Phillip Buckley is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture, and Society program. His research interests include education law, particularly the impact of litigation on education policy and practice, the philosophy of education, education and politics, and the relationship between education, citizenship, and civic participation. Phillip teaches Education Law at GSE and U.S. Law and Society/Law and Language to international LLM students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Prior to coming to Penn, he served for three years in the US Department of State English Language Fellowship program, teaching law students at universities in Ukraine and Serbia. He holds a Juris Doctor degree, an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership, and a B.A. in International Affairs.

email: buckleyd@dolphin.upenn.edu

Carolyn Chernoff is a joint Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. An ethnographic and qualitative researcher, Carolyn's research interests center on cities, social change, and the arts as well as broadly-defined issues of difference, inclusion, and democracy. As a teacher, consultant, and program director, she has worked with a wide variety of nonprofit and community-based organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Oaxaca, Mexico. Carolyn is also co-founder of The Girls' DJ Collective.

email: chernoff@dolphin.upenn.edu

Roseann Liu is a joint Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program and the Anthropology department. She is interested in the cultural production of diasporic youth and the role of media in these communities. Roseann previously taught in New York City public schools and worked at the charter school unit in the state education department. Most recently, Roseann was research associate at Research for Action. She has published and presented in the areas of state-wide school reform, data use, and participatory action research.

email: roseannl@dolphin.upenn.edu

Erika Kitzmiller is a doctoral student in Education, Culture, and Society. Before coming to Penn, she worked for the Steppingstone Foundation and taught social studies. Her research interests include: youth civic engagement, university-related schools, and the politics of urban school reform. For the past three years, she has been Doug Lynch's research assistant and has worked on special initiatives, such as a partnership with PennGSE and Facing History and Ourselves. She received her B.A. in history and Italian from Wellesley College and her M.G.A. from the Fels Institute of Government at Penn.

email: ekitzmil@dolphin.upenn.edu

Carlos R. Martínez began the Ph.D. program in Education, Culture and Society at Penn GSE in 2008.  He is simultaneously pursuing a joint degree in Anthropology from the School of Arts & Sciences and a Graduate Certificate in Urban Studies.  His research interests include dialogue as utilized in critical pedagogy, educative activity across liminal spaces, and the negotiation of identity in community settings.  Previously, Carlos instructed Spanish-English bilingual classes at the elementary level and E.S.L./Reading classes at the secondary level.  He holds an M.A. degree in Foreign Language Education from The University of Texas at Austin.  Currently, he is developing panaperture.com, scheduled to launch summer 2009.  The purpose of which is to provide an avenue for discourse in the fields of Education and Anthropology, as well as disseminating research and publication opportunities for graduate students within these fields. 

email: carma@dolphin.upenn.edu

Leya Mathew is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture and Society program. After earning a Bachelors degree in Education and a Masters degree in Media and Communication, she assisted film directors in India like Sai Paranjpye and Ajay Raina. The projects she worked on include the award winning documentary film ‘Wapsi (The Returning)’, about the cultural heritage and politics of the India Pakistan divide. During her media career, she worked extensively in conflict regions in India, often going beyond documentation, to participation. The video documentation work during the 2002 Gujarat riots overlapped with relief and rehabilitation efforts, and extended to trust building through non-formal education. Her later experiences with successive documentary film projects in and about Kashmir nurtured her interest in ethnographic research methods and Democratic Education in conflict regions. Her research interests also include multicultural education and de-segregated education.

email: leyamathew@gmail.com

Brian Peterson is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture, and Society program. His research interests include the achievement gap, technology in education, and youth culture. He co-launched a Saturday academic and cultural enrichment program for West Philadelphia secondary students, and wrote a study guide geared towards African-American college students. He holds a B.S.E. and M.S. Ed from Penn.

email: peterson@pobox.upenn.edu

Catherine R. Rhodes

Catherine R. Rhodes is a joint Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program at GSE and in Linguistic Anthropology in the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds an M.A. in the Social Sciences (specialization in Linguistic Anthropology) from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Latin American Studies (specialization in Anthropology, History, and Political Science) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Catherine’s research interest include semiotics, language diversity and cognition, bi- and multilingualism, social identification, discursive self-making, narrative, and discourse analysis. Specifically, Catherine seeks to explore the relationship between language diversity and thought and the implications this may have for bi- and multilingual speakers’ discursive selves. She has conducted research in Latino communities in the U.S. and in Mexico, and has lived, worked, and traveled widely in Latin America and the Caribbean. Catherine has worked as a Writing Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently a Research Assistant for Dr. Stanton Wortham on an ethnographic research project that investigates phenomenon related to new Latino diaspora communities in the U.S. Before coming to Penn, Catherine worked for over six years as a bilingual (Spanish-English) audience researcher and exhibit and program evaluator in museums and other non-formal learning institutions across the U.S.

email: rhodesc@gse.upenn.edu