Core Department Faculty Member

Emily Handsman is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in 2022, and worked as a Harvard College Fellow (2022-2023) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform (2023-2024).

Emily is a sociologist of education who uses qualitative methods to study processes of cultural, political, and organizational change in the context of K-12 schools. In her research, she considers how cultural and political changes impact K-12 schools and how K-12 schools as organizations are either resistant to or open to change. In her current book project, Eras of Equity, she studies equity efforts in three suburban school districts, highlighting how exogenous shocks impact these efforts.

In her other projects, she examines changes in character education in US schools as well as equity efforts in mathematics. She is also engaged in a long-term, collaborative project on equity-centered school leadership funded by the Wallace Foundation.