyday practices.
Raquel Jimenez
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Arts Education, Youth Culture, Ethnography, Minoritized Youth, Civic Participation
Raquel Jimenez is a Ford Foundation Fellow studying young artists and the creative learning communities that support them. Her dissertation uses ethnographic methods to explore how young people make sense of their social worlds through the arts in sanctuary cities.
Jane M. Kang
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Computer Science, Mathematics, Teaching Practice, Classroom Practice
Jane Kang's research focuses on teaching practice, especially in K-12 computer science and mathematics.
Kaity C. Kao
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Literacy, Language, Cognitive Development, Educational Psychology
Kaity C. Kao studies the development of cognitive language and literacy skills in students from early elementary through adolescence.
Thomas Kelley-Kemple
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Measurement, Organizational Structures, Secondary Schools, Data Use
Thomas Kelley-Kemple focuses on examining school level determinants of policy implementation and effectiveness. He is primarily interested in understanding how schools use data to improve and support student success.
Anna Kirby
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Early Childhood, Conceptual Development, Moral Development, Rural Education, Music Education
Anna Kirby is interested in the influence of cultural and social factors on how young children think about their own identities, their communities, and people who are different from them.
Kate Klenk Larned
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy Analysis, School Reform, Economics, School Context and Culture, Social Emotional Learning, Measurement
Kate Klenk Larned's research interests include education policy analysis and the economics of education, with a focus on K-12 organizational effectiveness and the use and measurement of non-tested skills and outcomes.
Whitney Kozakowski
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics of Education, College Access & Completion, Blended Learning, College Remediation, Civic Engagement, Causal Inference, Program Evaluation
Whitney Kozakowski is a Ph.D. candidate and PIER fellow through the Center for Education Policy Research. She uses econometric methods to study inequalities in college access and completion.
Mary Laski
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics, Policy, Teachers
Mary Laski is a Ph.D. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her interests include the economics of education, policy evaluation and analysis, and teacher effectiveness and development.
Jaein Josefina Lee
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Higher Education, Immigrant Integration, Institutions, Equity, Immigrant Students, Minority Students, Community Engagement
Jaein Josefina Lee's research focuses on immigrant students in higher education.
Ka Ya Lee
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of Education, Epistemic Justice, Curriculum, Intellectual Virtues, Social Studies
Ka Ya Lee is a Ph.D. student in education at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the intersection of education, epistemology and ethics. In particular, she is interested in epistemic justice and social studies.
Matthew Lenard
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Program Evaluation, Policy Evaluation, Teacher Quality, Economics, School Improvement, Achievement Gap, Equity
Matthew Lenard studies program and policy impacts at the K-12 and postsecondary levels. His recent projects have explored the effects of comprehensive school reform, career and technical education, and gifted education interventions.
Pei Pei Liu
Concentration: Human Development and Education (HDE)
Interests: Teaching and Learning, Educational Psychology, Motivation, Teacher Education, Learning Environments, Postsecondary Transitions, Professional Learning
Pei Pei Liu researches secondary and postsecondary instructors' understanding of and pedagogical responses to psychological factors in student learning. Prior to Harvard, she worked as a high school English teacher, mentor, and faculty developer in Boston and Sofia, Bulgaria.
Virginia Lovison
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics of Education, Teacher Quality
Virginia Lovison is a Ph.D. student and Partnering in Education Research (PIER) fellow at Harvard University. She studies the economics of education with a focus on K-12 teacher quality.
Dylan Lukes
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Economics, Education, Labor Economics, Econometrics, Technology, Consulting
Dylan Lukes is a Ph.D. student and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University. He studies the economics of education with a focus on technology and learning.
Brent Maher
Concentration: Higher Education (HIED)
Interests: Higher Education, History, Policy, Federal Government, Accreditation
Brent Maher studies the history of U.S. federal higher education policy.
Zid Mancenido
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Teacher Education, Professional Development, Teacher Labor Markets, Teachers' Lives, Causal Inference, Quantitative Methods, Policy Evaluation
Zid Mancenido's research focuses on how school systems can recruit, train, and retain excellent teachers. He is currently working on research projects investigating how to recruit more high-achieving college graduates into teaching; and how to evaluate what works in teacher preparation.
Parastoo Massoumi
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race, Equity, Middle School to College Pipeline, Intersectionality, College Access, Youth Leadership, Activism
Parastoo Massoumi is interested in studying the systemic inequities impacting communities of color and their intersectional identities (ie: gender, class, ability, citizenship status, sexual orientation, etc.) within the middle school to college pipeline.
Preeya Pandya Mbekeani
Interests: Inequality, Higher Education, Policy Analysis, Program Evaluation, Parenting
Preeya Pandya Mbekeani is a doctoral candidate at HGSE and doctoral fellow in the multidisciplinary program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She studies inequality in college access and completion for underrepresented students and policies aimed at reducing these disparities.
Michael McGarrah
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Curiosity, Cognitive Development, Affective Development, Self-Regulation, Emotions, Executive Function, Information-Processing
Michael McGarrah is a Ph.D. student studying the intersections of cognitive and affective development across early childhood and adolescence. Currently, he is conducting research on what makes people curious, how curiosity develops over time, and how it impacts learning.
Eileen McGivney
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Educational Technology & Innovation, Learning Sciences, Comparative Education, Human-Computer Interaction
Eileen McGivney is a Ph.D. student studying how people teach and learn with digital technologies in complex learning environments. Her projects include measuring inquiry-based teaching practices with virtual worlds and how contextual factors affect performance in online courses.
Alfatah Moore
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Literacy, Reading, Interventions, Fluency, Randomized Control Trial, Education, Policy
Alfatah Moore is interested in the science of reading, intervention design for struggling readers, and instructional and pedagogical guidance for teachers.
Doug Mosher
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Vocabulary Development, Academic Language, Literacy, English Language Learners, Social-Emotional Learning
Doug Mosher is interested in studying the vocabulary development of young elementary school students. Additionally, he is interested in examining the relationship students have with language and the if and how of whether students develop a love of language.
Nozomi Nakajima
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Inequality, Economics, Statistics, Causal Inference, International Development, Policy, Gender
Nozomi Nakajima's research focuses on how education policy interacts with family life to maintain and reduce inequality.
Tara Nicola
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Higher Education, Policy, Equity, Postsecondary Transitions
Tara Nicola is a second year Ph.D. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on issues concerning access, choice, and equity in higher education. She is especially interested in evaluating policies related to the college admission process.
Chris Norris-LeBlanc
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Mathematics, Education, Curriculum, Teacher Training, Equity, Abstract Algebra, Number Theory
Chris Norris-LeBlanc is interested in bringing heuristics, concepts, and skills from University mathematics into high schools through curricular innovation and teacher training. He hopes to use these as tools to make mathematics education more impactful and equitable.
Eleanor (Nell) O'Donnell
Concentration: Culture, Communities, and Education (CCE)
Interests: Parenting, Child Development, Early Childhood Education, Policy, Curriculum, Child Rearing
Eleanor O'Donnell's research interest is in the role of parents and their attitudes in young children's learning.
Daphne Penn
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Race, Politics, Inequality, Demographic Change
Daphne Penn's research focuses on the politics of racial and ethnic stratification in education. Specifically, she is interested in examining the role of politics in how decision makers interpret and manage competing demands, especially within the context of ethnoracial demographic change.
Amelia Peterson
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Comparative, Implementation, Politics, High School, Evaluation, Innovation
Amelia Peterson is a Ph.D. candidate in Education at HGSE and a Fellow in the Multidisciplinary Inequality and Social Policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on upper secondary (high school) innovation and reform in a range of OECD countries.
Whitney Polk
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Race, Adolescent Development, Equity, School Discipline, Discrimination, Identity, School Climate
Whitney Polk is a licensed professional counselor interested in school discipline, mental health, racial discrimination, racial identity development, and racial socialization.
MG Prezioso
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Children's Literature, Developmental Psychology, Literacy, Social-Emotional Learning, Moral Development, Literary Theory
MG Prezioso's research lies at the intersection of psychology and literature. Specifically, she is interested in the process of children's narrative absorption, as well as how literature contributes to students' moral development and identity formation.
Fernanda Ramirez-Espinoza
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Economics, South America, Developing Countries, Equity, Gender
Fernanda Ramirez-Espinoza is researching educational policy evaluation in South America and developing countries, with a focus on socioeconomic and gender inequality.
Celia Reddick
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Migration, Displacement, Refugee Education, Language of Instruction Policies and Practices, Multilingual Learning, Africa and African Diaspora
Celia Reddick's research explores the intersection of language, migration, and education. Her dissertation focuses in particular on the relationship between the languages used in schools and communities and refugee children's learning, identity-development, and sense of belonging in urban settings in East Africa.
Joseph Reilly
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Educational Technology, Data Science, Science Education
Joseph Reilly's research interests include immersive virtual environments for learning, multi-modal learning analytics, stealth assessment of student understanding, automatic generation of dynamic scaffolding, and collaborative data-intensive improvement.
Sarah A. Rendon Garcia
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Undocumented Immigrants, Latino Families, Caregiver-Child Relationships, Social Emotional Learning, Developmental Psychology
Sarah Rendon Garcia is a fourth-year doctoral student in education, with a concentration in HDLT. Her research focuses on the well-being and social emotional learning of Latino families impacted by immigration status.
Carly Robinson
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Teacher-Student Relationships, Family Engagement, Social Emotional Learning, Social Psychology, Experimental Research
Carly Robinson is a Ph.D. candidate in education at Harvard University. Her interests lie at the intersection of education, social psychology, and policy. Her current research focuses on developing and testing interventions that mobilize social support for students.
Susha Roy
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Economics, Policy, Inequality, K-12, Stratification
Susha Roy researches the economics of education.
Lena Shi
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Higher Education Policy, School Finance, College Access, Socioeconomic Mobility, Inequality, Civic Participation, Economics
Lena Shi studies the effects of higher education policies on socioeconomic mobility, inequality, and civic participation.
So Yeon Shin
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Early language Acquisition, Early Childhood Education, Bilingual development, Parent-Child Interactions, Language, Immigration
So Yeon Shin's research focuses on early language and cognitive development of monolingual and bilingual children in South Korea and the role that parents play in supporting their children's learning.
Mikko Silliman
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, Labor Economics, Inequality
Mikko Silliman's research focuses on questions at the intersection of education policy and labor economics.
Kirsten Slungaard Mumma
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: School Choice, Charter Schools, Economics, Adult Education, Economics
Kirsten Slungaard Mumma is interested in the economics of education in general, and more specifically, the local spillover effects and social returns of education.
Gahyun Sung
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Learning Analytics, Instructional Design, Big Data in Education, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Programming Education
Gahyun Sung is a Ph.D. student interested in using sensor data in learning analytics and discovering how the results of learning analytics could best be interpreted and disseminated to students and teachers.
Sarah Surrain
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Bilingualism, Language Development, Literacy, Early Childhood, Parent Beliefs, Home Language Environment, Language Attitudes
Sarah Surrain is a Ph.D. student in education. She studies the language and literacy development of children from diverse linguistic backgrounds, with an interest in the role of parental beliefs and home language practices on bilingual development in early childhood.
Eric Torres
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Moral Education, Partisanship, Reason, Social Psychology, Moral Development, Epistemology, Philosophical Practice
Eric Torres studies issues related to reasoning, morality, and civic education. He is currently focused on understanding (and alleviating) the consequences of political alienation in and out of schools.
Ran Wei
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Developmental Psychology, Language Development, Cognitive Development, Psycholinguistics , Early Childhood, Early Socialization
Ran Wei is interested in how children's development is profoundly shaped by their interaction with the social world. Wei's research explores how caregivers' beliefs shape the way in which they communicate with their children and how parental input influences children's language and cognitive development.
Wendy Wei
Concentration: Human Development, Learning and Teaching (HDLT)
Interests: Early Childhood, Contexts, Neighborhoods
Wendy Wei's primary research interests fall at the nexus of early childhood development and policy. Wei is interested in studying the factors in various contexts (e.g., school, home, and neighborhood) that promote children's cognitive and social-emotional development during early childhood.
Benjamin West
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Literacy, Social-Emotional Skills, Measurement, Evaluation, Policy, Elementary, Psychometrics
Benjamin West's research aims to improve our ability to measure literacy and social-emotional skill development among early learners. He also studies the effects of policies and programs that teach these skills in elementary schools.
Andrew An Westover
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Ethics, Philosophy of Education, Gender, Sexuality, Religious Studies, Arts Education, Forgiveness
Andrew Westover is an ethicist who focuses on education. His interdisciplinary work draws from moral philosophy, artistic practice and expression, queer theory, and practical ethics. Currently, his research focuses on teacher/student conflict and the possibilities of forgiveness.
Xin Xiang
Concentration: Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS)
Interests: Inequality, Sociology, Repertoires of Learning, Psychology, Rural-Urban Divide, China, Non-Profit
Xin Xiang investigates how learning and schooling in contemporary China is shaped by as well as (re)produces rural-urban and socioeconomic inequalities. She also directs a nonprofit organization serving migrant children in South China.
Fei Yuan
Concentration: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE)
Interests: Policy, International Development, Program Evaluation, Economics, Developing Countries
Fei Yuan's research focuses on identifying effective interventions to improve student learning in low- and middle-income countries. She is also interested in providing robust evidence to answer policy-relevant questions.
Maxwell Yurkofsky
Concentration: Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice (EPLIP)
Interests: School Reform, Continuous School Improvement, New Institutional Theory, Organizational Theory, Educational Leadership and Administration
Maxwell Yurkofsky draws on organizational and neo-institutional theory to study the impact of district reform strategies related to continuous improvement and deeper learning on teachers' and school leaders' practice.