Four doctoral students receive NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowships for education research
Four UW–Madison doctoral students are among the 35 selected to receive 2026 National Academy of Education (NAEd) and Spencer Dissertation Fellowships. The competitive fellowship supports projects that address critical issues in the history, theory, or practice of education at national and international levels. This year, it drew a pool of nearly 500 applicants.
UW–Madison’s graduate student awardees are:
- Farah Basit, doctoral candidate, Educational Policy Studies
- Tony DelaRosa, doctoral candidate, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
- Benjamin Lebovitz, doctoral candidate, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
- Curtis O’Dwyer, doctoral candidate, Curriculum and Instruction
In addition to the doctoral fellows, UW–Madison School of Education faculty Christopher Saldaña and Icy Zhang received NAEd/Spencer postdoctoral fellowships.
Farah Basit
Dissertation: “Schools, Sex & Silence: A Comparative Ethnography of the Pedagogies of Gendered Shame in Lahore, Pakistan”
Farah Basit is a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in Comparative and International Education. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Sociology from Lahore University of Management Sciences. Her research sits at the intersection of education, gender, sexuality, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), with a particular focus on how schools shape young women’s understandings of the body, morality, safety, and belonging. Building on her earlier work on menstrual hygiene management and sex education in Pakistan, her scholarship examines how shame, silence, and institutional regulation structure girls’ educational experiences. Through ethnographic and feminist approaches, she explores how schools reproduce and negotiate sociocultural ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, and respectability, particularly within Pakistan’s class-stratified education system. Her current dissertation research investigates the pedagogies of gendered shame in girls’ secondary schools in Lahore, focusing on the official, hidden, and missing curricula of gender and sexuality across public, low-cost private, and elite-private schools. Her work contributes to feminist, anthropological, and comparative education scholarship by theorizing shame not simply as an emotion, but as a pedagogical and institutional practice that shapes what girls can know, ask, and imagine. More broadly, she is interested in questions of educational inequality, gender justice, moral regulation, and the politics of knowledge in schools. Her dissertation research is supported by the Arvil Barr Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.
Tony DelaRosa
Dissertation: “In The Belly of the Beast: ACT 266 & The Policy Advocacy of HMoob/Hmong & Asian American K-12 Studies in Wisconsin”
Tony DelaRosa (he/they/siya) is the son of Pampangan & Caviteño Filipino immigrants and the father of two Filipinx-Cuban kids. He is a poet, sociologist, entrepreneur, and avid gamer. Tony holds a Masters in arts education and non-profit management from Harvard University. Tony is now a PhD Candidate in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He researches HMoob/Hmong Policy Advocacy, Du Boisian Afro-Asian Racialization and Solidarity, and Ethnic Studies movements, with support from the UW-Madison EdGRS Fellowship, the OCA-Wisconsin Graduate Leadership Fellowship, the UW-Madison Education Policy Engagement Grant, the UCEA Barbara Jackson Scholarship, and the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. For his dissertation, he is building an oral history archive of HMoob/Hmong and Asian American policy advocacy in partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society. Outside of education, Tony co-investigates the USAP Tayo Lab at the Center for Healthy Minds at UW–Madison, a community-engaged project with FilExcellence, where he examines the relationship between politics and the well-being of Filipina/x/o Americans nationally. In 2023, Tony was named one of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Asian American leaders by Madison 365 magazine. He will be an incoming NYU Faculty First-Look fellow in 2027. Tony has been published in the Harvard Asian American Policy Review, Urban Education Review, and the Sage Encyclopedia for Filipina/x/o Studies. His work has been featured in Hulu, CBS, Harvard Education Magazine, NBC, and elsewhere. He serves as a contributing writer for the Hechinger Report and Mochi Magazine. Lastly, Tony is the author of the award-winning book “Teaching the Invisible Race: Embodying a Pro-Asian American Lens in Schools,” published by Jossey-Bass. Learn more at TonyRosaSpeaks.com.
Benjamin Lebovitz
Dissertation: “Contesting Erasure: How Youth, Caregivers, and Adults Disrupt Trans and LGBTQ+ Student Exclusion in Wisconsin”
Benjamin Lebovitz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis and a predoctoral fellow in the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their scholarship examines how educational leadership, organizational practices, and policy environments shape the academic opportunities, belonging, and well-being of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized youth. Prior to doctoral study, Ben taught choir and drama, advised a gender and sexuality alliance, and became a National Board Certified Teacher (Music, Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood) at a public high school in southern Arizona. A 2019 Arizona Teacher of the Year semifinalist and former GLSEN Tucson chapter leader, Ben brings sustained commitment to translational scholarship that is informed by their experience in teaching and in leadership. They actively partner with schools, professional organizations, and community groups through practitioner workshops, leadership institutes, and research–practice partnerships. Ben earned a master’s degree in instructional leadership from Northern Arizona University and a bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Arizona.
Curtis O’Dwyer
Curtis O’Dwyer, a doctoral candidate in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator with a decade of experience in secondary and post-secondary education. His work is characterized by his commitment to advancing equitable, justice-centered, and innovative approaches to science teaching and learning. His scholarly interests lie at the intersection of science education, science and technology studies, and Black studies. His research investigates how the teaching philosophies and practices of Black science educators—past and present—foster otherwise possibilities for Black liveliness by unsettling norms within the profession that are productive of antiblackness. Curtis’s project, along with receiving the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation fellowship, has been supported by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Science Education and Education Graduate Research Scholars fellowships, as well as the Black Teacher Archive. His publications appear in the recent book compilation, Science Education and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, and the St. Louis American newspaper. He holds a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Mathematics from Roosevelt University and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Washington University in St. Louis. Beyond his research, Curtis continues advancing educational possibilities through his service as a graduate representative for AERA’s Division B–Curriculum Studies and as a board member for a local school in Madison.