Postdoctoral Fellows

Zachary Brown is a postdoctoral fellow with joint appointments at the Warner School and the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies. His interdisciplinary research engages critical theories of race and gender, particularly Black feminist criticism, to study the social foundations and cultural politics of education in postsecondary contexts. Specifically attending to the archive of student protest and discourses of educational resistance, his scholarship examines how the psychic residue of racial slavery and settler colonialism on college campuses structures contemporary higher education practices.

Judith Van Alstyne is a postdoctoral fellow with joint appointments as a liaison for Warner’s Research Subjects Review Board (RSRB), as a senior researcher for the National Science Foundation-funded project “Creating a Model for Sustainable Ambitious Mathematics Programs in High-Need Settings,” and for the Center for Professional Development and Education Reform, where she will be exploring the group information management practices in mentoring contexts, such as Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs). Van Alstyne also teaches courses in the teaching and curriculum program. Before pursuing her doctoral degree, she worked in public libraries and as a K-12 school librarian. Helping students keep track of digital information led her to discover the field of Personal Information Management and the lack of research on youth. Van Alstyne’s dissertation is titled “Toward an Understanding of the Personal Information Management Discourses of Youth.” Her research focuses on the digital information practices of youth in multiple settings including academic (e.g., learning management systems) and extracurricular (e.g., digital art and gaming) contexts

Yu Jung Han is a postdoctoral fellow housed in the Center for Learning in the Digital Age (LiDA), with additional teaching responsibilities at the Warner School. She is involved in a few externally funded LiDA-related projects and, more generally, contributes her expertise in instructional technology, AI-powered tools for multimodal content creation, and qualitative analysis to LiDA’s initiatives. Han has taught in a variety of contexts and for various audiences both prior to and during her doctoral study at the Warner School.  She graduated in 2022 with a dissertation titled “Extramural English in the Classroom: Intersecting Spaces for Interest-driven English Learning.”  Her primary research focus centers around the exploration of language learners' language use outside of the classroom, which is motivated by their personal interests. Han focuses on creating learning environments that allow students to leverage and enhance the expertise they acquire through these interest-driven practices, and effectively connect their expertise to their personal, academic, and professional goals. Her research is further categorized into several main areas, such as language learners’ motivation, identity development, and the utilization of technology for interest-driven practices, which has recently expanded into the realm of generative AI.  

Rebecca Rosen is a postdoctoral fellow working on a National Science Foundation-funded study on inclusive design in informal learning spaces. Additionally, with her appointment in the Center for Professional Development and Education Reform, in conjunction with Associate Professor Kevin Meuwissen, she helps to develop and enact professional learning for the Regional Social Studies Leadership Cadre – a working group of educators committed to supporting high-quality social studies teaching. Rosen also assists with evaluating the ROC Urban Teaching Fellows Program, Rochester’s first teacher residency program. Rosen teaches courses in the teaching and curriculum program. Before pursuing her doctoral degree, she worked as an educator and teacher educator at the Guggenheim Museum and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. Rosen’s dissertation was titled “Gatekeeping Difficult Histories: The Interaction of Emotions with Secondary Social Studies Teachers’ Pedagogical Reasoning.” Her research focuses on the decision-making practices of social studies teachers and the ways in which they mediate their own and their students’ emotions, and perceptions of associated risks, when teaching difficult content.