Hi! I am a learning scientist whose research focuses on writing and education. In addition to my background in educational psychology, curriculum and instruction, and composition and rhetoric, I have to say that my work (and play!) outside of academia also bring significant perspective to the work that I do. My main interests lie in learning more about adolescents' literacies across contexts, creativity, audience, new media, motivation and -- most significantly -- writing.

As an undergraduate, I balanced my time among studying the economics of comprehensive school reform, writing poetry, and learning how to be a good teacher. After finishing up my BA, I taught middle and high school for several years, working across subjects including English, history, drama, and technology. In the classroom, I watched and taught as my students struggled and succeeded in their efforts to read and write and analyze and communicate, and, ultimately, I knew that I needed to learn more to become a better teacher.

In my graduate study, I worked to bridge fields, drawing from psychological, sociocultural, and rhetorical traditions to analyze and design learning and learning environments. For my masters' work, I collaborated with the Epistemic Games group to design Science.net, a role-playing game that explored how students learn to write and think as they learn to be science journalists.

My doctoral work, with Erica Halverson and the Games, Learning, and Society group, broadened my focus to adolescents' creative writing. In my dissertation, Understanding readers: Contexts, motivations, and a writer's audience, I took a descriptive approach, comparing multiple case studies to examine the confluence of creative writing, authenticity, designed participant structures, and motivations to write. I explored how these factors were affected and enabled by three different kinds of audiences and writing environments: an 11th grade English classroom, an extracurricular creative writing camp, and Neopets, an online game.

When I'm not teaching or working on academic writing, you're likely to find me dancing with my aerial troupe, cycling, playing with words, cooking, hiking, learning about a new game, or curled up with a good book or article.

Here is my full CV (pdf link).