Nicole Mirra

Nicole Mirra is an Associate Professor of Urban Teacher Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Prior to earning her Ph.D. in Urban Schooling from the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies in 2012, she taught English Language Arts at a public high school in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. This experience sparked her passion for English Education, which continued to grow as she taught at another public high school in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and coordinated the UCLA Council of Youth Research, a university/school partnership that engages young people in research in their schools and communities in pursuit of educational and social justice.

Her teaching and research focuses on the intersections between critical literacy and civic engagement across multiple contexts, including urban secondary English classrooms, grassroots youth organizations, and digital learning communities. Her work has appeared in such publications as English Journal, Reading & Writing Quarterly, Democracy & Education, and Journal of Teacher Education. She also advocates for teacher leadership and critical digital literacy as a Connected Learning Ambassador for the National Writing Project.