Faculty Profiles
Molly Hamm-Rodríguez
Assistant Professor, Social Foundations of Education
Email: mhammrodriguez@usf.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Molly Hamm-Rodríguez 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-Rodríguez 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-Rodríguez’s 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-Rodríguez 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 Gaitán 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-Rodríguez completed a Ph.D. in Equity, Bilingualism and Biliteracy from the
University of Colorado Boulder’s 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-Rodríguez 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.