An alumna of the UW–Madison School of Education has been awarded the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2026 Dissertation of the Year Award from the organization’s Rural Education Special Interest Group.
Erin Gill, who graduated with her doctoral degree from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in 2025, is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, “Rural Spaces, Queer Places: The Influence of Geography on School Climates and LGBTQ+ Student Mental Health,” was chosen by the interest group’s awards committee for its strong analysis and theoretical sophistication.
“This submission makes an important and timely contribution to the field of rural education weaving together a solid conceptual framework with rigorous, multi-scale empirical evidence,” the committee noted. “Particularly striking was the nuanced finding that rural LGBTQ+ students face harsher school climates yet do not uniformly report worse mental health outcomes. This is a counterintuitive result that opens important new lines of inquiry into rural resilience and protective factors.”
Gill’s study used large-scale survey data at the county, state, and national levels to examine how geography shapes LGBTQ+ students’ school experiences and well-being.
In Wisconsin, she found LGBTQ+ students in rural schools face higher levels of bullying and victimization than peers in city and suburban schools. These geographic differences in school experiences did not lead to mental health disparities, pointing to potential sources of resilience within rural schools.
Across 22 states, Gill found that when states adopt civil rights protections based on sexual orientation, bullying among lesbian, gay, and bisexual students declines. This finding suggests that policy decisions at the state level can meaningfully affect school environments for LGBTQ+ youth. However, students in the South and parts of the Midwest lack access to these essential protections.
While at UW–Madison, Gill co-authored several studies with Mollie McQuillan, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Those included a study that found transgender students were more likely than their cisgender peers to seek support from school staff and a study that found training elementary school teachers in inclusive practices for LGBTQ+ students leads to lower disciplinary rates for all students.
Gill will present her research and be presented with the honor this weekend at the AERA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.