From helping to co-chair the planning committee to hosting a reception, members of the NYU Steinhardt community were front and center.
The AERA 2025 program committee (left to right): Co-Chair and USC Rossier Associate Professor Huriya Jabbar; Co-Chair and St. John's University Professor Catherine C. DiMartino; AERA President and UC Berkeley Professor and Associate Dean Janelle Scott; and Co-Chair and NYU Steinhardt Professor and Vice Dean Lorena Llosa at an AERA planning meeting.
The 2025 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting took place in Denver, Colorado, from April 23 to 27. The world's largest gathering of education researchers, the AERA Annual Meeting convened professionals and practitioners from around the country, with NYU Steinhardt playing a leading role in the organizing and execution of this important event.
Lorena Llosa, vice dean for academic affairs and professor of education at NYU Steinhardt, served as co-chair of this year’s program committee, which helped select the theme of “Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal.”
“The last few years have brought many challenges in society generally and education specifically,” says Llosa. “Our goal with this theme was to center the role of education research not just in identifying and documenting educational inequities, but to go beyond and think of it also as a tool for remedying injustices and repairing the system.”
For Llosa, this theme feels familiar as it “beautifully aligns with what we do at Steinhardt.”
“Dean Jack Knott talks often about improving the lives of people and communities in New York City and around the world through our work here at Steinhardt, and so our faculty are adept at leveraging academic diversity with interdisciplinary work,” says Llosa. “We pride ourselves in applied research that is highly relevant to real-world problems here, and that’s also what we want to highlight in our sessions at the AERA Annual Meeting.”
As leaders in the field of education research, NYU Steinhardt maintained a strong presence during the AERA Annual Meeting. The School hosted a well-attended social reception for alumni and friends, and Dean Knott sponsored a table during the awards luncheon.
Dean Knott also participated in an executive panel entitled “The Perspectives of Deans on Navigating Graduate Student and Early Career Trajectories in Troubling Times—An Open Discussion,” which was co-sponsored by AERA’s Consortium of University and Research Institutions (AERA-CURI). Dean Knott is on AERA-CURI’s Executive Committee, where he and other leaders in education advise the group on achieving their objectives to help member institutions with their research missions; facilitate AERA’s education and advocacy efforts to promote federal research support and sound research policies; and enhance collaborative efforts among individual scholars.
Lorena Llosa (far right) with fellow AERA program committee members at the Annual Meeting in Denver.
As in years past, a substantial number of Steinhardt students and faculty attended and presented at the AERA Annual Meeting, including Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, vice dean for research and equity and professor of international education; Fabienne Doucet, executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and associate professor of early childhood and urban education; and Jan L. Plass, professor and Paulette Goddard Chair in Digital Media and Learning Sciences.
Llosa herself has been attending the AERA Annual Meeting since she was in graduate school, making the opportunity to co-chair the program committee a full-circle moment.
“AERA has played a big role in most of our professional lives, from networking to presenting research and more,” says Llosa. “I am very grateful to Dean Knott for his support in taking on this role, and I am excited that Steinhardt had the opportunity to show how connected our work was to this year’s theme of using education research as a tool to find solutions and make an impact.”
“Attending the AERA Annual Meeting was an extraordinary experience, and I am immensely proud of our faculty, alumni, and students who represented NYU Steinhardt with insight, innovation, and enthusiasm,” says Dean Knott. “I hope our shared experience reaffirms our ongoing commitment to advancing education through rigorous research and meaningful collaboration."
Next year’s meeting will take place in April 2026 in Los Angeles, California, with the theme “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research.”
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