AERA President Deborah Loewenberg Ball has announced prominent scholars William Trent and Linda Tuhiwai Smith as major speakers at the 2018 Annual Meeting. The meeting—scheduled for April 13–17 in New York City—is the single largest gathering of scholars in the education research field and is a showcase for groundbreaking, innovative work in a diverse array of areas.

Trent, an AERA Fellow, will give the AERA Distinguished Lecture. A professor of education policy studies and sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is widely recognized for his commitment to the improvement of educational practice in American primary and secondary schools, his groundbreaking research on equity in education, and his repeated service as an expert. Trent’s scholarship on educational inequality has focused on school desegregation effects at the K-12 and postsecondary levels, benefits and consequences, social organization of schools, status attainment research, co- and extracurricular activities, and comparative education.

Smith, also an AERA Fellow, will give the Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture. She is a professor of indigenous education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. A leading scholar of indigenous education, her book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, is the most often quoted scholarship in indigenous research, advocating culturally appropriate research protocols and methodologies. She has advanced educational knowledge and research infrastructure as the director of three research institutes in New Zealand and through two terms as president of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education.

Additional information about these and other noteworthy sessions will become available in the coming weeks. More than 15,000 attendees are expected at the 2018 Annual Meeting, including nearly 10,000 presenters. The meeting’s theme is “The Dreams, Possibilities, and Necessity of Public Education.”

Click here to register for the Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting registration fee is less expensive if you are a 2018 AERA member. Be sure to obtain your AERA membership before registering for the Annual Meeting so that you obtain the discounted registration fee.