Research

I work at the intersection of the learning sciences and the sociology of knowledge, asking what education is fundamentally for — and how the dance between cultural transmission and innovation actually happens across interactions, communities, institutions, and generations.

My primary field site is Jewish education, with a broader eye toward academic and artistic canons, organizational learning, and remix culture.

Ongoing Projects

Learning to Be Jewish — an interview-based study of how Jewish emerging adults learn to be Jewish, with Ari Y. Kelman (Stanford University).

Learning Trajectories of Adult Jewish Learners — a study of how adult Jewish learners think about their learning across their lives, rather than in any particular context, forthcoming in the Journal of Jewish Education.

[Untitled book] — a book that uses liberal Jewish Talmud study — in interactions, in life trajectories, in institutions, and across broader swathes of culture — as a site through which to ask what education is fundamentally for, and how it does that.

Credentials

Ph.D., Anthropology of Education, Stanford University

Thesis Title: “To Belong as Individuals: Making Meaning—Personal and Shared—in Liberal Jewish Talmud Study”

Supervisors: Ari Y. Kelman, Ariel Evan Mayse, T.M. Luhrmann, Sarah Levine

M.A., Instructional Technology and Media, Columbia University Teachers College

Thesis Title: “Games for Character Development: A Dual-Process Approach”

Supervisors: Joey J. Lee, Lalitha Vasudevan, Maxine Greene z”l

B.A., Theater Studies, Yale University

Thesis title: “Hineni: Reflections on Directing Martin Buber’s Elijah”

Supervisors: Joseph Roach, Toni Dorfman