Mira Debs, Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2022

Mira Debs teaches and conducts research on comparative international education, alternative pedagogies, education policy, parent involvement, school choice, and school integration.

Research from her first book, Diverse Parents, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in an Era of School Choice (Harvard Education Press, 2019) was featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is the co-editor of the Handbook on Montessori Education (Bloomsbury 2023).

Other research examines how groups form collective identity through schooling, history and art. This including studies on school integration activism in Copenhagen, New York City, and Hartford, CT, and projects on the collective trauma resulting from the destruction of Italian art and India’s independence struggle. Her work has been published in Cultural Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, the American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, the American Education Research Journal, Comparative Education, Research in Comparative and International Education,  and the Journal of Montessori Research. She has also written for the New York Times, Ed Week, and the Washington Post. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Brady Foundation and WEND Ventures.

At Yale, Mira Debs serves on the Advisory Committee for the Yale Prison Education Initiative and the Rhodes & Marshall Selection Committee. She has taught in a variety of spaces including high school, Wesleyan University, Yale-NUS, and a CT maximum security prison. She previously served as the director of the Yale Education Studies program from 2017 to 2025.

Selected publications:

1. Castillo, E. and M. Debs (2025) Asian Americans, the Model Minority Narrative and Perspectives on School Integration. Urban Review. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-025-00723-1
2. Debs, M., Kafka, J., Makris, M. V., & Roda, A. (2023). Happiness-Oriented Parents: An Alternative Perspective on Privilege and Choosing Schools. American Journal of Education, 129(2). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/723066
3. Handbook of Montessori Education, Bloomsbury, UK, 2023. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bloomsbury-handbook-of-montessori-education-9781350275614/
4. Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in the era of school choice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2019.https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diverse_Families_Desirable_Schools/RhklEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0