Review Board
Brooke Blevins, PhD University of Idaho Brooke Blevins is Dean and Professor in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences at the University of Idaho. She is the co-creator of the iEngage Summer Civics Institute. Her research interests include civic inquiry and education, critical historical inquiry, and teacher education.
T. Jameson Brewer, PhD University of North Georgia T. Jameson Brewer is an Associate Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of North Georgia. His teaching experience spans from the middle school, high school, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels. Broadly conceptualized, his research focuses on the impact of privatization and marketization of public education by way of school vouchers, charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and homeschooling.
Hilary Conklin, PhD DePaul University Hilary Gehlbach Conklin is a Professor of Education at DePaul University in Chicago. A former middle and high school social studies teacher, her research explores civic and democratic education, the design of teacher preparation experiences, and the impact of teacher education experiences on teachers’ practices and their students’ learning. Her work centers on teaching and learning practices that contribute to a more humanizing, just, inclusive, and connected democracy. She holds a BA in Sociology/Anthropology and Education from Swarthmore College; secondary social studies teaching certification (MAT) from Brown University; and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jenni Conrad, PhD Oregon State University, Cascades Jenni Conrad is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Teacher Education at Oregon State University. As an educational researcher and teacher educator, her work explores the intersections of critical pedagogy, democratic education, history education, and culturally sustaining learning. She taught for eight years in public K-8, middle, and high schools in Seattle, and, for ten years with NGOs focused on global, environmental, and girls’ leadership education programs. Her research focuses on how teachers’ learning processes, socio-cultural identities, and curricular content interact - especially across differences of power with students, and during discussion- and inquiry-based learning. Previously, Dr. Conrad served as research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, postdoctoral research fellow at Temple University, and teaching faculty at the University of Washington and Seattle University. Her writing appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, Theory & Research in Social Education, Teaching & Teacher Education, Qualitative Research, and others.
Rebecca Geller, PhD University of Georgia Rebecca C. Geller is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Georgia. Her scholarship examines how social studies teachers navigate, experience, and think about teaching controversial, critical, and political issues in contested sociopolitical contexts. Her current research projects are focused on reproductive justice in social studies and on teachers’ experiences with school-based gun violence. She was an elementary and middle school teacher in Oakland prior to earning her Ph.D. in Education at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Michael G. Gunzenhauser, PhD University of Pittsburgh Michael G. Gunzenhauser is Professor and Senior Associate Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs at University of Pittsburgh. He is a philosopher of education and qualitative research methodologist and is currently working on several research topics, including race-conscious ethics, educator professionalism, and responsive caring.
Anne-Lise Halvorsen, PhD Michigan State University Anne-Lise Halvorsen is a Professor of Teacher Education specializing in social studies education at Michigan State University. Her scholarship focuses on curriculum reform in social studies education, specifically exploring project-based learning, culturally sustaining pedagogy, historical inquiry, and discussion. She is particularly interested in developing and field-testing innovative and justice-oriented social studies curricula. She teaches courses in social studies methods, literacy methods, educational foundations, and quantitative methods.
Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, PhD Miami University Kathleen Knight-Abowitz is a Professor of Educational Leadership at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. She uses philosophical and qualitative methodologies to explore questions of citizenship education, educational governance, leadership, and policy-making. A former school board member, she brings interest and experience in topics of local control, school boards, and place-based thinking in education.
Ryan Knowles, PhD Utah State University Ryan Knowles is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education and Cultural Studies within the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University. His research interests focus on democracy and education, teacher and student ideology, and large-scale data analysis. Specifically, his research uses quantitative research methods to understand how teacher and student ideology develops and manifest within schools and classrooms.
Anniinna Leiviskä, PhD The University of Oulu Anniina Leiviskä is an Associate Professor in Philosophy of Education at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Oulu. Her primary fields of research include democratic education, deliberative democracy, political polarization, and social justice in education.
Brett Levy, PhD University at Albany, State University of New York Brett Levy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice. His research explores how educational programs can support civic engagement among youth and how such engagement can foster academic and life skills. He has written articles for a variety of publications, including Educational Researcher, Political Psychology, and Journal of Teacher Education, and teaches courses on youth civic engagement, social studies education, and research methods. He also hosts a podcast on civic education.
Jane Lo, PhD Michigan State University Jane C. Lo is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the political engagement of youth, social studies curriculum development, and developing measures of deep learning and collaboration. Her methodological expertise includes mixed-methods designs and design-based implementation research. She teaches courses in social studies methods.
Paula McAvoy, PhD North Carolina State University Paula McAvoy is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on philosophical and empirical questions concerning the relationship between schools and democratic society. Her recent work investigates strategies for engaging students in discussions of public policy issues and the ethics of teaching.
Sarah McGrew, PhD University of Maryland Sarah McGrew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She studies educational responses to the spread of online mis- and disinformation, focusing on how young people search for and evaluate online information on contentious civic topics and how schools can better support students to learn effective evaluation strategies. Her current research focuses on three related questions: how best to support teachers to learn online reasoning themselves and prepare for teaching students, how to design lessons that are rooted in civic and community issues that students know and care about, and how to connect lessons on evaluating online information to a larger process of civic inquiry that includes discussing issues and taking informed action.
Ellen Middaugh, PhD San Jose State University Ellen Middaugh is an Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Development and Interim Associate Dean for the Lurie College of Education at San José State University. Her research examines the impact of emerging technologies on youth civic skills and engagement practices and the implications for civic education.
Katherina Payne, PhD University of Texas at Austin Katherina A. Payne is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in Social Studies Education at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research considers the intersections of civic education, elementary/early childhood schooling, and teacher education, and examines the roles of relationships, community, and justice in transforming classrooms into child-centered, democratic, and more equitable spaces. Her research has been published in venues such as Theory and Research in Social Education, Teachers College Record, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Journal of Teacher Education. She has also published practitioner-oriented pieces in Social Studies and the Young Learner and Young Children.
Martin Samuelsson, PhD Nord University, Norway Martin Samuelsson is an Assistant Professor at Nord University, Norway. He has mainly focused on questions related to an education for deliberative democracy.
Jeremy Stoddard, PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison Jeremy Stoddard is Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and a researcher in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research includes the teaching of civics and history in partisan contexts, the integration of media education into democratic education, and a particular focus on engagement with so called “difficult” or marginalized histories and contemporary controversial issues. In addition to numerous publications, he has also led curriculum development and evaluation projects in formal and informal education settings, including his current IES-funded project PurpleState. He has co-authored or co-edited three books, including Teaching Difficult History Through Film (Routledge, 2017). He has served in numerous service roles, including Editor for Theory & Research in Social Education, and leadership roles in the Teaching History SIG of AERA, National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of NCSS.
Asegeir Tryggvason, PhD Örebro University Ásgeir Tryggvason is an Associate Professor of Education at Örebro University, Sweden, and the coordinator of the research environment ESERGO. His research focuses on environmental and sustainability education (ESE), with a particular interest in the political and existential dimensions of teaching. He is interested in agonistic theory and conducts empirical research on teaching in secondary education. Currently, he is working on a research project exploring the existential dimension of teaching about environmental crises.
Michalinos Zembylas, PhD Open University of Cyprus Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus and Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. His research explores the role of emotion and affect in education, particularly as they intersect with issues of social justice, decolonization, and politics. He is the author and editor of numerous books and scholarly articles. His most recent publications include Responsibility, Privileged Irresponsibility and Response-ability in Contemporary Times: Higher Education, Coloniality and Ecological Damage (co-authored with Vivienne Bozalek) and Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education (co-edited with Petra Mikulan).