Board

The Advisory Board currently advises QuERI graduate students on research projects and works to create Institute sustainability.

Deborah L. Tolman, PhD

Deborah L. Tolman is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College and on the faculty of the Critical Social Psychology doctoral program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She was Professor of Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, where she was the founding director of the Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality (CREGS). She has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and several books and edited volumes, including Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality (Harvard, 2002) and The American Psychological Association Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology (2015, with Lisa Diamond). She has an MS in Human Sexuality Education (UPenn) and a doctorate in Applied Developmental Psychology (Harvard Graduate School of Education). She is a co-founder of SPARK Movement, an intergenerational initiative supporting girls to become feminist activists. Her current projects include: writing a book on girls’ experiences of embodied sexuality, Catching Feelings: Teenage Girls Talk about Desire, Sex and Relationships; qualitative, experimental and participatory action research studies on diverse girls’ and young women’s management and perceptions of racialized sexualization and body surveillance; and developing SexGenLab, a collaborative of students and researchers producing and translating “critical knowledge for critical times” to make scholarship on gender and sexuality accessible to the public.

Emma Renold, PhD

Emma Renold is Professor of Childhood Studies at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. She is the author of ‘Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities’ (2005), Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation’ (2015), AGENDA: A young people’s guide to making positive relationships matter (2016), and the co-editor of the “Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education”. Her research investigates how gender and sexuality come to matter in children and young people’s everyday lives across diverse sites, spaces and locales. Recent projects (see www.productivemargins.ac.uk) explore the affordances of co-productive and creative methodologies to engage social and political change with young people on gender-related and sexual violence (see www.agenda.wales). Emma is currently chairing the Welsh Government’s expert panel on the future of sex and relationships education in Wales.

Jessica Ringrose, PhD

Jessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the UCL Institute of Education (London, UK), where she leads the MA program, Social Justice and Education. Her current research is looking at young people’s understandings of gender diversity and their networked sexual cultures and digital activisms; and how UK schools are meeting the challenge of gender and sexual rights and equality. Her books include: Post-Feminist Education? (Routledge, 2013); Deleuze and Research Methodologies (EUP, 2013); Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (Palgrave, 2015). She is currently working on two new books: #FeministGirl @School (Routledge) with Professor Emma Renold, and Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight back against Rape Culture (Oxford University Press) with Dr. Kaitlynn Mendes and Dr. Jessalynn Keller.

Jessica Fields, PhD

Jessica Fields is Professor of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University and Research Faculty at the SF State Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality. In 2008, Dr. Fields published Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality (Rutgers), a school-based ethnography that received the 2009 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from American Sociological Association’s Race, Class, and Gender Section. Dr. Fields is currently writing her second book, a consideration of emotion, affect, and methodology in qualitative research. In 2013, Dr. Fields and colleagues at SF State (Laura Mamo), Teachers College, Columbia University (Nancy Lesko), and York University (Jen Gilbert) launched The Beyond Bullying Project (beyondbullyingproject.com), which uses community based storytelling to understand and interrupt the ordinary hostility in high schools to LGBTQ sexuality and lives (funded by the Ford Foundation).

Cris Mayo, PhD

Cris Mayo is a Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Director of the LGBTQ Center at West Virginia University.  Mayo’s books include “Disputing the Subject of Sex: Sexuality and Public School Controversies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and “LGBTQ Youth and Education: Policies and Practices” (Teachers College Press, 2013). Both have won the Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. 

In addition, Mayo has edited or co-edited special issues of Philosophy of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and Urban Education. Additional publications include works in philosophy of education, pedagogy, educational policy, and gender and sexuality studies in journals such as Educational Theory, Educational Policy and Theory, Policy Futures in Education, and Sexuality Research and Social Policy. 

Mayo was awarded the Queer SIG of the American Educational Research Association’s Body of Work Award in 2014.

Glennda Testone

Glennda Testone, M.A., has been a leader in the field of social justice and civil rights for over 15 years.  She is the first female Executive Director of the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Community Center. Prior to her position at The Center, she held positions in the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and The Women’s Media Center.  Testone’s strong passion compels her to fight diligently to assist LGBT New Yorkers in need, to empower queer young people and to assist her community to achieve their individual and collective dreams.  Testone currently sits on the board of CenterLink; the community of LGBT Centers, the Human Resources Administration (HRA) Citizens Advisory Committee and the National Council for Research on Women’s Emerging Leaders Advisory Committee.

“The QuERI approach to school change is comprehensive and research-based, working with policy at the state, district and school levels, as well as preparing pre-service teachers, providing professional development to in-service teachers, leadership programs for high school students, teaching Education graduate students, conducting multiple research studies on LGBT issues, and disseminating and applying that research. The depth, breadth and success of a program that has never been funded is truly remarkable, and I have seen organizations with half a million dollar budgets do far less.” Glennda Testone

James Scheurich, PhD

Dr. James Scheurich is Professor of Urban Education Studies and Coordinator of the PhD Program in Urban Education Studies at Indiana University-IUPUI.

Scheurich has been the editor of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education for over 15 years and was an associate editor for Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ) for four years. He served for six years on the executive committee for the University Council for Educational Administration, the premier education leadership national research organization. He is among a small group of scholars who led changes in the national education discourse about the importance of race in education, about the possibility of success for schools and districts of color, and about social justice as a focus for departments of educational leadership. As an indicator of his national reputation, in 2007 Professor Scheurich was nominated for president of the American Education Research Association (AERA).

“Having spent a long career as an education professor, I have never seen a center or institute that is more effective and more productive than The Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI), directed by Dr. Elizabethe Payne. Single handedly, Dr. Payne has created a remarkable operation with little support from anyone but the graduate students who have assisted her.  They have produced significant scholarship, numerous submissions on Huffington Post, state policy papers, conference presentations, policy development work, university courses, and numerous school programs and professional developments. In other words, they are doing what many education scholars advocate needs to be done in any area of change in education.”  James Scheurich, Ph.D.

Jody Polleck, PhD

Dr. Jody Polleck is the program coordinator for literacy education in the Hunter College School of Education. Jody began her work with urban adolescents in 1994 where she was an outreach counselor for runaway teenagers in Washington, D.C. Her current research agenda focuses on differentiated and culturally responsive literacy instruction. Jody received a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar Award at the University of Amsterdam for her research project: “Bibliotherapeutic Book Clubs to Enhance Literacy and Social-Emotional Development for Urban Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.” She chairs the Hunter College School of Education Equity and Advocacy Committee and is dedicated to improving teacher preparation to support diverse student populations. She has written on teaching LGBTQ themed content in secondary English education. Jody is part of the QuERI Dignity for All Students Act Professional Development Project.