News Warikoo Named Associate Professor Posted June 9, 2014 By Jill Anderson Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean James Ryan has announced that Natasha Warikoo has been promoted to associate professor.“Natasha is a true asset to this community. In addition to producing award-winning and policy-relevant scholarship on the influence of culture in education, she is a superb teacher whose courses deftly address highly-charged issues of race, ethnicity, and social status,” Ryan said. “These difficult conversations — and an instructor with the knowledge and skill to facilitate them — are absolutely essential to creating an environment at this school that will prepare our students to confront the underlying causes of inequality. I am thrilled Natasha will continue to help lead this effort at HGSE.”Warikoo, who joined HGSE in 2009, is a cultural sociologist whose research focuses on education and its relation to race, ethnicity, and social status. Next year, she will begin teaching the new core course for the Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS) concentration in the Ph.D. Program.“I am honored to be promoted to associate professor. Working with such thoughtful and engaged scholars and students at HGSE has been so important for my own thinking and writing on race, ethnicity, and inequality in education,” Warikoo said. “Going forward, I will do what I can to honor this privilege by completing research that illuminates how inequality shapes the lives of students in schools and universities, and by teaching our wonderful students to think deeply and to do important work in the world when they leave HGSE.”For the past year, Warikoo has devoted her time as a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar to working on her book, What Merit Means: Admissions, Diversity, and Inequality at Elite Universities in the United States and Britain. In particular, the book will examine these students’ understandings of diversity, multiculturalism, and social inequality.She previously authored the book, Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City (University of California Press, 2011), which received the Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association. News The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education Explore All Articles Related Articles News Dryden-Peterson Named Professor of Education Sarah Dryden-Peterson, a scholar in the field of refugee education, has been promoted to the rank of professor News Brennan, Bridwell-Mitchell Announced as Named Chairs Two HGSE faculty members have recently been awarded named chairs News Brennan Named Professor of Practice Karen Brennan, whose work seeks to foster excellent teaching and learning experiences in computer science, assumed the rank of professor of practice on July 1