Faculty Profiles Page

E-mail: benson@tc.columbia.edu

Office Location: 288 Grace Dodge Hall

Carol Benson came to Teachers College in 2014 after a long career as an educator, researcher and consultant in educational development with a focus on non-dominant languages and literacies in multilingual societies. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education (UCLA, 1994). From 1998 to 2011 she was based at Stockholm University in Sweden, where she worked at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism and later at the Center for University Teaching and Learning. She also worked internationally as a technical assistant for UN agencies and Scandinavian bilateral donors in the field of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MLE). Prior to that she lived for some years in Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique, and for shorter periods in the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Ethiopia and South Africa. Dr. Benson has worked in formal education (teacher capacity building, curriculum development, program evaluation) and non-formal education (literacy, gender equity) in the Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Africa regions as well as in Europe, particularly in the Spanish Basque Country. She has ongoing research projects on MLE policy and implementation in Senegal and Cambodia, both of which involve TC students as research assistants. Other projects include a meta-study of MLE effectiveness research with Prof. Kevin Wong of Pepperdine University (a TC graduate) and a team of TC students, and an analysis of writing assessment data from Cambodia, Senegal and Myanmar to demonstrate the literacy skills of bilingually taught learners. Recent publications include “An innovative ‘simultaneous’ bilingual approach in Senegal: Promoting interlinguistic transfer while contributing to policy change” (International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2020), and a second volume of “Language Issues in Comparative Education” co-edited with Kimmo Kosonen (2021, Brill Publishers). Dr. Benson promotes a multilingual habitus in her life and work, regularly using Spanish, Portuguese, French and Swedish and supporting students in developing their linguistic repertoires.

Courses AY 2021-22:

Fall 2021

ITSF 4025: Languages, Societies & Schools

ITSF 4580: Comparative Education

Spring 2022

ITSF 4013: Literacy & International Development

ITSF 4038: Monitoring & Evaluation

E-mail: cortina@tc.columbia.edu

Office Location: 352 Macy Hall

Regina Cortina is Professor of Education in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Her Presidential Address, “’The Passion for What is Possible’ in Comparative and International Education,” was published in the Comparative Education Review in November 2019.  Professor Cortina’s teaching and publications are advancing the field by focusing on Decolonial Theories in Comparative Education.  Most recently, two of her articles were published in 2019 and 2020 in Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.  Professor Cortina’s book published in 2017, Indigenous Education Policy, Equity, and Intercultural Understanding in Latin America, is a comparative study of policies designed to increase the educational opportunities of Indigenous students, protect their rights to an education inclusive of their cultures and languages, and improve their education outcomes.  Her earlier book, The Education of Indigenous Citizens in Latin America (2014), examines unprecedented changes in education across Latin America that resulted from the endorsement of Indigenous people’s rights through the development of bilingual intercultural education.  Professor Cortina’s other areas of expertise are gender and education, the education and employment of teachers, public policy and education, and the schooling of Latinx students in the United States. Among her other major publications are Women and Teaching: Global Perspectives on the Feminization of a Profession (Palgrave, 2006), Immigrants and Schooling: Mexicans in New York (Center for Migration Studies, 2003), and Distant Alliances: Promoting Education for Girls and Women in Latin America (Routledge, 2000).  She has a Ph.D. in Education, a master’s degree in International and Comparative Education, and a master’s degree in Political Science, all from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Professor Cortina was President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in 2018-2019.

In academic year 2021-2022 Professor Cortina will teach the following classes:

Fall 2021

ITSF 5043: Decolonial Theories in Comparative Education

ITSF 5500:  Education Across the Americas

Spring 2022

ITSF 4060:  Latinxs in Urban Schools

ITSF 4581:  International Comparative Education and Development Studies, Part 2

Radhika Gorur is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia, and a Visiting Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Spring of 2022. Her research is in the fields of education policy, the sociology of quantification and metrics, the sociology of science, and critical data studies. She is interested in the social and political lives of data and in how policies get mobilised, stabilised, circulated, and challenged. Her research spans international and national education policy and reform; global aid and development; data infrastructures and data cultures; classroom research; and the sociology of knowledge. She received a BA in sociology and literature from Bangalore University, India; an MA in curriculum and teaching from Michigan State University; a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education and a PhD in Education from the University of Melbourne.

Radhika is a founding director of the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies, deputy convenor of the Deakin Science and Society Network (where she also co-leads the Data Cultures theme), a founding member of the international EDU-STS network, and a member of the TransAsiaSTS Network. She is one of the inaugural NORRAG Senior Fellows (2021). She is an Editor of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the International Journal of Educational Development and Journal of Education Policy.

Radhika has made pioneering contributions to the sociology of quantification and the use of socio-technical approaches to education policy. She has recently completed a major project studying the regimes of accountability being introduced by global policy networks in India and Cambodia. Recent publications include Dancing with COVID: Choreographing Examinations in Pandemic Times (with several co-authors); Governing by Dashboard: Reconfiguring Education Governance in the Global South (with Ben Arnold); Capacity Building as the Third Translation: The Story of PISA-D in Cambodia (with Camilla Addey); and Making the User Friendly: The Ontological Politics of Digital Data Platforms (with Joyeeta Dey). Radhika has received several research and writing awards, including the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research and Research Training, Victoria University.

Courses AY 2021-22:

Spring 2022

ITSF 5199 Numbers, Policy, and Governance in Education

ITSF 4581 International Comparative Education & Development Studies (Part 2)

E-mail: leichter@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 274 Grace Dodge Hall

Hope Leichter is an Elbenwood Professor of Education and the Director of the Elbenwood Center for the Study of the Family as Educator at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests focus on families and communities as educators; family memories and narratives; kinship networks and grandparents as educators; the mediation of television by the family; museum education for families; families and school reform; and immigration, migration and family education. Among Dr. Leichter’s publications are: Kinship and Casework: Family Networks and Social Intervention (Russell Sage Foundation); Families and Communities as Educators (Teachers College Press); The School and Parents (Teachers College Record); and Family Contexts of Television (Educational Communication and Technology). One of her most recent research projects is exploring the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the educational activities and roles of family members as adults and children work together in the home She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Oberlin College.

Courses AY 2021-22:

Spring 2022

ITSF 5023: The Family as Educator

ITSF 6520: Families/Communities as Educators

E-mail: nl2539@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 375C Grace Dodge Hall

Nicholas Limerick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Education and International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His main areas of research interest include linguistic anthropology, nation-states and schools, sociopolitical movements, indigenous language and culture revitalization, multilingualism, citizenship, and alternative models of education. He is currently drafting publications from his first project, which is based on more than two years of ethnographic research with indigenous directors of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador. He is involved in ongoing projects related to multilingualism and the politics of education in the Andes. His research has received awards from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Reed Foundation. Dr. Limerick received his Ph.D. in anthropology and in educational linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, and he also holds a B.A. in anthropology from Emory University. His research is conducted in Spanish and in Quichua.

Courses AY 2020-21:

Fall 2021

ITSF 5001: Advanced Ethnographic Methods

ITSF 5050: Language, Cultural Politics & Education

Email: Mendenhall@tc.columbia.edu 

Mary Mendenhall is an Associate Professor in the International and Comparative Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research examines refugee education policies and practices across camp, urban, and resettlement contexts; and teacher support and professional development in crisis settings, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her most recent publication (co-authored with both master’s and doctoral students/alumni Jihae Cha, Danielle Falk, Charlotte Bergin and Lauren Bowden) is Teachers as agents of change: Positive discipline for inclusive classrooms in Kakuma Refugee Camp (International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2020). 

Dr. Mendenhall is currently leading a research study on teacher and student well-being among displaced populations in Uganda and South Sudan. The four-year study is being conducted through an Oxfam-led and EU-funded initiative called Building Resilience in Conflict through Education. Dr. Mendenhall also serves as a member of the Standards and Practice Working Group for the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), and leads the research workstream for INEE’s Teachers in Crisis Contexts Collaborative (TiCC), an inter-agency effort to provide continuous, quality professional development to teachers working in displacement contexts. She also serves as an advisor to the Right to Education Initiative and the Center for Learning in Practice (CLiP) at the Carey Institute for Global Good, and is a faculty affiliate to the CPC Learning Network (housed at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health)

Dr. Mendenhall has an Ed.D. in international educational development from Teachers College, an M.A. in higher education administration from New York University, and a B.A. in psychology from Ohio University.

Courses AY 2021-22:

Fall 2021

ITSF 6580: Advanced Seminar in International and Comparative Education I

Spring 2021

ITSF 6581: Advanced Seminar in International and Comparative Education II

ITSF 4005:  Education in Emergencies and Reconstruction

E-mail: op2183@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 370 Grace Dodge Hall

Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Trained in sociology, his research interests focus on global education movements and their implications to schools. Professor Pizmony-Levy’s main line of research is concerned with international large-scale assessments of student achievement (e.g., TIMSS and PISA), the impact of these assessments on the policy process, and local resistance to test-based accountability (e.g., the opt-out movement). Other lines of his research focus on policies that advance environmental and sustainability education and promote safe-schools for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGIE) minorities. He received a B.A. in political science and educational policy from Tel-Aviv University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology and educational leadership and policy studies from Indiana University – Bloomington.

Professor Pizmony-Levy is the founding Director of the Center for Sustainable Futures. At the Center, he co-leads a research-practice partnership with the New York City Department of Education Office of Sustainability; the partnership seeks to improve schools’ engagement with sustainability education. He is an active member of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and served as the Chairperson of three Special Interest Group: SOGIE SIG (2018/2020); Large-Scale Cross-National Studies in Education SIG (2013/2016); and the Environmental and Sustainability Education SIG (2012/2014).

Among his recent publications are “The Opt-Out Movement and the Reform Agenda in US Schools” (with Bob Lingard and David Hursh), “Improving ESE policy through research-practice partnerships: Reflections and analysis from New York City” (with Meredith McDermott and Thad Copeland), and “Networked Education Systems and the Flow of PISA-Induced References” (with Erika Kessler). Professor Pizmony-Levy is the recipient of multiple awards from professional associations, including CIES and the American Sociological Association. He has received research grants from the Arcus Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the U.S. State Department.

Courses AY 2020-21:

Fall 2021

ITSF 4580:  International Comparative Education & Development Studies (Part 1)

ITSF 5031: Environmental and Sustainability Education

Spring 2021

ITSF 4101: Quantitative Analysis in International and Comparative Education

E-mail: sgrussell@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 278 Grace Dodge Hall

Garnett Russell is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education specializing in education in post-conflict societies. She also directs the George Clement Bond Center for African Education. Her research focuses on areas linked to education and conflict, peacebuilding, transitional justice, human rights, citizenship, and gender particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Rwanda and South Africa.

Her current research project is focused on the role of education in promoting peace-building and transitional justice in Colombia. She has also conducted research on resettled refugees and newcomer youth in the U.S., human rights education in New York high schools, and the right to education for urban refugees in Ecuador, Lebanon, Kenya and other countries in the global south. In addition, she is the co-founder and former co-chair of the CIES SIG for Education, Conflict, and Emergencies and is also a board member for the Journal on Education in Emergencies and the International Journal for Human Rights Education.

Dr. Russell’s recent publications have appeared in Comparative Education Review, Harvard Education Review, Gender and Education, Social Forces, and the Journal on Education in Emergencies. In addition, her book on education and peacebuilding in post-genocide Rwanda, Becoming Rwandan, is published with Rutgers University Press.

She has received funding from the Spencer Foundation, Dubai Cares/E-3, the National Science Foundation (NSF), NSEP Boren, and the U.S. State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPRM). Previously, she worked as a policy analyst for UNESCO, as well as a consultant for other non-profit organizations including Save the Children and SRI International. Professor Russell has a Ph.D. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, an M.A. in International Development from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University.

Personal website: www.garnettrussell.com

Courses AY 2021-22:

Fall 2021

ITSF 4580: International Comparative Education & Development Studies (Part 1)

ITSF 4160: Human Rights in Africa

Spring 2021

ITSF 5029: Education, Conflict, & Peacebuilding

ITSF 5040: Mixed Research Methods

E-mail: gs174@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 364 Grace Dodge Hall

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of International and Comparative Education. Her scholarly interests include comparative policy studies, policy borrowing/lending, teacher policy and school reform, globalization theories, case-study methodology, strategic planning and evaluation research. Among Professor Steiner-Khamsi’s twelve books are:  Comparative Methodology in the Era of Big Data and Global Networks (with Radhika Gorur and Sam Sellar, Routledge 2019); The State, Business and Education: Public-Private Partnerships Revisited (with Alexandra Drexler, E.Elgar Publisher 2018); Researching the Global Education Industry (with Marcelo Parreira do Amaral and Christiane Thompson, Palgrave 2018); and Understanding PISA’s Attractiveness: Critical Analysis in Comparative Policy Studies (with Florian Waldow, Bloomsbury, 2019).

She actively participates in a five-year research project (2018-23) entitled “Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison,” funded by the Norwegian Research Council and hosted at the University of Oslo, Norway. Periodically, she carries out analytical work the Asian Development Bank, European Union, Open Society Foundations, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, UNICEF, USAID,  and the World Bank with a focus on Mongolia and Central Asia. Professor Steiner-Khamsi was 2009/2010 President of the Comparative and International Education Society. She is (co)-editor of the book series International Perspectives on Educational Reform (Teachers College Press), World Yearbook of Education (Routledge), and NORRAG Series on International Education and Development (Elgar).  She is recipient of an honorary doctoral degree from the Mongolian National University of Education. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Zurich/Switzerland.

Professor Steiner-Khamsi splits her time between New York and Geneva. She is teaching and advising students in the International and Comparative Education program in the fall semester of each year. In the spring semester, she teaches at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In addition to her academic appointments, she serves as Director of NORRAG, a Geneva-based global network of international policies and cooperation in education with more than 5,000 members, and of the Global Partnership for Education’s KIX (Knowledge and Innovation Exchange) Hub for Europe – Asia – Pacific (21 countries), which is coordinated by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Courses AY 2021-22:

Fall 2021

ITSF 5006: Comparative Policy Studies

E-mail: ft442@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 376 Grace Dodge Hall

Felisa Tibbitts is a Lecturer in the Comparative and International Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include peace, human rights and global citizenship education; curriculum policy and development; critical pedagogy; and human rights in higher education.  Her geographical areas of interest include Eastern and Western Europe, the Balkans and Baltic States, South Africa, Turkey and Myanmar.

She has published practical resources on curriculum, program development and evaluation on behalf of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF, UNESCO, OSCE/ODIHR, the Council of Europe and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and the Open Society Foundations. Dr. Tibbitts’ scholarship has appeared in numerous books and journals including Comparative Education, Journal of Peace Education, Intercultural Education, Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, Teaching and Teacher Education and the International Review of Education.

In addition to her responsibilities at Columbia University, Dr. Tibbitts is Chair in Human Rights Education at Utrecht University (Netherlands) and UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Higher Education .She co-founded the NGO Human Rights Education Associates (HREA – www.hrea.org)and remains active in international HRE networks. Dr. Tibbitts was a Fulbright Fellow at Lund University, Sweden (Fall 2014) and a Human Rights Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2011-2013). She received her bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees (Public Policy, Education) from Harvard University and her D.Phil. in Political Science from the Otto-von-Guericke Universität of Magdeburg (Germany).

Courses AY 2021-22:

Fall 2021

ITSF 4093: Curriculum & Pedagogy in International Contexts

ITSF 4613: International Perspectives on Peace & Human Rights Education

Spring 2022

ITSF 4090: Issues & Institutions in International Education Development

ITSF 4613: Human and Social Dimensions of Peace

Summer 2022

ITSF 4038: Monitoring and Evaluation in International Education Development

E-mail : cv2343@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: TBD

Carine Verschueren is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the International and Comparative Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of education policy, politics of education, and sustainability, and explores environmental and sustainability education policies in K-12 education systems worldwide. She is particularly interested in urban schools and school districts, and the implications of urban politics around sustainability for these schools. She received an M.A. in Translation and an M.A. in International Politics from the University of Antwerp; she holds an Ed.M. in International Educational Development and a Ph.D. in International and Comparative Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

As a policy analyst, Professor Verschueren is a team member of Teachers College’s Center for Sustainable Futures. At the Center, she was instrumental in 2018-2019 in launching, coordinating and moderating the webinar series: “Thinking Global, Educating Local”. She is also an active member of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and is serving since 2020 as the Program Chair of the Environmental and Sustainability Education Special Interest Group. 

Her most recent publication is “Global and Local (F)Actors in Environmental and Sustainability Education Policies: The Case of New York City Public Schools.”

Courses AY 2020-21:

Fall 2021

ITSF 4009-002:  Intro to Research Methods

E-mail: rfw2004@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: 274 Grace Dodge Hall

Ruth Westheimer may best be known for having pioneered talking explicitly about sex on radio and television, but as it turns out, that is only a small part of her rich and diversified life. Born in Germany in 1928, Dr. Westheimer went to Switzerland at the age of ten to escape the Holocaust, which wiped out her entire immediate family. At the age of sixteen she went to then Palestine. She joined the Haganah, the Israeli freedom fighters, and was trained to be a sniper and was seriously wounded in a bomb blast. She later moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne and in 1956 went to the U.S. where she obtained her Master’s degree in Sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School of Social Research and Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) in the Interdisciplinary Study of the Family from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her work for Planned Parenthood led her to study human sexuality under Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center, where she became an Adjunct Associate Professor. She is also an Adjunct Professor at New York University, and a fellow of both Calhoun College at Yale and Butler College at Princeton, where at the latter two she taught a seminar from 2005-2010, as well as a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She has her own private practice in New York and lectures worldwide. She is the author of 36 books, the latest of which is Dr. Ruth's Guide for the Alzheimer's Caregiver and the executive producer of five documentaries.

E-mail: pwilliams@tc.columbia.edu

Office location: President’s House, 2^nd Floor

Portia Williams is the Executive Director for the Office of International Affairs (OIA) and an Adjunct Assistant  Professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her current work explores internationalization practices within higher education, transnational cooperation, and strategic global mobility. With more than 20 years of experience in education and development, Dr. Williams has directed, advised, or collaborated on policy and program initiatives in East and Southern Africa, Eastern Europe, East and Southern Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Dr. Williams holds an Ed.D. in International Educational Development and Policy Studies and an Ed.M. in International Family and Community Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.  She also holds an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Dr. Williams is a former Spencer Research Fellow and David L. Boren Fellow. Her research investigates the politics of foreign aid and its impact on educational policy and teacher shortages.

Email: cel2106@tc.columbia.edu

Connie Lafuente is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the ITS department at Teachers College.  She is interested in the strategies of NGOs, and in education philanthropy both domestically and internationally. A practitioner, Dr. Lafuente works at the Carnegie Corporation of New York where she manages a portfolio of grantees working to improve professional learning of educators and school leaders. Dr. Lafuente sources and vets grants and provides technical assistance to grantees. Before joining Carnegie, Dr. Lafuente worked in professional learning of early childhood educators at Bank Street College of Education for New York City’s Pre-K for All; and in the implementation of a randomized controlled trial of an early math curriculum with Bank Street College and MDRC, a social policy research organization. A native of Argentina, Dr. Lafuente worked as the director of primary education programs of Junior Achievement Argentina, an international NGO, where she designed curricula, lead the primary school program and provided professional development to teachers and volunteers. Her research interests include the strategies of education-related NGOs, including service delivery, advocacy and accountability processes. She has a PhD in International Comparative Education with a concentration in political science from TC, Columbia University, a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Oxford, a Masters in NGOs from the Universidad de San Andres, and a Bachelor in Political Science from the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires.

Courses AY 2020-21:

Fall 2020

ITSF 5500: Education Across the Americas

Spring 2021

ITSF 4060:  Latinxs in Urban Schools