Our Students | International & Transcultural Studies | Teachers College, Columbia University

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Meet Our Doctoral Students

Kevin Henderson

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Dissertation Advisor: Oren Pizmony-Levy

Kevin is a PhD candidate in international organizations and global education policy whose research probes how international actors shape education narratives on skills, reskilling, and digital transformation. He employs mixed methods including discourse analysis to show how these narratives are constructed, institutionalized, and legitimized.

Kevin served as a program officer and founding program director of digital content at the United Board where he specialized in digital education initiatives in Hong Kong, Japan, India, and the Philippines. He is former editor in chief of Current Issues in Comparative Education, a member of the Comparative and International Education Society, and a cofounder of its Southeast Asia Special Interest Group. He holds degrees from Columbia, Fordham, and Nyack College.

International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Whitney Hough

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Dissertation Advisor: Mary Mendenhall

My research centers around the intersection of education, conflict, development, and peacebuilding. I focus specifically on the agency of teachers in conflict-affected contexts, the provision of high-quality secondary education in emergencies, and the transformative role of education in protracted conflict. Outside of the doctoral program, I have worked in the international education and nonprofit sectors for over 15 years and am currently the Deputy Project Director for Fulbright Teacher Exchanges at IREX, a global international education development nonprofit.

International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Skylar Kaat

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Skylar's research focuses on the aspirations and consequences of efforts made by language learners as they create new domains of knowledge and innovative ways to engage with the language. In their ongoing dissertation project, they examine a group of elderly individuals who organize themselves to learn their heritage language, Classical Mongolian — a language they never had the opportunity to learn in their youth. Through 9 months of ethnographic work, Skylar documents their creative learning strategies, revealing how language serves not just as a tool for communication, but as a vibrant place for memory, community, and joy.

International & Transcultural Studies

Sumit Karn (He/Him/His)

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Sumit Karn examines how ideas, innovations, and institutions diffuse across contexts and influence educational policies, reforms, and systems. He focuses on the processes through which certain ideas gain legitimacy while others fade, paying close attention to how global cultural and institutional norms interact with local dynamics. He pursues this work through the disciplinary lens of sociology and history, utilizing multiple and mixed-methods approaches. His work has appeared in journals such as Economic Analysis and Policy and Current Issues in Comparative Education.

Before starting his Ph.D. at Columbia, Sumit supported various impactful projects with organizations, including Bloomberg Philanthropies (Global Scholar program), the Gates Foundation (Ananya 3SI project with CDOT in Bihar, India), and Steps (DDA project of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services). Before that, Sumit worked as a journalist for the Everett Herald newspaper in Washington, USA.

International & Transcultural Studies First-Generation College Student

Samaya Mansour

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Samaya Mansour is a Ph.D. candidate in International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she also serves as a Doctoral Research Fellow for the Division of Academic Planning and Global Affairs. Samaya works at the intersection of research, policy, and practice to advance global education through meaningful partnerships. In her dissertation research, she uses a decolonial lens to explore how refugees reconstitute citizenship in displacement contexts.

Currently, she is the Senior Research Analyst with the Gender Equality in and through Education workstream and co-coordinates the Echidna Global Scholars Program at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Prior to her current role, Samaya co-led international research and development projects with INEE, UNHCR, UNDP, Plan International, and others, providing research-based insights and policy recommendations aimed at improving education systems in fragile and crisis contexts.

International & Transcultural Studies

Grace Na

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Grace Na is a Ph.D. candidate in international and comparative education with a specialization in political science. Her main research focuses on the global governance of education, specifically examining how its mechanisms have evolved over time. She is also helping spearhead a project that investigates the politics of knowledge production in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), exploring the roles of the OECD, the World Bank, and UNESCO in shaping educational discourse and policy. Before embarking on her doctoral studies, she worked to advance global education reform by helping to establish a nonprofit organization that fosters partnerships among policymakers, educators, and business leaders. Additionally, she has experience in North Korea policy work in Washington, D.C., where she engaged with various government branches to address complex geopolitical challenges.

International & Transcultural Studies

Sara Pan Algarra (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Dissertation Advisor: Regina Cortina

Sara, Researcher and Policy Advisor, is a Doctoral Candidate in Comparative and International Education. She is a research assistant in the Latinidad Curriculum Initiative. She was the 2024-25 editor-in-chief of Current Issues in Comparative Education. Her PhD research centers on the intersection of climate mobility, internal displacement, disasters, and school abandonment among adolescent girls in Honduras. This work reflects her commitment to addressing pressing global issues through context-based academic inquiry and practical policy insights.

With a passion for advancing education policy and practice, Sara brings a wealth of interdisciplinary experience from her engagements in Switzerland, India, Italy, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Venezuela, and the United Kingdom. She was a Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Scholar in 2021-22 and an International Fellow at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in 2023-24.

International & Transcultural Studies

Elena Peeples

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Dissertation Advisor: Nicholas Limerick

I am a doctoral candidate in Anthropology and Education. My research interests include adult education, community organizing and collective political action, urbanism and urban infrastructure, and Latin American immigration to the United States. My dissertation work considers community organizing and advocacy efforts around traffic safety issues within participatory planning initiatives. Through ethnographic engagement, this project considers how a variety of stakeholders, especially Latinx immigrants, participate in planning initiatives and community organizing and how the knowledge they produce for and through these efforts is legitimated, transformed, contested, and reinscribed as they attempt to improve traffic safety. Prior to entering doctoral study, I was an educator, organizer, and nonprofit leader working across southern and central New Jersey.

International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Darren Rabinowitz

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Dissertation Advisor: Oren Pizmony-Levy

Darren Rabinowitz is a PhD candidate studying International and Comparative Education at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University, and works as a research associate at the TC Center for Sustainable Futures. His dissertation research investiages the role of environmental provisions in national constitions and their influence on policy making, education, citizenship and activism. His research interests include globalization theories, peacebuilding, social movements, civil society, climate change education, citizenship education, and youth activism. He has previosuly worked on international education resesach projects with the, Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR), Earth Institute, Columbia Univeristy, the The Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education Project (MECCE) and the North American Association for Environmental Education.

International & Transcultural Studies

Kemigisha Richardson

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Dissertation Advisor: Mary Mendenhall

Kemigisha Richardson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and 2025 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. Her research explores institutional structures, policies, curricula, and pedagogies that support empowering and sustainable teaching conditions, as well as positive academic and psychosocial outcomes for students in crisis-affected contexts. Prior to her doctoral studies, Kemigisha worked as a public school teacher in Hawai'i with students with diverse learning needs and newcomers with varied English literacy.

International & Transcultural Studies

Issa Rooney (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Issa is a doctoral student and graduate research assistant at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include teacher identity and roles in the context of forced displacement.

Issa earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, as a Peace Corps Fellow in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology. During her time at Teachers College, Issa also taught high school science at a project-based high school. She has worked with the International Rescue Committee's Youth Education team, supporting refugee education initiatives, and she has taught secondary science in Mozambique as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Currently, Issa serves as the Chair of Community Engagement for the New York City Peace Corps Association.

International & Transcultural Studies

Tiffany Tryon

Ph.D. Student, Comparative and International Education

Tiffany Tryon’s research investigates how displaced and marginalized youth negotiate political identity, belonging, and state relations amid disrupted education and protracted displacement. She examines how structural exclusion from education intersects with broader questions of power, recognition, and state legitimacy, drawing on qualitative and participatory methods to center youth perspectives. Tiffany has worked across Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Moldova, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates, supporting international education, public diplomacy, teacher training, and humanitarian development for organizations such as USAID, the U.S. Department of Defense, and national Ministries of Education.

International & Transcultural Studies

Noël Um-Lo

Ph.D. Student, Applied Anthropology

Dissertation Advisor: Nicholas Limerick

Noël is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation research, situated in South Korean alternative schools for North Korean displaced youth, examines how states and civil society actors map religious and political meaning onto the experience of displacement. Drawing on three years of ethnographic and archival research, this project traces the social life of South Korean unification as it moves beyond state ideology and becomes an infrastructural logic—one that mediates access to education, recognition, and belonging for North Korean displaced youth. At its core, her research asks what it means to be folded into a nation’s future while being excluded from its present. This project is supported by the National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in Cultural Anthropology.

International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Fernanda Vasconcelos Dias (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Dissertation Advisor: Ellen Grey Gundaker

Fernanda Vasconcelos Dias is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her ethnographic research explores how race, immigration, culture, and learning shape the everyday lives of Black Brazilian immigrants in the New York area. She focuses on Afro-Brazilian cultural practices such as samba reggae and dance, examining how these spaces foster community, labor, and cross-cultural dialogue among racially diverse groups. Fernanda worked as an Adjunct Lecturer at Lehman College (CUNY) and has served as Educational Manager at SQA Education, where she led curriculum development for ESL programs. She holds master’s degrees from Teachers College, UMass Dartmouth, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She is also a co-founder of Kilomba Collective, the first Black Brazilian women’s collective in the U.S., and a coordinating member of the Paulo Freire Initiative at Columbia University.

International & Transcultural Studies First-Generation College Student Student-Parent

Sarah Vazquez (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Sarah G. Vazquez is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research examines the intersection of childhood, digital technology, civic engagement, and multicultural education. Her dissertation, Civic Media Worlds, is an ethnographic study exploring how multilingual children use digital technologies in their social lives, and in particular how they are engaged with the Roblox ecosystem. Working in partnership with Clifton Public Schools in Passaic County, New Jersey, her research contributions to conversations on education technology, digital equity, civic media literacy and the role of digital technologies in shaping civic identities among young children.

Sarah is also a member of the Primary School Faculty at Montclair Kimberley Academy in Essex County, New Jersey. Prior to her doctoral studies, she taught in elementary education for several years in the US and internationally.

More information: www.sarahgvazquez.me

International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new online profiles for Doctoral Students at Teachers College.

If you are a currently enrolled doctoral student at Teachers College, please visit the profile submission page for more information on how you can create your own profile.