Biography

Erin K. Gill is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her research examines how geography and public policy shape K–12 students’ educational opportunity, with particular attention to LGBTQ+ and rural student well-being. She leverages large-scale survey data and rigorous quantitative methods to examine how state and local contexts structure educational opportunity.

Her research is informed by her experience as a rural educator, where she taught art and served in teacher leadership roles at a rural high school in Indiana. She contributes to research–practice partnerships with school districts, community organizations, and state agencies by co-authoring policy briefs and research reports to inform educational leadership and policy. This work has been recognized with an Outstanding Educational Policy Report Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Educational Policy and Politics Division.

Her scholarship has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA Pediatrics, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and the Journal of School Leadership. She also contributed a chapter to Rural Education and Queer Identities: Rural and (Out)Rooted, the first edited collection devoted to the intersection of rural education and queer identities. Her doctoral research was supported by an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Fellowship and the Kaplan Dissertation Fellowship in LGBTQ+ Studies.

Education

  • Ph.D. (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025
  • M.S. (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2021
  • B.S. (Visual Arts Education) Indiana University-Bloomington, 2014

Areas of Expertise

  • Education policy
  • LGBTQ+ studies
  • Rural schooling
  • Quantitative methods
  • Translational research

Links

Research Interests and Current Projects

Building on her doctoral research, Dr. Gill serves as co-principal investigator of a quasi-experimental study examining how LGBTQ+-restrictive state legislation shapes student well-being, informing debates about student civil rights and educational equity. As a postdoctoral researcher, she contributes to a study on absenteeism rates and reasons across school locales, revealing how geographic context shapes patterns of student attendance. Together, these projects reflect her broader research agenda on how policy and place intersect to shape educational opportunity.

Publications