Faculty Profiles

Molly Hamm-Rodr铆guez

Assistant Professor, Social Foundations of Education

Molly Hamm-Rodriguez

Email: mhammrodriguez@usf.edu
Curriculum Vitae


Dr. Molly Hamm-Rodr铆guez is an Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education. She specializes in anthropology of education (sociocultural, linguistic, and applied anthropology), comparative and international education, and race and ethnic studies. Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez uses critical and sociocultural theoretical perspectives across two focus areas that encompass the global study of educational inequality for Afro-Latinx and Caribbean youth through a transnational lens. The first strand of research explores the relationships between language, race, labor, and schooling as they shape the social futures of youth in global school-to-work and college and career readiness programs. The second strand of research engages with the policy contexts that influence multilingual development in and out of schools as well as the experiences of children and youth as they negotiate learning and their livelihoods within these contexts.
 
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez鈥檚 research focuses on the language ecologies within which varieties of English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French coexist, attending to the power relations and language ideologies that are expressed through both education policy and the communicative practices of speakers. She is committed to work that explicitly addresses issues of social justice and transformation. Her research priorities are developed through reciprocal relationships that center youth and community voices as well as through equitable research-practice partnerships with schools, districts, and community-based organizations. Her most recent projects involve collaboration with an NGO supporting Dominican and Haitian youth through a workforce development program in the Dominican Republic and a research-practice partnership with teachers and school leaders at bilingual elementary schools in Colorado (led by colleagues at CU Boulder).
 
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez uses ethnography, community-based and youth participatory action research methods, and discourse analysis in her research, which has been supported by the NAEd/Spencer Foundation, Fulbright, and Wenner-Gren Foundation. She is a 2023 Concha Delgado Gait谩n Presidential Fellow with the Council on Anthropology and Education. Her work has been published in Applied Linguistics; archipelagos: A journal of Caribbean digital praxis; CENTRO: Journal for Puerto Rican Studies; Language Arts; Learning, Culture, and Social Action; TESOL Quarterly; and The Reading Teacher. Her dissertation, entitled Re-Storying Paradise: Language, Imperial Formations of Tourism, and Youth Futures in the Dominican Republic, received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder and an Honorable Mention for the Frederick Erickson Dissertation Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education.
 
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez completed a Ph.D. in Equity, Bilingualism and Biliteracy from the University of Colorado Boulder鈥檚 School of Education, earning graduate certificates in Critical Ethnic Studies (Department of Ethnic Studies) and Culture, Language, and Social Practice (Department of Linguistics). She holds an M.A. in International Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also completed a B.A. in English, B.S. in Secondary Education, secondary major in International Studies and minor in Nonprofit Leadership at Kansas State University. Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez has experience collaborating with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Embassy, Pan-American Development Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, and UNESCO, among other institutions.