Who We Are
Who We Are
 
Profile of Division F Members
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Division F explores the history and historiography of education broadly from national, international, and comparative perspectives, and provides historical context for the formation of educational policy. Members teach and research in a variety of contexts, from community colleges to research universities, undergraduate to graduate programs, and include independent scholars and those working outside of the academy. 

 
 
Division Officers
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AERA Division F Leadership, 2023-2024


Vice President Jon N. Hale, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 

 Dr. Jon Hale is an associate professor of education and educational history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership.  His research focuses on the history of student activism and the intersection of race and educational policy. Dr. Hales’ research explores the history of student and teacher activism, grassroots educational programs, and segregated high schools during the civil rights movement. He explores this in five authored and co-edited books, including his award-winning book, The Freedom Schools: A History of Student Activists on the Frontlines of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and his most recent books, The Choice We Face: How Segregation, Race, and Power Have Shaped Americas Most Controversial Education Reform Movement (Beacon Press, 2021) and  “A New Kind of Youth”: The Politics of Historically Black High Schools and Student Activism During the Long Southern Freedom Struggle, 1920-1975  (University of North Carolina Press). Hale’s research has also been featured in outlets including C-SPAN, The Atlantic, The American Scholar, The New Yorker, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, and The Washington Post. Dr. Hale’s service to the wider community is connected broadly to civil rights education initiatives including the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program and the Southern Initiative of the Algebra Project.

 


Program Chair Mirelsie Velázquez, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

   

Mirelsie Velázquez, PhD, is an associate professor of Latina/o Studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work centers history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education. Her book, Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977 (University of Illinois Press 2022), chronicles the Puerto Rican community’s response to the urban decay in which they were forced to live, work, and especially learn. Her work has most recently appeared in the journals  Latino Studies,  Centro, and  Gender and Education. Dr. Velázquez is currently working on a second book project that historicizes Puerto Rican women and other Latina activists in higher education across the Midwest, from the 1970s to the 1990s, as they worked to create homespaces. 


Mentoring session Atiya S. Love, Widener University  

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 Dr. Atiya S. Love is an Assistant Professor of Education and Director of the Higher Education Leadership Program at Widener University. She has over 15 years of experience as a scholar-practitioner with research interests in the history of higher education, Black experience, mentorship, and belonging. Her research utilizes qualitative and historical inquiry to address issues connected to social change and justice. She is interested in the ways in which institutions have created, and continue to create spaces conducive for liberation, transformation, and love, in pursuit of justice, equity, social change and belonging. Her work has been published in the Peabody Journal of Education and book chapters in Leading Against the Grain by Teachers College Press and Opportunities and Challenges of HBCUs by Palgrave. She has presented at national conferences such as AERA, ASHE, AABHE and previously served as the Senior Graduate Representative for AERA Division F.

 


 Mentoring session c0-chair Kimberly Ransom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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 Dr. Kimberly C. Ransom is an interdisciplinary historian who studies the History of African American Education and the History of Childhood. Her research examines the oral histories and material objects of Black children who once attended segregated schools in the Deep South during the Jim Crow Era (1940-1969). As a public scholar and artist, Kimberly also uses her historical research to create public exhibits related to African American childhood in and around schools. In her most recent project, she has worked in partnership with her dissertation respondents to create a local museum, the Historic Pickensville Rosenwald School Museum & Community Center, which is the sole remaining Rosenwald Schoolhouse in Pickens County, Alabama. Her scholarship seeks to illuminate the unique ways Black children have taken up childhood despite having been marginalized from childhood status in America, particularly in and around schools. Through her research and public-facing projects Kimberly also aims to demonstrate what can be learned from Black schoolchildren’s agency to imagine and influence the social and cultural world of schooling via their embodiments and articulations of childhood in the past. 


Equity and Inclusion Officer Theopolies Moton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Theopolies J. Moton III is an Assistant Teaching Professor of History of American Education and Higher Education in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. With research, teaching, and service commitments to advancing racial justice, cultural understanding and culturally responsible policies and practices in higher education, his specialties include the history of U.S. education, the history of African American education, the history of U.S. higher education, education law, and culturally responsive program assessment.

 

Moton earned his earned a B.A and M.A. from the Southern University at A&M College at Baton Rouge in Modern United States History and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Education Policy Studies.

 


Secretary Christine Woyshner, Temple University 

 

Christine Woyshner earned her doctorate in Teaching, Curriculum, and Learning Environments at Harvard University. She is Professor of Education in the Teaching and Learning Department at Temple University. Her research focuses on the history of civic voluntary associations in the history of American education. Christine has published six edited and authored books, including The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement, 1897-1970; The Educational Work of Women’s Organizations, 1890-1960, co-edited with Anne Meis Knupfer; and Histories of Social Studies and Race, 1865-2000 co-edited with Chara Haeussler Bohan. Her scholarship has appeared in History of Education Quarterly, Teachers College Record, the Journal of American History and Espacio, Tiempo y Educación. Christine also has written about the need to diversity the K-12 history and social studies curriculum in American schools around race and gender. She is currently working on a book on the educational activities of black civic voluntary organizations during Jim Crow, which has been funded by a Spencer Foundation Small Grant. Christine has been active with Division F and the History of Education Society for over twenty years. She serves on the editorial boards of Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, Theory and Research in Social Education, and Social Studies Research and Practice. In her free time, Christine skates with Philly Spirit, an amateur competitive synchronized ice-skating team. 

 


Graduate Student Representatives
 

Nathan Tanner, Senior Representative, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Nathan Tanner is a Doctoral Candidate in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership with a concentration in the history of education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His interdisciplinary research investigates the influence of white supremacy on educational opportunity structures and illuminates the ways politically and racially minoritized students navigate and resist oppressive schooling configurations. A primary goal of Nathan’s research is to draw educators and policymakers’ attention to the intersections and influence of place, race(ism), and religion on schools, past and present. Nathan’s book reviews can be read in History of Education and History of Education Quarterly and he has published his work in Religions and the Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education. Through document analysis, oral history, and collaborative research with former participants of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, Nathan’s dissertation project seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature on Native American boarding schools. His project also sheds light on 20th century removal, relocation, and schooling efforts that impacted tens of thousands of Native American children. Nathan worked formerly as a middle school social studies teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as an ESL teacher in Tianjin, China. He holds a B.A. in History and a M.Ed. in Educational Leadership and Policy.

 


 

 

Jackie Pedota, Junior Representative, University of Texas-Austin

Jackie is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin within the Educational Leadership and Policy department. As a daughter of Cuban immigrants, Jackie’s research focuses on equity in higher education and the institutionalization of diversity initiatives through a historical and organizational lens. Jackie’s work as an interdisciplinary scholar utilizes public scholarship, like oral history, and community-based research to democratize knowledge and disrupt powers and structures historically present within knowledge production and dissemination. She serves as the Managing Editor for the US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal and is a Graduate Student Member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. Her work has been recognized at major education and interdisciplinary conferences such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Oral History Association (OHA), the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). 

 

 


 

Webmaster, Chris Getowicz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign