Two graduate students and a recent alumna from the UW–Madison School of Education are recipients of 2025 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships.
The competitive NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship encourages a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. This fellowship supports candidates whose dissertation projects bring innovative and insightful approaches to the history, theory, analysis, or application of formal and informal education.
This year, the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship awarded $27,500 to 35 dissertation fellows, from a pool of over 400 applicants. Awardees from UW–Madison include:
- LaShanda Harbin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies
- Marina Miranda Noriega, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction
The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship supports early career scholars working in critical areas of education research. Through professional development, funding, and mentorship from senior scholars, the fellowship enhances the career and research opportunities of the fellow.
This year, the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral awarded $70,000 to 25 postdoctoral fellows who were selected from a pool of over 270 applicants.
Among them is Giselle Martinez Negrette, who earned her PhD from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction in 2019. She is now an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.
“The NAEd/Spencer Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships offer life-changing opportunities,” according to Okhee Lee, chair of the NAEd Professional Development Committee. As a past recipient herself, Lee personally knows “the significant impacts these fellowships have on the recipients’ professional careers and how these fellowships enable the recipients to further their ideas and contribute to shaping education research.”
Furthermore, Lee emphasizes that “given the current political challenges, the fellowships will have even greater impacts on the fellows, their fields, and society at large.”
Learn more about the 2025 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellows and Postdoctoral Fellows and their research.