Annie Hemphill

I am a Ph.D. candidate studying Education Policy at Michigan State University. I am also a graduate research assistant and a part of the REACH project that studies how parents and education leaders responded to racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 and navigated challenges related to COVID-19. Additionally, I have published research that examined the role of teachers’ unions during the COVID-19 pandemic and their political power during a crisis.

My dissertation research uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods that aim to understand White individuals’ perceptions and reactions to policies aimed to desegregate or diversify learning environments in a variety of ways. Specifically, I look at their involvement with intentionally diverse charter school policies, and policies concerned with two-way language immersion in K-12 schools. In addition, I am interested in how policy frames can impact support for K-12 desegregation policies. I designed and analyzed data from a survey experiment that varied different policy frames to understand how policy framing shapes White individuals’ support for diversity policies.

I am a mixed methods researcher with experience on projects that use strictly qualitative, solely quantitative, and a combination of the two. My expertise in both research methods enables me to let the nature of the research question guide me to the most suitable methodology and explore public policy issues from multiple perspectives.

When I am not working, I love traveling, reading, and exploring the outdoors with my dog Lizzie!