​Debbie Sonu

Faculty coleader

Debbie Sonu is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Hunter College and doctoral faculty in the Urban Education Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research interests include curriculum theory and practice as it relates to urban schooling and social justice pedagogies in the United States. Her work has been published in Curriculum Inquiry, Journal of Teacher Education, and the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, among others. Her dissertation, …(in)Justice for All?: Brooklyn Youth and the Question of Social Justice, explored youth performances and the complications of teaching for social justice, and received the 2011 Division B Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award and the 2010 Critical Educators for Social Justice SIG Distinguished Dissertation of the Year Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In addition to her research, she works closely with elementary school teachers in the Lower East Side and Chinatown, serving as a university liaison within the clinically-rich teacher education program. Currently, she is studying the perspectives of youth and children as they engage difficult knowledge and is interested in narratives of past educational experience.