FELLOW NOTABLES

We are pleased to share the following NAEd/Spencer Fellow-submitted updates from Spring 2026:

Tasha Austin

Tasha Austin has published (or had accepted) the following peer-reviewed scholarly articles since December 2025:

  • Austin, T. & Farah, W. (in press). Pearls Before Swine: An Nwkaethnographic Exploration of the Language and Labor of Black Women Scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
  • Hsieh, B., & Austin, T. (2026). Guest editorial: Thickening solidarities through dialogue: the role of languaging on intracultural discourses of racialization. Journal for Multicultural Education, 20(2), 133-140. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-05-2026-253
  • Austin, T., Clemons, A. & Raysor, A. (2026). “More than lo visible:” Black World Language Teachers’ Use of Identity to Contest Culturelessness. Foreign Language Annals.
  • Afolalu L., Smith P., Austin T. (2026;). “This is where we go: the quantum healing possibilities in languaging Black humanity”. Journal for Multicultural Education, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-12-2025-0318
  • Austin, T., Raysor, A., James, D. (2026) “They is Me”: Redefining ‘Traditional’ Students Through Narratives of Black World Language Teachers. Modern Language Journal, 110, 67-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.70028
  • Austin, T. (2026). Black Mothers as Bad Teachers: Intersectional Raciolinguistic Erasure in Teacher Education Curricula. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2024.2435653

Tasha Austin has also given the following refereed talks and presentations since December 2025:

  • Austin, T., Clemons, A. & Randolph, LJ. (2026). Where in the World are World Languages? [Chair and Presenter]. Symposium accepted at American Educational Research Association. Los Angeles, CA.
  • Battey, D. & Austin, T. (2026). Examining Mathematics Reform as a Racial Project Through Raciolinguistic Genealogy. Paper accepted at American Educational Research Association. Los Angeles, CA.
  • Austin, T. (2026). Leisure vs. Labor: A Raciolinguistic Genealogy on the Decline of World Language Study. Paper accepted at American Association for Applied Linguistics. Chicago, IL.
  • Raysor, A., Austin, T., & James, D. (2026). “They is Me!”: Redefining ‘Traditional’ Students through Narratives of Black World Language Teachers. Paper accepted at American Association for Applied Linguistics. Chicago, IL.

Tasha Austin was invited to give the following talks since December 2025:

  • Austin, T. (2026). From Cultural Capital to Culture as Praxis in World Language Education. Joint Invited webinar for Critical and Social Justice Approaches and African American Special Interest Groups of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. [Virtual]
  • Austin, T. (2026). Limited capital: a genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education. Invited workshop for New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers. [Virtual]
  • Austin, T. (2026). Critical Collaborative Reflection, Linguistic Landscapes & Material Culture in Teacher Preparation. Invited workshop for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Salt Lake City, UT.

Tasha Austin has submitted her full-length contracted book manuscript for publication in fall 2026 entitled, Revolutionary Possibilities in Black World Languaging: Humanizing World Language Study in the United States. Palgrave Macmillan.

Tasha Austin was awarded with the following recognitions since December 2025: Award: Top 10 Cited Article 2025 Foreign Language Annals Wiley

Award: AERA Travel Award 2026 Dean’s Office University at Buffalo

Elena Aydarova

Elena Aydarova, T. Jameson Brewer, Emily Hodge, and Serena Salloum have co-authored “Manufactured Outrage: The Conservative Industrial Complex’s War on Education and How to Fight Back.” Learn more https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9798895570937/manufactured-outrage/

Dominique Baker

Dominique Baker has started a column, named “Echoes in the Quad,” at Inside Higher Ed. The column explores what tethers our current higher education policy realities to past moments in history, leading to potential lessons on crafting an American higher education system that thrives within a multiracial democracy. She’s part of the inaugural cohort of fellows for the Alliance for Higher Education, which focuses on situating higher education within the context of democracy for all. She also published, along with former NAEd dissertation fellow Christopher Bennett, an essay tracing the status hierarchy of the institutional affiliation of approximately 30,000 creative arts, humanities, and social sciences fellowship winners (https://www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-guggenheims/).

Monisha Bajaj

Monisha Bajaj delivered the keynote address entitled “Peace Education in Precarious Times” at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society in March. She also recently published her first children’s book “A Year of Kites” (Bloomsbury, 2026) which offers young readers a message of global citizenship through the metaphor of kites and how they are flown in more than 12 places around the globe.

Michelle Bellino

Michelle Bellino, Carolyn Barber, Marcela Ortiz-Guerrero, Julia Paulson, and Cristian Cruz Moreno have published “The Right to Truth: Students’ Proximity to Conflict, Classroom Climate, and Opportunities for Teaching About Conflict and Peace in Bogotá, Colombia,” in Comparative Education Review. The online first version can be accessed at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/740392.

Alyssa Bivins

Alyssa Bivins, PhD (NAED/Spencer Dissertation Fellow 2023) published an article on her Middle East education history research in Jerusalem Quarterly, “Re-Contextualizing Palestinian Jerusalemite Education as Resistance, 1967 to the Present” (December 2025). You can read the article at https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1658196

Brooke Bocast

Brooke S. Bocast’s monograph, If Books Fail, Try Beauty: Educated Womanhood in the New East Africa (Oxford University Press 2024) was awarded the Outstanding Book Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education, the Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize from the Society for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, and the Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention) from the Society for Professors of Education. Research for this book was supported by a NAEd Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.

Tolani Britton

Tolani Britton (Dissertation 2016, Postdoctoral Fellow 2021) received a European Union Erasmus+ Grant to deliver a series of lectures at Universidad del Pais Vasco.

She also served as a co-author on a conference proceeding:
Perdomo, J. C., Britton, T., Hardt, M., & Abebe, R. (2025, June). Difficult lessons on social prediction from Wisconsin public schools. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (pp. 2682-2704).

Marlee Bunch

My publication, the Magnitude of Us received a research award from the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE). My book Unlearning the Hush received a notable mention award from the Society of Professors Book Award. Additionally, I created and implemented two micro credentials with the University of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education, which will allow educators to receive professional development hours related to culturally responsive teaching- moving theory to practice.

Nolan Cabrera

Nolan Cabrera was awarded the Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In addition, his co-authored book “Banned! The Fight For Mexican American Studies in the Streets and the Courts” won the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) “Book of the Year” (senior category).

Corbin Campbell

Corbin M. Campbell is the founding Director of the new Advancing College Teaching for Student Success (ACTSS) National Center at American University (https://www.american.edu/soe/actss/actss.cfm). The first center project is the Alliance for Better College Teaching (www.bettercollege teaching.org), funded by Lumina Foundation and ECMC Foundation.

Elise Castillo

Elise Castillo was awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Trinity College.

Chris Chang-Bacon

Chris Chang-Bacon published an article in Equity, Excellence, and Education entitled, “Because estamos gringas”: The racialized co-construction of white linguistic saviorism in a bilingual tutoring program. You can read it at https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2026.2638560

Laura Chávez-Moreno

Laura Chávez-Moreno published: Chávez-Moreno, L. C., & Lacayo, C. (2026). Latinx racialization in education: A composite conversation on the social construction of race. Race Ethnicity and Education, 29(3), 484–507. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2026.2622766

Pempho Chinkondenji

Pempho Chinkondenji (2025 Postdoctoral Fellow) published her first book with Emerald Publishing titled “Drop-out, Push-out, or Walk-out?: (Re)Imagining Education for Young Mothers and Pregnant Adolescents.” The book delves into the pressing issues of social justice and equity for pregnant learners and school-aged mothers within international contexts. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80686-051-7.

Aris Clemons

In May, Dr. Aris Clemons is looking forward to the release of her forthcoming book project, Lifting as We Climb: How Black Faculty Make Professional and Linguistic Choices to Thrive in Higher Education, coauthored alongside Dr. Kendra Calhoun, Dr. Joy Peltier, Dr. Kahdeidra Martin, and Dr. Anne Charity Hudley, available for pre-order on Amazon and at Teachers College Press. Additionally, Dr. Clemons and Dr. Tasha Austin were recently featured on the ACTFL facebook page for their publication “More than lo visible”: Black world language teachers’ use of identity to contest culturelessness,” published in Foreign Language Annals. Beyond sharing the work at this year’s AERA conference in Los Angeles, Dr. Clemons was also afforded the opportunity to recruit for two new journals she helped to found: Journal of Black Language and Culture (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-black-language-and-culture) and the Journal of Racial Justice in Multilingual Education (RJME.org). Both journals are accepting submissions now!

Robert Cohen

Robert Cohen won the 2025 Lillian Smith Book Award for his book. Confronting Jim Crow: Race, Memory and the University of Georgia in the 20th century. His new book, Not Dreaming: Martin Luther King Jr’s Critique of America will be published next October as part of the Morehouse College King Collection Series on Civil and Human Rights

Andreas de Barros

Andreas de Barros delivered keynote presentations at two government-hosted education events this year, sharing evidence from large-scale public education reforms. In Rabat, he spoke at Morocco’s National Teacher Forum, where he released findings from an evaluation of the country’s “Pioneer School” reform in public middle schools. In Lusaka, he spoke at a Ministry of Education event in Zambia, where he released findings from a cluster-randomized evaluation of the country’s national “Catch Up” program in public primary schools. He was also named a Research Affiliate at CESifo and IZA, two international research networks in economics and public policy.

Cati de los Ríos

Cati de los Ríos received the 2026 AERA Early Career Award. She also recently published 3 papers with students and colleagues:

Seltzer, K., & de los Ríos, C. V. (2026). Shifting from labels and languages to people: Attuning TESOL to translanguaging realities. TESOL Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70128

de los Ríos, C. V., & Carlos, D. (2026). Sones elásticos: Leveraging the dynamic spirit of son jarocho-based writing into the TESOL Classroom. TESOL Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.70125

Méndez, C. S., Chung-de los Ríos, T. & de los Ríos, C. V. (2026). We Are Sanctuary – Chúng tôi là nơi trú ẩn – Somos Santuario. English Journal, 115(3), 13-23. https://doi.org/10.58680/ej2026115319

Eric Dearing

Eric Dearing was inducted as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Stefanie DeLuca

  • American Academy of Sciences and Letters, Elected 
  • William T. Grant Foundation, Board of Trustees, Elected
  • Awarded a $1.2M Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation grant to study whether alternative credentials can promote economic mobility (Co-PI with Richard Settersten) 

Alex Eble

Alex Eble was selected to serve as Scientific Advisor to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) for its Africa Education portfolio.

Jason Ellis

Jason Ellis published an audibook version of his book A Class by Themselves: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond, voiced by Adam Grant Warren. The audiobook is available at audible.com.” [please hyperlink to this link, if that’s appropriate. https://www.audible.ca/pd/A-Class-by-Themselves-Audiobook/B0GQVFJ7T3

Josh Gilbert

Josh Gilbert published a meta-analysis in Educational and Psychological Measurement. You can read more at https://doi.org/10.1177/00131644261426972. Josh Gilbert published an article on explanatory item response models in Behavior Research Methods. You can read more at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-026-02986-2. Josh Gilbert published an article on value-added models in Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice. You can read more at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/emip.70011.

Chantal Hailey

Chantal Hailey and her co-author, Jennifer Candipan, published a Science Advances paper describing how school discipline disparities shift in neighborhoods with changing Black populations. You can read the paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady4239.

Meseret Hailu

Meseret Hailu earned tenure and promotion at the University of Georgia.

Ilana Horn

Picture me as the legendary little Dutch boy diligently and tenaciously sticking a finger in a dam that is about to flood my beloved town. I have spent the last year staving off collapse of various entities I lead in the wake of a collapsing research ecosystem. 

If you see me at a conference, buy me a sparkling water and I will tell you my tales. It would be highly impolitic of me to disclose the details in this note. Suffice it to say, this was not at all the year I imagined. Despite the vagueness of my note, I am proud of this accomplishment, even if my finger is sore and puckered. I hope others are faring better. 

Rosalind Horowitz

Rosalind Horowitz, Founder and Head of the College of Education and Human Development (COEHD) Research Colloquium at The University of Texas San Antonio, designed the 18th Annual COEHD Research Colloquium. This year’s theme was Artificial Intelligence versus The Authentic Mind: Challenges, Obstacles, and Opportunities for Academic Learning in the Disciplines. Presentations included a Keynote Speaker, Professor and Interim Dean, Computer Sciences, Fred Martin, of the newly launched College of AI, Cyber, and Computing; introductory remarks by Dean of the COEHD, Mario Torres; and Rosalind Horowitz, Endowed Professor, Honors College, and Creator of the Colloquium. Presentations were by faculty from across the University’s Colleges, Doctoral, Post-Doctoral, Masters, and Undergraduate students. The University of Texas San Antonio recently joined with the Health Sciences medical community resulting in an enrollment of 45,000, serving a large Hispanic population of South Texas and beyond. It has become one of the fastest growing institutions of higher education in the United States.

Alexander Hyres

Alexander Hyres published Protest and Pedagogy: Charlottesville’s Black Freedom Struggle and the Making of the American High School (University of Georgia Press, 2026). To purchase the book, go here: https://www.ugapress.org/9780820375304/protest-and-pedagogy/.

Anthony Johnson

Anthony Johnson received the 2026 Carlos J. Vallejo Emerging Scholar Award from the Multicultural/Multiethnic Education SIG at the American Educational Research Association.

Jarrel Johnson 

Jarrel Johnson recently co-authored, with Dalvin T. Dunn, a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of College Student Development titled Their Eyes Are Watching Quares: HBCU Student Affairs Professionals Enacting Grassroots Strategies for the Inclusion of Quare Collegians. Drawing on qualitative research across three public HBCUs in the U.S. South, this study challenges deficit narratives by highlighting how student affairs professionals employ culturally responsive, grassroots leadership strategies to support quare students. The article introduces the Quared Liberatory Critical Praxis as a framework to inform future research, theory, and practice. To read this article, please see the following citation:

  • Johnson, J. T., & Dunn, D. T. (2025). Their Eyes Are Watching Quares: HBCU Student Affairs Professionals Enacting Grassroots Leadership Tactics for the Inclusion of Quare Collegians. Journal of College Student Development, 66(5), 565–582. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2025.a970179

Additionally, Jarrel Johnson published a commissioned essay in Public Books titled This Is Not a Choice—It Is a Charge: How HBCUs Must Embrace Black Radical Love & Empower Queer and Trans Students*. In this piece, Jarrel draws from his research to address the contemporary sociopolitical climate, offering three actionable strategies for HBCU administrators to better support queer and trans* students amid ongoing structural and political challenges. To access this article, please visit this website:

  • https://www.publicbooks.org/this-is-not-a-choice-it-is-a-charge-how-hbcus-must-embrace-black-radical-love-and-empower-queer-and-trans-students-in-the-trump-era/ 

Matthew Kraft

Matthew Kraft was named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2026 Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Adam Laats

Adam Laats (postdoc 2009) was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities individual fellowship for his book project, School Children: A New History of US Public Education. The book will offer a new look at the origins of public education in the United States. Thanks to this fellowship, Laats will spend the academic year 2026-2027 working full time on writing the manuscript.

Tisha Lewis Ellison

Tisha Lewis Ellison was promoted to Professor in 2026, becoming the first Black American faculty member in her department to achieve both tenure and the rank of Full Professor.

Luis Leyva

Luis A. Leyva was distinguished with the 2026 Early Career Award from AERA Division G (Social Context of Education). He was elected as Co-Chair for the AERA SIG on Research in Mathematics Education and a member of the Steering Committee for the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA).

Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez

Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez received the 2026 Council for Exceptional Children Division for Research, Distinguished Researcher from Underrepresented Groups Award.

Heather McCambly

Heather McCambly was appointed as an inaugural Fellow, along with seven other scholars, at the Alliance for Higher Education. You can learn more at https://allianceforhighered.org. She also co-authored two new papers relevant to the current regressive political environment, one on racial partisanship in federal earmarking at the American Journal of Education (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/740268) and another on federal grants and ideological control in Education Sciences (https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/16/1/163).

Sarah McCarthey

  • McCarthey, S. J. (2026). What do Children Value in a K/1 Writing Workshop? Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.
  • McCarthey, S. J. & Ren, Z. (2025). Supporting and co-constructing texts with peers: Children’s collaborative writing practices. Writing & Pedagogy, 16 (2). https://doi.org/10.3138/wap-2025-0003
  • McCarthey, S. J. & Ren, Z. (2025). Autonomy and choice in collaborative writing environments. Language Arts, 103 (2) 77-88.
  • McCarthey, S. J., Vu, N., & Zheng, J. (2025). Teachers’ talk about children’s writing. Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, 13 (1). https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol13/iss1/4

Nicole Panorkou

Nicole Panorkou (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017) and her doctoral research assistant, Amanda Provost, published new article foregrounding the role of mathematics in interdisciplinary STEM. This study highlights the pivotal role of questioning for eliciting different students’ forms of covariational reasoning in both mathematics education and interdisciplinary math and science education.

Panorkou, N. & Provost A. (2025). Making Mathematics Visible in Integrated STEM: A Design Framework for Eliciting Students’ Covariational Reasoning in Science. Research in Integrated STEM Education (published online ahead of print 2025). https://doi.org/10.1163/27726673-bja00035

Michelle Perry

Michelle Perry was named the inaugural Richard C. Anderson Professor of the Cognitive Science of Teaching and Learning, in the Department of Educational Psychology, at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.

Frank Reichert

Frank Reichert recently published two journal articles and one encyclopedia entry:

Maria Eugenia Rojas Concha

María Rojas Concha was awarded a 3-year research grant by the Chilean government. Only 7 education-based research projects receive the Postdoctoral Fondecyt Grant. Her research will investigate systems of support for undocumented immigrant students in Chile. 

John Rury

Publication of seventh edition of Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling. This edition was coauthored with former doctoral student Sylvia Mendez, currently at the University of Kentucky. 

Stephen Santa-Ramirez

Stephen Santa-Ramirez received a 2026 Outstanding Advocate Award from the Coalitions and Networks via ACPA-College Student Educators International at the annual convention in Baltimore, Maryland.

Maribel Santiago

Maribel Santiago co-edited the book “”Shifting the Lens in History Education”” with Tadashi Dozono.  You can purchase the book from Harvard Education Press.  Link: https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9781682539644/shifting-the-lens-in-history-education/ 

Melody Schwenk

My first author manuscript “ ASL proficiency predicts advanced visual-spatial processing independent of age of acquisition” was accepted for publication in Cognitive Science.

Campbell Scribner

I published an essay in “Front Porch Republic,” called “Large Language Models and the New Scholasticism.” Link here: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2025/12/large-language-models-and-the-new-scholasticism/

Rachel Talbert

Rachel Talbert published an article, Wrong Rocks Counterstorying a Curriculum of Erasure in Manahatta/n with an excellent team of Teachers College doctoral students David Vining, Deanne Green and Neal Schick. The work centers Lenape Presence in New York City. Read the article here https://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/article/view/1173

Noël Um-Lo

Noël Um-Lo recently published “Your Father Bought Me for 8,000 Yuan,” a work of ethnographic fiction based on her dissertation research, in Anthropology and Humanism. You can read it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400741264_Your_father_bought_me_for_8000_yuan. She also presented her dissertation research at the American Anthropological Association in November 2025, where she won the Shirley Brice Heath New Scholar Award.

Jon Wargo

Jon M. Wargo has been named a 2026 Early Childhood Education Fellow at the Clyfford Still Museum Institute. Through the Residential Fellowship Program, he will join a cohort of six fellows in residence in Denver, CO, to pursue an independent project informed by the museum’s collection and expertise. His work focuses on early childhood education at the intersection of art, education, and participatory design. In addition, Wargo – alongside of collaborators Dr. Cassie Brownell (OISE – University of Toronto) and Dr. Kathleen Schenkel (San Diego State University – received the 2026 AERA Technology, Instruction, Cognition, and Learning Outstanding Research Collaboration Award.